The Performance: How Intellectual Cowardice Masquerades as Argument

Or: A Field Guide to Recognizing When People Have Stopped Thinking

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

A meditation on status-dominance games, cult epistemology, and what happens when Bitcoin enthusiasts encounter actual philosophy

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This is, after all, a philosophy blog.

But what I’m about to document isn’t philosophy. It’s the systematic replacement of thought with performance—the careful choreography of intellectual motion that creates the appearance of engagement while avoiding it absolutely.

Over the past seventy-two hours, I set forward an intellectual and moral intervention of sorts. Two essays: “Bitcoin is a Lie“ and “The Banality of Bitcoin Advocacy.” In them, I made a simple structural argument about deflationary monetary systems: that they systematically advantage accumulated wealth holders in ways that escape democratic constraint, that Austrian economics suffers from systematic distributive blindness, and that Bitcoin embeds feudalism in code while its advocates dress extraction as liberation.

What followed was not debate. It was a comprehensive demonstration of every technique human beings deploy when they cannot defend what they believe but cannot bear to question it.

I’m going to show you the pattern. I’m going to name every move. And I’m going to use actual examples from actual people who thought they were arguing when they were, in fact, doing something else entirely.

Pay attention. Because this pattern appears everywhere—not just in Bitcoin discourse, but anywhere cognitive dissonance meets tribal identity. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And once you can name it, you become immune to it.

Consider this your cognitive vaccine.

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I. The Intervention: What I Actually Argued

Before documenting how Bitcoin advocates avoided my arguments, let me state clearly what those arguments were. Because the first move in every status-dominance game is to mischaracterize the critic’s position.

In “Bitcoin is a Lie,” I argued that Bitcoin will fail not because of technical limitations but because of structural impossibility: you cannot build stable political economy on deflationary monetary base that systematically advantages early accumulators while providing no mechanism for democratic oversight. The promise that Bitcoin offers liberation is a lie—what it actually offers is permanent wealth concentration beyond democratic constraint.

In “The Banality of Bitcoin Advocacy,” I documented how Bitcoin advocacy has become banal in Hannah Arendt’s sense—the systematic abdication of thought in favor of slogans, clichés, and comfortable evasions. Bitcoin advocates aren’t evil geniuses plotting feudalism. They’re ordinary people who’ve stopped thinking, who’ve retreated into Austrian economics talking points they haven’t examined, who defend extraction while calling it freedom because examining their premises would threaten investments—financial, social, intellectual, identity—they cannot bear to question.

My core claims were precise:

First, Distributive Blindness. Austrian economics systematically ignores who starts with what. When you add distribution back—when you ask “who has savings to appreciate under deflation?”—the system reveals itself as advantaging accumulated wealth holders automatically while wage earners at subsistence have nothing that appreciates. This isn’t a bug. It’s the design.

Second, Political Economy Requirements. Markets don’t create their own institutional frameworks. They require legal structures, enforcement mechanisms, democratic oversight. Bitcoin advocates treat “removing government from money” as liberation when it’s actually removing democratic accountability from concentrated power.

Third, Historical Evidence. Commodity money standards didn’t produce equilibrium—they produced depressions, deflation spirals, massive wealth concentration. We abandoned them for reasons Bitcoin advocates refuse to examine.

Fourth, Hayek Appropriation. Friedrich Hayek explicitly supported social safety nets, monetary policy oversight, and constitutional constraints on concentrated power—public or private. Bitcoin advocates invoke his name while building exactly what he warned against: “intolerable concentrations of private power” beyond democratic constraint.

Fifth, Nozick’s Evolution. Robert Nozick—intellectual father of libertarian property rights theory—later repudiated his own work, recognizing that natural rights libertarianism couldn’t justify existing property distributions and led to morally indefensible conclusions. Bitcoin advocates defend more rigid positions than even Nozick could sustain.

These aren’t vague criticisms. They’re specific structural arguments about distribution, institutions, power, and democracy.

Now watch what happened when Bitcoin advocates encountered them.

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II. The Opening Gambit: Universal Assumption of Ignorance

The first move in the status-dominance game is elegant in its simplicity: assume the critic doesn’t understand.

Not “I disagree with your interpretation.” Not “I weight these factors differently.” But the fundamental assertion: you simply don’t grasp what we’re discussing.

John Haar, representing Swan Bitcoin, opened with this: “Mike Brock claims that hard money somehow results in exactly what fiat money does. As if we don’t have 54 years of fiat evidence.”

Petter Englund contributed: “You need to understand philosophy 101 before calling on Hume to laugh on your behalf.”

And Rollo McFloogle—yes, that’s really his chosen pseudonym, and no, I will never tire of it—declared: “This is a really bad understanding of how money works by Mike Brock.”

Notice what they’re not doing. They’re not engaging my distributive analysis—the observation that wage earners at subsistence have no savings to appreciate under deflation. They’re not addressing my claim that Bitcoin removes monetary policy from democratic oversight permanently. They’re not confronting the historical evidence that commodity money caused depressions rather than equilibrium.

They’re asserting I don’t understand Austrian economics. I don’t grasp Bitcoin’s protocol. I’m confused about how money works.

This is crucial to recognize: they have restated my conclusion while ignoring my premises entirely. It’s the intellectual equivalent of responding to a proof that 2+2=4 by saying “you just don’t understand mathematics” without ever touching the proof itself.

The tell is simple: Can they accurately restate your position before disagreeing with it?

If yes—honest disagreement.

If no—status gaming.

None of them could. Not one. Because to restate my argument accurately would require engaging with distributive analysis, institutional requirements, and political economy. And the moment you engage those questions, the simple libertarian bromides collapse into their constituent absurdities.

So instead: “You don’t understand.”

It’s a perfect opening move. It requires no actual knowledge. It places the burden of proof on the critic. And it signals to the tribe: this person is an outsider who doesn’t grasp our enlightened truths.

