For Bethany

Bsking, who is still surrounded by all the Karen Read-has-been-framed, Dr Turtleboy nonsense, now mercifully coming to an end (we hope) as the trial concludes, has been discouraged at how many people have opinions with only the most superficial knowledge. She has several Psalms which have occurred to her over this.

Today I was listening to Jonathan Keeperman, known online as "Lomez," (Verbal quote, not written)

In my real life - family, friends, former colleagues in particular - they are not online by and large, and they do not understand the context.  In a couple of cases I have tried to explain "Hey this guy at the Guardian, he's an Antifa activist," and they go "What's Antifa?" I sort of skip over that and I go "Well he's trying to doxx me," and they go "What is doxxing?" And then I realise it would take hours to construct the proper contextual clues so that they could make sense of what happened and what the motivations of this guy are and why I am a target.      

And so they are not inured to these smear tactics, they see that the Guardian  and they just assume that this is a credible outlet, and if they are publishing this piece it must have some public-interest rationale.   I must actually be whatever he called me this "Leader of this proto-fascist movement" and they don't know what that means either...so I try to prod a little bit to see where these people are coming from and I say "What does that mean to you, that I'm a proto-fascist," and they don't really have an answer. (Italics mine.)

Yup, it's one of the versions of what I used to call whack-a-mole politics, that not only are there too many things to hit, but that they don't stay down.  You answer one and a few seconds later it pops back up again. You are arguing against aura and feelings, not facts.