Month: August 2016

There is a species of read­er who always seems to know bet­ter than you what ought to inter­est you and what you ought to say. Just as often, this read­er (or Face­book denizen) knows all the things a writer like you should not both­er with. I get e‑mails with the instruc­tions, “Hey, Alt! You should write a post about the Johan­nine com­ma!” or “Hey, Alt! Did you see this stu­pid thing that Mr. Y post­ed at the-pope-is-the-antichrist.com? You ought to refute that!” One would think I took were a DJ, or an impres­sion­ist, and took requests. I mar­vel at this and much else.

In my own case, sev­er­al peo­ple have hijacked dis­cus­sions on my Face­book wall in order to write long and graph­ic descrip­tions of what hap­pens dur­ing an abor­tion. Or to say that six­ty mil­lion dead babies are plead­ing with us to vote for Mr. Trump. Yes­ter­day, some­one tweet­ed to me a graph­ic pic­ture of a bloody and dis­mem­bered baby as the kind of thing I would be respon­si­ble for — not if I vote for Mrs. Clin­ton, but mere­ly if I refuse to vote for Mr. Trump. This is emo­tion­al manip­u­la­tion. It is the tac­tic, not of thinkers, but of bul­lies. And so my read­er is exact­ly right.