But here’s what they didn’t know: I’ve spent twenty years studying philosophy, science, and engineering. I’ve read Hayek comprehensively—not selectively quoted passages from The Road to Serfdom but the entirety of his work, including The Constitution of Liberty where he explicitly supports social safety nets and monetary policy oversight, and Denationalisation of Money where his proposal for competing currencies looks nothing like Bitcoin’s fixed-supply monopoly through first-mover advantage. I’ve studied Austrian economics deeply enough to understand precisely where its distributive blindness operates—not as peripheral flaw but as central feature. I can distinguish Hayek’s actual liberalism from Rothbard’s feudalist appropriation with the kind of precision that comes from comprehensive study rather than ideological cherry-picking.

I know that Hayek and Mises both rejected Rothbard—not as minor disagreement but as fundamental repudiation of his anarcho-capitalist project. I know that Nozick spent the last decades of his life backing away from the property-rights absolutism of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, recognizing it couldn’t justify existing distributions and led to morally indefensible conclusions.

But none of this matters to the performer. Because the point isn’t to engage with what I actually know. The point is to avoid having to defend what they believe.

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III. The Laundered Ad Hominem: Character Assassination as Inquiry

When assumption of ignorance doesn’t work—when the critic demonstrates comprehensive knowledge—the game escalates.

But crude ad hominem is too obvious. “You’re stupid” ends the conversation immediately and makes the attacker look bad.

So they launder it. They hide character attacks inside questions, concerns, or innocent observations.

Brett—a Bitcoin enthusiast who goes by “5and2fish,” the symbolism apparently Christian, the irony of using it to defend wealth accumulation apparently lost—provided the textbook example.

He began with: “Sorry, did you criticize his piece without having listened to the piece?”

This sounds like a reasonable question. An inquiry into whether I’d done due diligence. But it’s functionally identical to asserting: “You’re intellectually lazy and dishonest.”

When I explained I had listened and encountered sufficient intellectual wreckage to stop because the structural disagreement was too epistemically fundamental, he pivoted immediately:

“You know what the worst part is. As an ‘ex-tech exec’ I am sure you live a very comfortable life. Which is great. But you never have to feel the devastating effects of the system you perpetuate—which CRUSHES the very people you claim you want to help.”

Notice the technique. He’s not saying “your argument is wrong because you’re comfortable.” That would be obvious ad hominem, easily dismissed. Instead, he’s expressing concern about my comfort while people suffer. He’s questioning my moral standing to make arguments about political economy.

It’s character assassination wearing the costume of social consciousness.

Others suggested I might be taking Ozempic, implying medication was impairing my reasoning. Multiple people claimed I was “speaking with big words I don’t understand,” suggesting I’m performing intelligence rather than demonstrating it. John Haar eventually declared I “wouldn’t know what an intellectually honest argument looked like if it hit me in the face”—this after refusing my formal debate challenge.

Each of these is the same move: attack the person to avoid engaging the argument, but do it through implication, question, or concern rather than direct assertion.

The beauty of the technique is its deniability. When called out, they can protest: “I was just asking!” or “I’m just concerned about...” But the function is transparent: suggest the critic is deficient—intellectually, morally, psychologically—so you don’t have to address what they’re actually saying.

The counter is simple but requires unflinching directness: Name it explicitly.

When Brett deployed his emotional appeal about comfortable tech executives crushing workers, I responded: “What a dodge, Brett. I pointed you to a substantive response, and you resort to an emotional appeal! Do you know how embarrassing you are?”

Later, when he persisted, I escalated: “Are you too fucking stupid to realize this is a laundered ad hominem attack, and explains why I respond to you with such hostility? You insult my intelligence, and then dare me to disprove an oppositional claim that is discontinuous from my premises.”

The profanity is important here. It signals that patience has limits. That persistent intellectual dishonesty—hiding character attacks in questions, playing innocent while suggesting the critic is confused, lazy, or morally compromised—eventually earns not measured response but controlled fury.

This isn’t losing composure. It’s deploying appropriate intensity after exhausted patience. It’s pedagogical rage—earned through restraint, justified by behavior, calculated in execution.

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IV. The Premise Smuggle: Rigging the Frame

Here’s a sophisticated move that requires attention to spot: hide controversial assumptions in the question structure itself, forcing the critic to accept your framework to answer at all.

Kevin Hutchinson provided the perfect specimen: “Can you give any real-world examples of functioning democracies?”

This sounds like a straightforward request for evidence. But notice what it assumes: that no functioning democracies exist, or at least that examples are rare and contestable.

The question isn’t “Do functioning democracies exist?” It’s “Can you name any?”—presupposing the answer is difficult or impossible.

I responded by extracting the hidden premise: “The embedded assumption here, that all democracies have failed, and all experience hath shewn—that’s a Declaration of Independence reference—that democracy has been a failure, is one hell of a premise on which to start an honest discussion.”

This matters. If I’d simply listed democracies—the United States, Germany, Canada, Japan, Norway, dozens of others—I’d have accepted his frame. I’d be defending democracy against an impossible standard of perfection, acting as though the burden is on me to prove democracies function when obviously they do.

The US holds regular elections that change governments. It has constitutional constraints on power, independent judiciary, free press, civil liberties, and democratic accountability over monetary policy. Is it perfect? No. Has it experienced serious problems? Obviously. Does it function as a democracy where citizens participate in self-governance? Undeniably.

But by framing the question as “can you give examples,” he smuggled in the assumption that examples are rare enough to require special justification.

This technique saturates Bitcoin discourse:

“Do you believe Bitcoin can scale enough for your arguments to matter?” (Smuggles: your arguments only matter if Bitcoin scales to full adoption)

“How does inflation stop asset holders from accumulating?” (Smuggles: we’re only comparing inflation to deflation, not examining whether deflation solves the problem or creates worse ones)

“Don’t you see the game-theoretic brilliance of the protocol?” (Smuggles: the protocol is brilliant, you’re just not sophisticated enough to perceive it)

Each question hides contestable assumptions that, if accepted, determine the answer before you’ve even engaged.

The counter is surgical: Stop and examine premises.

Don’t accept the framing. Don’t answer questions that smuggle assumptions. Extract the hidden premise and demand they defend it first.

“You’re assuming all democracies have failed. Defend that claim before I engage your question.”

“You’re assuming Bitcoin’s protocol is normatively neutral rather than embedding specific distributional outcomes. That’s precisely what I’m disputing—defend the assumption.”

