Pitiful Patterns

The pitiful pattern of the deceitful dimwit:

1. ask you something
2. interrupt your response dismissively
3. feign confusion and/or argue
4. abruptly change subject and ramble
5. eventually attempt to assert the thing previously opposed

Treatment protocol:

1. ask them to spell it (or Google it)
2. advise them to sue the schools they attended
3. give them ideological equivalent of Deep Woods OFF

Example:

A neighbor came to my back door gushing high praise for Bruce Springsteen’s "Bring Them Home" song (2006). He was regurgitating rhetoric he presumably read in a poorly written alternative weekly. In the course of rambling, he asked if I knew what NEOCON meant.

I laughed in his face.

If he did not grasp that term, he didn’t understand the song, or much of the 20th Century. Had he approached me sincerely, I would have informed him or politely sent him in the right direction. After that, whenever the subject of politics or culture came up I asked him if he ever found out the meaning of NEOCON. He hasn’t. He has to scavenge elsewhere.