I think what bothered me most was that he was too intelligent to just dismiss out of hand and leave his misinformation hanging in the air, but too convoluted to treat seriously and straight up as an honest interlocutor in a search for truth.
I wound up going farther than I wanted to, but not as far as I needed to in order to strip him of all pretense and flail his exposed backside until he screamed uncle.
He didn’t want truth. He wanted victory, which for him was to frustrate people who felt righteously aggrieved. He got what he wanted.
At some point, I descended to his level. Except for the public spectacle, which I hope helped someone, it was a waste of time.
His air of superiority, and tossing out of pseudo history as fact irked me. I wasn’t about to be mollified with a pat on the head or a pompous display of faux erudition.
I descended into mild abuse/soft derision. When he questioned my tone, I wanted to jump down his throat to show him what real abuse looked like.
I don’t like getting goaded like that, and was mildly ashamed of myself for letting it happen.
As I say, I posted it to get it out of my system. It’s working, slowly.
Somebody commented on my blog that my “hatred” for liberals was causing me wrongly to call a smart guy an imbecile. It was more anger and frustration than hatred. And, the point is that one can be both intelligent and an imbecile. That’s what liberalism does to a lot of very smart people.
But, his point was well taken. I should keep a lid on my anger so as not to get abusive. I asked him to pray for me. That’ll probably piss him off. Hopefully not.