“You’re assuming ‘game-theoretic brilliance’ settles the normative question about whether permanent wealth concentration beyond democratic constraint serves human flourishing. Make that argument rather than hiding it in your question.”

Force them to argue for their premises rather than hiding those premises in question structure. Watch what happens when you do: they either have to defend indefensible assumptions or retreat to different ground entirely.

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V. Assertion as Answer: The Circular Retreat

When challenged on substance, watch for this move carefully: they simply restate their position, claim they’ve “answered,” and demand you disprove it.

“Rollo McFloogle”—I cannot emphasize enough how much joy that pseudonym brings me—demonstrated this with crystalline perfection.

After I dismissed his initial claim as likely drawn from “bullshit essays on the Mises Institute’s website,” he protested: “I did answer the part I quoted from your piece though.”

His “answer”? The assertion that “hard money makes saving possible” and “makes you have to actually produce something of value.”

But that’s not an answer to my argument. My argument is structural and distributive: deflationary money systematically advantages those who already have accumulated wealth because their capital appreciates automatically without producing anything. Meanwhile, wage earners at subsistence levels don’t have savings to appreciate. Therefore deflation concentrates wealth in existing holders through automatic appreciation beyond democratic constraint, while those without capital to begin with gain nothing from “sound money” except the privilege of watching wealth accumulate to others.

His response: “But hard money makes saving possible!”

This is the intellectual equivalent of responding to a proof that 2+2=4 because of Peano axioms and set theory by shouting “But 2+2=4!” and claiming you’ve engaged the proof.

It’s not engagement. It’s assertion wearing the mask of rebuttal.

The pattern repeated across every exchange with numbing consistency:

Me: “Deflationary systems advantage accumulated wealth holders through automatic appreciation. Those without savings don’t benefit.”

Them: “But deflation rewards saving!”

Me: “Who has savings to appreciate? Not wage earners at subsistence. You’re ignoring distribution.”

Them: “Hard money makes you produce value!”

Me: “You’re not engaging distributive consequences. This is closed-system reasoning disconnected from political economy.”

Them: “You just don’t understand Austrian economics.”

Round and round. Never touching the actual argument. Always retreating to assertion when pressed. Circle complete.

The tell is obvious: Do they engage your premises or reassert their conclusion?

If they engage—that’s argument, however much you might disagree. If they reassert—that’s performance, regardless of how sophisticated the vocabulary.

I made specific claims requiring specific responses:

Distributive analysis shows deflation advantages wealth holders. Engage the distribution or explain why it doesn’t matter.

Historical evidence shows commodity money caused depressions not equilibrium. Engage the history or explain why this time is different.

Political economy requires democratic oversight of concentrated power. Engage the institutional requirements or explain how Bitcoin creates accountability.

Hayek explicitly supported monetary policy oversight and social safety nets. Engage his actual positions or stop invoking his name.

Not one person did any of these things. They asserted Austrian economic principles as though assertion settled questions, then demanded I disprove their framework using that same framework’s assumptions.

This is the intellectual equivalent of “The Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true.” When you point out the circularity, they claim you’re rejecting God’s word rather than examining whether the premise withstands scrutiny.

Brett provided another perfect example. When I explained I’d found his podcast guest’s arguments epistemically incoherent—meaning they contained structural contradictions at the level of basic premises—he responded with a closed cycle “proof”:

“Fixed money supply: when the amount of stuff grows, prices fall → prices fall, spending slows → spending slows, production slows → production slows, the amount of stuff shrinks → the stuff shrinks, prices rise! → prices rise, spending rises. Try a free market.”

This is textbook closed-system reasoning. It only “works” if you:

• Ignore who has assets that appreciate versus who lives paycheck to paycheck

• Ignore institutional frameworks that enable markets to function

• Ignore power dynamics that determine who benefits from price changes

• Ignore historical evidence that this cycle doesn’t actually equilibrate but spirals into depression

• Ignore political requirements for democratic accountability

Once you add any of those back—once you move from closed abstract system to actual political economy—the elegant cycle collapses.

I responded: “I’m devastated, Brett. You’ve assembled these neo-classical economic talking points into a completely internally non-contradictory frame and proclaimed your own brilliance. But as every trained philosopher and economist can plainly see, it is the closedness of your structural argument—outside any workable theory of political economy—that betrays the fraudulence of the entire enterprise.”

The closedness is the problem. His argument only works in a frictionless vacuum where distribution doesn’t exist, institutions don’t matter, power is absent, and history provides no evidence. The moment you reintroduce reality, the system reveals itself as what it is: intellectual masturbation dressed as economic theory.

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VI. The Tribal Appeal: Consensus as Substitute for Argument

When assertion fails to persuade, watch them pivot to consensus—but not actual consensus of economists or political philosophers. Consensus of their tribe.

John Haar deployed this with particular vigor: “By now, the flaws in your claims and arguments have been explained to you many times by many different people.”

Rollo McFloogle added: “*No one with a clue takes you seriously. Most people want to be fed easy slop to make themselves feel good about themselves.”

Petter Englund simply declared: “Not impressed.”

Notice what’s happening. They’re not making arguments. They’re appealing to imagined agreement within their bubble.

“Many different people have explained the flaws” - Who? Where? None of them engaged my distributive analysis. They asserted Austrian principles and claimed I don’t understand. That’s not explaining flaws—that’s assuming them.

“No one with a clue” - Define “with a clue.” Do you mean “agrees with Austrian economics”? Then you’re being circular—only people who accept your premises count as informed. Do you mean “trained in economics”? Because most trained economists abandoned commodity money standards for exactly the reasons I’m articulating. The profession moved past these arguments half a century ago because they couldn’t withstand scrutiny when distribution and institutions were added back.

“Not impressed” - This is pure status performance. Whether you’re impressed is utterly irrelevant to whether my arguments hold. I’m not trying to impress you. I’m making claims about distribution, power, and institutions that either withstand scrutiny or don’t. Your feelings about them matter not at all.

This technique works inside the bubble. Everyone around you agrees, reinforcing the sense that disagreement must indicate ignorance or bad faith. The problem is your bubble isn’t reality. It’s a carefully curated information environment where only confirmatory evidence penetrates and dissent gets filtered as noise.

