Discussions about politics with reasonable people you disagree with are fascinating and illuminating, but I've found it's always the unreasonable people who have reprehensible indefensible politics who try to unilaterally inject them into the conversation, but then when somebody calls them on it and stands up to their bullying and gaslighting, they suddenly don't want to talk about politics any more after bringing it up, because they don't want to discuss or defend or justify what they just said, "loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past" [1]. Many people unfortunate enough to have brainwashed alt-right relatives they're seasonally visiting are experiencing that this holiday season.

I recently lost a long term friend of several decades I used to adore and respect, John Gilmore, to this disgracefully common pathological mental decline and intellectually dishonest trolling. It started with his gleefully and frequently bringing up climate change conspiracy theories, then finally degenerated into blatant racism, a straight white privileged over entitled libertarian millionaire man bitterly complaining about white victimhood and reverse discrimination and the woke mind virus, and literally quoting and enthusiastically agreeing with and intellectually dishonestly arguing in support of Scott Adams statements that "Blacks people are a hate group" and "White people should stay the hell away from Black people" and White Supremacist slogans like "It's OK to be White".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_okay_to_be_white

https://time.com/6259311/dilbert-racism-scott-adams/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/02/28/rasmussen-po...

It sucks to lose a friend, but it sucks a hell of a lot more to tolerate racism and abuse and gaslighting from a troll.

Tolerating him and his ilk but just avoiding talking about politics around him is exactly the wrong approach, since he's never going to change. Packing up my luggage, leaving his house, returning his key, checking into a hotel, terminating the friendship, and never talking with him again is much cleaner and healthier for all involved.

That's what the EFF did too, when they voted to kick him off the board of the organization he founded. But it's also important to warn other people about him and others like him, because he certainly wouldn't want me to self censor or keep my experiences and what I think a secret.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -John Gilmore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gilmore_(activist)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/10/john-gilmore-leaves-ef...

My heart and sympathy goes out to others stuck with sociopathic trolls like John Gilmore, because of family or financial or other commitments, and all I can suggest is don't tolerate any of it, don't try to fix them, just cut them out of your life as much as you can.

[1] “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

This quote is from Jean-Paul Sartre's work "Anti-Semite and Jew" (originally "Réflexions sur la question juive"), written in 1946. In this passage, Sartre analyzes the behavior and motives of anti-Semites. He argues that anti-Semites are aware of the absurdity and frivolity of their arguments. According to Sartre, they engage in such discourse not to persuade through rational debate but to amuse themselves and to disconcert their opponents. They do this by undermining the seriousness of any conversation, thus avoiding genuine discussion. When pressed, they may cease the discussion, indicating that they are above argumentation. This approach, Sartre suggests, is a form of bad faith, a concept he discusses in his existentialist philosophy, referring to acts of self-deception or dishonesty in one's dealings with oneself and others.