When I cited actual evidence—my paid Substack subscriptions have spiked significantly since writing these pieces, suggesting people find the arguments compelling—Rollo pivoted immediately:

“Most people want to be fed easy slop to make themselves feel good about themselves. I’m not denying you supply a very hungry market.”

Perfect. Unfalsifiable.

If people agree with me, they’re seeking comfortable lies. If people disagree with me, that would prove I’m wrong. Either way, he’s right.

This is cult epistemology in pure form:

• Those who agree with us possess clues

• Those who disagree lack clues

• Success reaching people proves you’re pandering

• Failure reaching people proves you’re wrong

• Either outcome confirms we’re enlightened

The remarkable thing about this framework is its complete immunity to evidence. No possible observation could disconfirm it. That’s not strength—it’s the defining characteristic of unfalsifiable pseudoscience.

When I pointed this out—”Ah, yes. The highly convenient dodge of the cult member. Those who disagree are misinformed. Those who break ranks are insane. To answer any challenge is to waste one’s time—the sad, pathetic world of self-delusion”—Rollo provided immediate confirmation by doubling down on exactly the pattern I’d just named.

The counter is straightforward: Point out the unfalsifiability.

“You’re appealing to your tribe’s consensus. That’s not argument. Either engage the substance or admit you’re substituting imagined agreement for actual reasoning.”

“You’ve created a framework where any outcome confirms your position. If people agree with me, they lack clues. If people disagree with you, they lack clues. This isn’t intellectual confidence—it’s epistemic closure.”

“Define your terms. Who counts as ‘having a clue’? If it means ‘agrees with Austrian economics,’ you’re being circular. If it means ‘trained in relevant fields,’ most of them disagree with you. Either way, you’re not making an argument—you’re performing tribal loyalty.”

And note carefully for the audience watching: Pay attention to who’s making arguments versus who’s invoking imagined consensus.

The person making specific claims about distribution, institutions, power, and history is arguing. The person saying “everyone who matters agrees with me” is performing.

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VII. The Waste-of-Time Exit: Declaring Victory Through Retreat

Here’s a move so transparent it would be comical if it weren’t ubiquitous: they claim engaging would waste their valuable time—while actively engaging.

John Haar executed this with particular flair. After multiple exchanges where I’d responded to every point, after I’d offered formal public debate, after I’d demonstrated comprehensive knowledge of Austrian economics specifically to expose its distributive blindness, he declared:

“What you think doesn’t matter in the slightest. Your claims are, and will be, completely irrelevant. You are simply a time-suck on economically literate people.”

Then, moments later: “You are a giant waste of time. ✌️”

The peace sign is a nice touch. Very casual. Very dismissive. Very “I’m above this exchange I’m currently participating in.”

But notice the obvious contradiction: If I’m actually a waste of time, why did he spend hours engaging? Why did he continue responding after claiming my thoughts don’t matter? Why did he refuse the debate challenge if he’s confident I “wouldn’t last five minutes”?

The “waste of time” exit is pure status performance. It allows retreat while maintaining the appearance of dominance. “I could destroy your arguments, but you’re not worth my precious time” sounds better than “I can’t actually defend my position and this exchange is revealing that fact publicly.”

Petter Englund did the same: “Not impressed... Bye.”

Multiple others claimed I was “irrelevant” while continuing to respond to my arguments with obvious emotional investment.

The tell is the contradiction between stated behavior and actual behavior.

If I’m irrelevant, ignore me. If I’m a waste of time, stop wasting your time. If my arguments are beneath response, stop responding.

But they can’t. And the reason they can’t is transparent to anyone watching honestly: I’m not irrelevant. The arguments are landing. People are listening. Their bubble is being penetrated by someone who actually knows the material and can demonstrate that their talking points are pseudointellectual sloganeering built on premises they haven’t examined.

So they retreat while performing confidence. They declare victory through exit. They claim they’re too busy to continue conversations they initiated and sustained for hours.

The counter is simple: Point out the contradiction directly.

“If I’m a waste of time, why are you still here? Your continued engagement contradicts your claims. Either engage substantively or leave—but stop pretending you’re too busy to respond while actively responding.”

When John Haar finally deployed his exit, I responded with perfect calm: “You’ve failed to make me doubt myself. I’m confident that I know what I’m talking about. And your little status-dominance game has not rattled me in the slightest.”

This is crucial. The “waste of time” exit is designed to suggest you’re not worth the effort while avoiding the admission that they cannot defend their position. When you stay completely unshaken—when you make clear their game didn’t work, you remain confident, and everyone watching can see the pattern—the retreat becomes obvious defeat rather than tactical withdrawal.

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VIII. The False Humility Pivot: Innocence as Last Resort

When all other moves fail, watch for this elegant pivot: suddenly they’re just humble truth-seekers innocently disagreeing, confused why you’re being so hostile to their honest questions.

Brett provided the textbook example. After suggesting I criticized without listening. After claiming I’m comfortable while crushing people with the system I perpetuate. After declaring he’d successfully “rattled” me. After all that:

“Status-dominance game? Mike, you have 10’s of thousands of followers. I’m a nobody just trying to outrun the money printer. I am under no illusions about ‘status-dominance’ here. I just think you’re wrong.”

The false humility is exquisite. I’m the powerful one with thousands of followers. He’s just a humble nobody with honest disagreement, trying to protect himself from inflation.

But look at what preceded this sudden humility:

First, he questioned whether I’d listened to a podcast before critiquing it—suggesting intellectual laziness or dishonesty.

Second, he pivoted to my comfort as “ex-tech exec” while “the system crushes the very people you claim you want to help”—suggesting moral hypocrisy.

Third, when I provided substantive response, he claimed this meant he’d “rattled” me—suggesting emotional weakness.

Now: “I’m just a humble nobody who thinks you’re wrong.”

This is laundering. He’s hiding his previous attacks under a veneer of innocent disagreement. He’s reframing the exchange from “he made multiple character attacks” to “he innocently disagreed and got attacked by powerful influencer.”

The false humility serves multiple functions:

It makes him sympathetic—David versus Goliath framing.

It makes you look like a bully—powerful person attacking humble nobody.

It erases previous attacks—”I just think you’re wrong” ignores that he questioned my diligence, morality, and emotional state.

It reframes the exchange—from “he deployed multiple status-dominance techniques” to “he innocently disagreed.”

It’s brilliant, really. Except it doesn’t work when you’ve documented every move.

My response: “Are you too fucking stupid to realize this is a laundered ad hominem attack, and explains why I respond to you with such hostility? You insult my intelligence, and then dare me to disprove an oppositional claim that is discontinuous from my premises.”

The profanity matters. It signals that patience has limits. That persistent intellectual dishonesty—hiding character attacks in questions, playing innocent after suggesting the critic is confused/lazy/compromised, then claiming humble disagreement when called out—eventually earns not measured response but controlled detonation.

This isn’t loss of composure. It’s appropriate escalation after exhausted patience. It’s pedagogical fury earned through restraint, justified by behavior, calculated in execution.

I continued: “I sit comfortably, so that anybody who is well studied in philosophy and argumentation would see the fraud being perpetuated here for what it is. And I might say, that I have shown more patience for people, than they deserve, as they continue to insult my intelligence.”

This makes explicit what needs stating: My patience wasn’t weakness. My restraint wasn’t uncertainty. My measured responses weren’t doubt.

I was being more generous than they earned. I was explaining what they wouldn’t hear. I was naming games they kept playing.

The patience is done.

The counter to false humility is rejection of the reframe:

“You’ve already questioned my diligence, my morals, and my emotional state. Don’t hide behind humility now. You engaged in character attacks disguised as questions and concerns. Own them or withdraw them—but don’t pretend they didn’t happen.”

“The record is public. Everyone can see what you said before pivoting to innocent disagreement. This isn’t you being humble—it’s you trying to erase your previous behavior when it didn’t achieve the desired effect.”

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IX. The Rattled Declaration: Reframing Substance as Emotion

Here’s a sophisticated inversion worth examining closely: when you provide substantive response to their points, they claim the fact you responded proves you’re emotionally affected.

Brett deployed this with particular confidence: “But I am glad to know it rattled you enough to go and look through your feed to find that.”

I had pointed him to a substantive response I’d made earlier about listening to part of a podcast and finding intellectual wreckage sufficient to stop. Finding and sharing that response apparently meant I was “rattled.”

This technique is elegant because it creates an unfalsifiable trap:

If you don’t respond, they win by your silence—claiming you have no answer.

If you do respond, you’re “rattled”—your engagement becomes evidence of emotional investment rather than intellectual seriousness.

It reframes:

Substantive engagement → Emotional defensiveness

Careful response → Being triggered

Documentation → Being bothered enough to look

The only escape from this trap is to name it explicitly and assert the opposite with complete confidence:

“You know deep down I’m not rattled. And you know, that I know, that this is a status-dominance game. To try to get me to question myself. Yet, again, like with others, it doesn’t work. You don’t know what you’re talking about Brett. I know this. And so does every other honest observer.”

This response operates at multiple levels:

Claims knowledge of his knowledge - You know I’m not rattled (not “I’m not rattled” but “you know I’m not”)

Names the game explicitly - This is status-dominance, not substantive engagement

Connects to documented pattern - “Like with others” (you’re not unique, just another performer of the script)

Makes absolute judgment - You don’t know what you’re talking about (not “I think” but “I know”)

Appeals to honest observers - Anyone watching fairly sees what’s happening

The point isn’t to convince Brett. He’s performing, not thinking. The point is to teach everyone watching how to recognize the technique and respond to it.

When someone claims your substantive response proves you’re rattled, they’re attempting to invert reality. The person making careful arguments, providing evidence, explaining connections between ideas—that person is engaged, not rattled. The person playing status games, refusing debate challenges, appealing to tribal consensus—that person is avoiding engagement while performing confidence.

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X. The Pattern Complete: The Cycle of Evasion

Now watch the full cycle play out. This happened with remarkable consistency across dozens of exchanges:

1. Critic makes structural argument challenging the fundamental framework

2. Defender assumes ignorance - “You don’t understand Austrian economics / Bitcoin protocol / how money works”

3. Critic demonstrates comprehensive knowledge, explaining why framework itself is flawed

4. Defender asserts position again - “But hard money enables saving! But deflation rewards production!”

5. Critic explains why assertion isn’t engagement, points out closed-system reasoning

6. Defender tries status games - “Not impressed” / “waste of time” / “no one serious agrees”

7. Critic names the games, stays completely unshakeable

8. Defender escalates to character attacks - Ozempic, pretending intelligence, crushing people, emotional investment

9. Critic names laundered ad hominem, maintains frame dominance

10. Defender declares victory and exits OR pivots to false humility

11. Critic documents the pattern for everyone watching

I experienced this cycle dozens of times in seventy-two hours. Different people. Different specific moves. Same underlying script.

The question is: why?

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XI. The Psychology: Why Smart People Stop Thinking

This isn’t stupidity. Many Bitcoin advocates are genuinely intelligent. Petter Englund appears to have academic background. John Haar works for a Bitcoin company requiring some sophistication. Brett is clearly educated enough to engage at some level.

So why do intelligent people resort to status games instead of engaging substance?

Cognitive dissonance.

When you’ve invested heavily in Bitcoin—financially, socially, intellectually—admitting fundamental flaws becomes psychologically unbearable.

You’ve told friends and family it’s the future of money. You’ve reorganized your savings around it. You’ve built identity around being early to transformative technology. You’ve internalized Austrian economic principles as revealed truth. You’ve joined communities where everyone reinforces these beliefs. You’ve staked reputation on Bitcoin’s success.

Then someone arrives with comprehensive knowledge demonstrating:

• Bitcoin embeds feudalism in code through permanent wealth concentration

• Austrian economics has systematic distributive blindness

• Hayek would reject this project entirely

• Nozick repudiated the premises underlying property-rights absolutism

• Historical evidence contradicts claims about commodity money equilibrium

• The whole thing is reactionary counter-revolution dressed as liberation

The cognitive dissonance is crushing.

You cannot:

Engage substance - Would reveal arguments fail when distribution and institutions are added back

Admit you’re wrong - Would shatter identity, invalidate investments, require acknowledging you’ve been defending feudalism as freedom

Ignore the critic - Too effective, reaching audiences, making arguments you can’t refute

So you:

Attack their confidence - Make them doubt themselves, question their understanding

Question their competence - They don’t understand, haven’t studied, are confused

Impugn their character - They’re comfortable, compromised, performing, medicated

Appeal to tribe - Everyone who matters agrees they’re wrong

Declare victory through retreat - Not worth our time, we have better things to do

None of this is conscious conspiracy. It’s psychological defense mechanism activating automatically when identity meets existential threat.

The problem: It’s completely transparent to anyone watching honestly.

When you assume ignorance instead of engaging arguments, everyone sees you avoiding substance. When you claim victory while retreating, everyone notices the contradiction. When you play status games after substantive engagement fails, everyone recognizes defensive performance.

The only people who don’t see it are those inside the same bubble, subject to the same cognitive dissonance, participating in the same collective self-deception.

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XII. The Cult Epistemology: Unfalsifiable by Design

Here’s what makes this particularly insidious: they’ve created unfalsifiable epistemology.

Every possible outcome confirms their worldview:

If you agree with them → You understand economics

If you disagree → You don’t understand economics

If they persuade people → Truth is spreading

If they don’t persuade → People want comfortable lies

If critics engage → We’re important enough to attack

If critics ignore → We’re obviously right, no one can refute us

If data supports them → We’re vindicated

If data contradicts → Data is captured by fiat interests / doesn’t account for enough variables / would prove us right given more time

There is no possible evidence that could make them question their premises.

This is textbook cult epistemology. Not through force or isolation, but through logical structure that makes questioning psychologically impossible.

Rollo made this explicit with crystalline clarity: “Most people want to be fed easy slop to make themselves feel good about themselves.”

Translation: Anyone who agrees with critics wants comfortable lies. Only we possess uncomfortable truths.

But notice the irony: Their “uncomfortable truths” are remarkably comfortable for wealthy Bitcoin holders. Permanent wealth concentration beyond democratic constraint? That’s extremely comfortable if you’re an early accumulator.

The “uncomfortable truth” framing is itself comfort—it lets them feel like brave truth-tellers while defending systems that serve their material interests.

When I pointed out that my subscriber growth suggests people find the arguments compelling, Rollo immediately declared this proved people seek “slop.” There’s no way for evidence to penetrate. Success reaching people proves you’re pandering. Failure reaching people would prove you’re wrong. Either way, they’re vindicated.

This is how you know you’re encountering cult epistemology rather than honest disagreement: the complete absence of conditions under which they’d reconsider.

Ask yourself: What evidence would make me reconsider my position? If the answer is “nothing,” you’re not holding a belief—you’re performing faith in an unfalsifiable doctrine.

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XIII. Why This Matters Beyond Bitcoin

I’ve used Bitcoin discourse as case study because it provided comprehensive examples within tight timeframe. But this pattern appears everywhere cognitive dissonance meets tribal identity:

MAGA movement: “You just have Trump Derangement Syndrome” (assume critics are irrational rather than engaging critiques)

MLM schemes: “You’re just not entrepreneurial enough” (assume skeptics lack qualities rather than responding to structural analysis)

Conspiracy theories: “Do your own research” (meaning: accept our premises, reject mainstream sources, join our epistemology)

Anti-vaccine movement: “Big Pharma has captured the data” (unfalsifiable—any evidence contradicting them proves the conspiracy)

Any ideological bubble: Assume critics are ignorant, appeal to in-group consensus, declare victory through retreat

Once you see the pattern, you recognize it everywhere. And here’s what’s crucial:

This is how democracies die.

Not through tanks in streets. Not through single dramatic coup. Through the systematic replacement of reasoning together with performing for tribal approval.

Democratic self-governance requires a specific condition: the possibility of reasoning together across disagreement when no one has privileged access to truth.

When that possibility breaks down—when every disagreement becomes status contest, when challenges trigger defensive performance rather than honest engagement, when tribal epistemology replaces shared standards for evaluating claims—reasoning together becomes impossible.

And when reasoning together is impossible, only two options remain: submission or force.

Either some authority decides for everyone (technocracy, monarchy, dictatorship), or disputes get resolved through power rather than persuasion (violence, institutional capture, authoritarian enforcement).

Both paths lead away from democratic self-governance. Both represent the death of the liberal framework—not liberalism as policy position but as the epistemic commitment making any positions possible.

This is why I take intellectual dishonesty seriously. Not because I’m personally offended—though laundered attacks on my mental health, competence, and character are certainly offensive. But because democracy requires intellectual honesty as substrate.

When people stop engaging substance and start performing status games, they’re not just being annoying. They’re corroding the conditions that make self-governance possible. They’re demonstrating exactly the kind of thinking that makes democratic reasoning impossible—the refusal to engage honestly when someone challenges your premises.

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XIV. The Supreme Irony: Proving My Point

Here’s what makes this particularly rich: Bitcoin advocates claim their system protects freedom while demonstrating inability to engage freely with critique.

They say: “Bitcoin removes power from corrupted institutions and returns it to individuals.”

Then when an individual makes comprehensive argument against their position, they:

• Assume he doesn’t understand rather than engaging his analysis

• Question his mental health and medication rather than his arguments

• Attack his character and comfort rather than his claims

• Appeal to tribal consensus rather than making substantive case

• Refuse debate while claiming he’d lose

• Declare him irrelevant while continuing to respond obsessively

• Retreat into epistemology where only tribe members can see truth

This is not how confident people with strong arguments behave.

This is how cult members behave when doctrine is threatened.

And the doctrine they’re defending is: Permanent wealth concentration beyond democratic constraint.

They dress it as liberation. Call it “sound money” and “individual sovereignty” and “opting out of the system” and “protecting yourself from inflation.”

But functionally, Bitcoin is feudalism embedded in code:

• Early accumulators become digital lords

• Fixed supply becomes digital land scarcity

• Automatic appreciation becomes digital rents

• Democratic oversight gets permanently removed by cryptographic design

When I point this out—with comprehensive analysis of distributive consequences, political economy requirements, historical evidence, and philosophical foundations—they cannot engage.

So they perform instead.

And in performing, they demonstrate exactly what I’m arguing: that intellectual movements built on premises that can’t withstand scrutiny inevitably retreat into cult epistemology where questioning becomes impossible and critics become enemies rather than interlocutors.

They’re proving my point about the authoritarian implications of their project by demonstrating authoritarianism in microcosm—the refusal to allow genuine questioning, the assumption that disagreement indicates deficiency, the retreat into unfalsifiable frameworks where only insiders possess truth.

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XV. A Note to Honest Bitcoin Advocates

I know some of you exist. People who genuinely believe Bitcoin solves real problems. Who aren’t performing status games. Who can engage critique without assuming ignorance or attacking character.

You’re watching this pattern, and you’re embarrassed.

You should be.

Because these are your fellow travelers. These are the people representing your movement to the world. These are the voices that dominate Bitcoin discourse and shape how ordinary people perceive your project.

And they’re making all of you look like cult members.

If you believe Bitcoin’s merits withstand scrutiny, you should be furious at people who refuse to engage scrutiny honestly.

If you believe Austrian economics has genuine insights, you should demand that advocates engage distributive questions rather than asserting “you don’t understand” when someone does understand and disagrees.

If you believe democratic oversight of money is genuinely unnecessary, you should welcome debate with someone who can articulate why it’s necessary—and make your case substantively rather than through status games.

Every time someone responds to my arguments by questioning my intelligence, my motives, or my mental health—they make your position look weaker.

Every time someone refuses debate challenge while claiming I’d lose—they make your movement look cowardly.

Every time someone declares me “irrelevant” while continuing to respond obsessively—they make your epistemology look cultish.

Every time someone pivots from substance to ad hominem—they prove they cannot defend what they’re claiming.

You can do better. You must do better.

Because right now, Bitcoin discourse is dominated by people who’ve stopped thinking and started performing. And that performance is completely transparent to everyone watching honestly.

If you want Bitcoin taken seriously as intellectual project rather than dismissed as cult, you need to police your own community. You need to call out the status games, the character attacks, the unfalsifiable epistemology. You need to demonstrate that your movement can engage honest critique without retreating into defensive performance.

Otherwise, you’re just another tribe where identity matters more than truth, where loyalty trumps honesty, where questioning becomes betrayal.

And that’s not a movement defending freedom. That’s a cult defending doctrine.

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XVI. What I’m Actually Defending

Let me be absolutely clear about what’s at stake in this argument—because it’s not primarily about Bitcoin or monetary policy or Austrian economics.

I’m defending the possibility of reasoning together across disagreement when no one has privileged access to truth.

That’s what liberalism actually is. Not a policy position. Not left or right. Not progressivism or conservatism. But the framework that makes positions possible by preserving conditions where citizens can deliberate honestly about what to do.

Bitcoin advocates want to remove monetary policy from democratic deliberation permanently. They claim this is liberation—”opting out of the system,” “protecting yourself from theft through inflation,” “taking back individual sovereignty.”

But it’s not opting out. It’s changing the rules so no one can choose differently later.

If Bitcoin succeeds in replacing democratically accountable money with algorithmic money, future citizens cannot vote to change monetary policy. They cannot democratically decide that permanent wealth concentration through automatic appreciation is unacceptable. They cannot adjust to new circumstances or new understanding or new values.

The choice gets locked into cryptographic code beyond democratic revision.

That’s not liberation. That’s locking future generations into arrangements they cannot democratically change—regardless of what they learn, what they need, what they value, or what circumstances they face.

And I oppose it for the same reason I oppose all schemes to remove democratic choice from citizens: because I believe ordinary people are capable of governing themselves, and removing their capacity to do so—even if you’re convinced it’s for their own good—is the death of what makes us human.

This is the liberal faith: that humans can engage in collective self-governance through reason, deliberation, and mutual respect.

Not perfectly. Not without error. Not reaching final truth. But well enough that the alternative—rule by those claiming superior qualification—is worse than the messy, uncertain, often frustrating process of reasoning together.

When Bitcoin advocates cannot engage my arguments honestly—when they retreat into status games, character attacks, and cult epistemology—they’re demonstrating precisely why democratic accountability matters.

Because people cannot be trusted to exercise power beyond democratic constraint—even when they’re absolutely convinced they’re liberating others by doing so, even when they believe their superior understanding justifies removing choice from those they consider less enlightened.

The conviction that you know better than democratic majorities, that your insight transcends the need for accountability, that permanent arrangements reflecting your values should be embedded beyond revision—this is the authoritarian impulse regardless of whether it comes from cryptocurrency enthusiasts or any other group claiming enlightenment.

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XVII. The Challenge Remains Open

I issued formal debate challenge. Multiple times. Public and specific.

John Haar responded: “You’re a waste of time.”

Petter Englund responded: “Not impressed.”

Others simply ignored it.

But the challenge stands, and I repeat it now with absolute clarity:

Anyone who believes I misunderstand Austrian economics, anyone convinced Bitcoin solves the problems I’ve identified, anyone certain I’m wrong about distributive consequences, political economy requirements, Hayek’s actual positions, or the feudalist implications of permanent wealth concentration beyond democratic constraint:

Debate me. Publicly.

Not Twitter threads where you can ignore points, appeal to tribe, declare victory and exit.

Live debate. Real-time. Recorded. Where you must defend your claims without the protective epistemology of your bubble.

I predict exactly what would happen, and I make this prediction publicly so it can be verified:

In five minutes, I would demonstrate that you’re operating from Mises Institute talking points you haven’t examined critically, Austrian principles you cannot defend when distributive analysis is added back, and understanding of Hayek you’ve absorbed through selective quotation rather than comprehensive study.

You know this.

That’s why you won’t accept. That’s why you declare me “not worth your time” while spending hours responding. That’s why you claim I’d lose while refusing to test the claim publicly.

Because deep down, behind all the status games and character attacks and tribal appeals, you know exactly how it would go.

You know that when you can’t ignore inconvenient questions, when you can’t appeal to in-group consensus, when you must defend your premises in real-time rather than asserting them—the whole structure collapses.

You know that “hard money makes saving possible” doesn’t address who has savings to appreciate. You know that “Bitcoin is neutral technology” ignores that design choices embed values. You know that invoking Hayek while building what he explicitly opposed is intellectual fraud.

You know all of this. And that knowledge—that uncomfortable recognition you can’t quite suppress—is what produces all the defensive performance.

You’re not defending Bitcoin from criticism. You’re defending your investment—financial, social, intellectual, identity—from the uncomfortable truth that you’ve built your worldview on premises that dissolve when someone who actually knows the material examines them.

The challenge stands.

If you believe I’m wrong, prove it publicly. If you won’t, then stop pretending your refusal is anything other than what it obviously is: recognition that you cannot defend what you believe but cannot bear to question it.

That’s not intellectual confidence. That’s cowardice dressed as superiority.

And it’s completely transparent to every honest observer.

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XVIII. For Everyone Else: The Cognitive Vaccine

If you’ve read this far, you now possess permanent cognitive infrastructure for recognizing intellectual dishonesty wherever it appears.

You know the pattern:

1. Assume ignorance rather than engaging the actual argument

2. Launder ad hominem through questions, concerns, and innocent-seeming observations

3. Smuggle premises into question structures that force acceptance of contested assumptions

4. Assert rather than argue, then claim you’ve “answered” by restating your position

5. Appeal to tribal consensus instead of making substantive case

6. Declare victory through retreat while claiming you’d win if you bothered

7. Pivot to false humility when other moves fail, erasing previous behavior

8. Claim critic is “rattled” by the fact they provided substantive response

You’ve seen dozens of documented examples from actual exchanges over seventy-two hours.

You’ve watched it unfold in real-time across multiple participants following the same script.

And now you cannot unsee it.

The next time you encounter this pattern—whether about Bitcoin, politics, conspiracy theories, MLM schemes, or any ideology requiring cognitive closure—you’ll recognize it immediately.

Name it. Make the performance visible to everyone watching.

Don’t engage it as though it were honest disagreement. That legitimizes performance as argument.

Document it. The permanent record protects truth when memory becomes contested.

Teach others to see it. The cognitive vaccine only works if it spreads.

Because the alternative—letting performance replace thought, letting status games replace reasoning, letting cult epistemology replace honest inquiry—is how democracies die.

Not through dramatic collapse. Not through single obvious moment. But through the gradual, systematic replacement of thinking with performing until no one remembers what honest disagreement looks like anymore.

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XIX. The Wire Still Holds

Two plus two equals four.

There are twenty-four hours in a day.

And deflationary monetary systems systematically advantage accumulated wealth holders through automatic appreciation while wage earners at subsistence have no savings to appreciate, creating permanent concentration beyond democratic constraint.

These are not opinions. They are structural observations about how distribution operates in systems where money appreciates automatically—observations that hold regardless of how sophisticated the economic theory claiming otherwise might sound.

Bitcoin advocates cannot refute them. So they perform instead.

And in performing—in deploying every status-dominance technique, every character attack, every tribal appeal, every unfalsifiable epistemology—they provide perfect demonstration of why democratic accountability over concentrated power matters.

Because people with power consistently demonstrate inability to exercise it responsibly when they believe themselves beyond accountability. Even when—especially when—they’re absolutely convinced their superior understanding justifies removing democratic constraint.

The circus continues. The wire still holds. And those of us who’ve actually done the work—twenty years studying philosophy, reading comprehensively, thinking carefully about distribution and institutions and power—we remain unshaken.

Because we know what we know. And no amount of status games, character attacks, or cult epistemology changes the facts.

Austrian economics has distributive blindness.

Bitcoin embeds feudalism in code.

Hayek would reject this project entirely.

Nozick repudiated the premises underlying it.

Historical evidence contradicts its claims.

And everyone watching honestly can see all of this.

The performance is over. The pattern is documented. The challenge stands.

If you believe I’m wrong, debate me publicly.

If you won’t, then your refusal speaks louder than any argument you might make.

Res ipsa loquitur.

The thing speaks for itself.

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Epilogue: On Patience and Pedagogical Fury

A final note about tone, because some will object that this essay is too harsh, too contemptuous, too willing to deploy profanity and call people cowards.

To which I say: I have shown more patience than they deserve.

I spent twenty years learning this material. I wrote two comprehensive essays explaining my position. I engaged dozens of responses with analytical precision. I explained distributive blindness repeatedly. I reclaimed Hayek from anarcho-capitalist appropriation. I named status games as they happened. I stayed calm through attacks on my mental health, intelligence, and character. I offered formal public debate.

And they responded with: “You don’t understand,” “you’re a waste of time,” “no one with a clue agrees,” “glad it rattled you,” “are you on Ozempic?”

At some point, pedagogical fury becomes the appropriate response.

Not because I’ve lost control. But because controlled contempt—earned through exhausted patience—is what persistent intellectual dishonesty deserves.

Christopher Hitchens understood this. When people defend the indefensible through dishonest means, when they deploy every rhetorical trick to avoid honest engagement, when they perform confidence while demonstrating cowardice—politeness becomes complicity. Measured response becomes enablement.

Sometimes you must say with absolute clarity: This is bullshit. You’re performing, not thinking. And everyone can see it.

That’s not incivility. That’s intellectual hygiene.

Because tolerating dishonesty—pretending bad-faith performance is good-faith disagreement, treating status games as legitimate argumentation—makes honest discourse impossible. It rewards exactly the behavior that corrodes democratic reasoning.

The wire still holds.

But only because some of us refuse to pretend. Refuse to treat performance as thought. Refuse to accept that “you don’t understand” substitutes for argument. Refuse to let cult epistemology masquerade as honest inquiry.

Democracy requires intellectual honesty. When honesty dies, democracy dies with it.

I choose honesty. I choose contempt for dishonesty. I choose appropriate fury at persistent bad faith.

And I make no apologies for any of it.

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This essay is dedicated to everyone who’s ever been told “you just don’t understand” by someone who couldn’t defend their position substantively. You understand just fine. They’re performing. And now you can prove it.

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Go Deeper into the Circus