Letter to a common anti-intellectual, and casual anti-semite

Your disapprobation of argument is a prejudice. Effectively, if not in intent (I note you are aware of at least one association to an often denigrated social group with the quality you refuse, and I have pointed out to you that that association has some historical correctness), it is prejudice harmful to many people. Your implicit accusation that I (and more consequentially perhaps, others who share what you here consider my fault) argue for the sake of a mere enjoyment that clearly is improper, this is incorrect. You call it a game. The only sense in which you and I are engaged in a game here is that arguments (by which I mean disagreements that are engaged in willingly and so "enjoyed" and are supplied with reasoning that those engaged in them consider important or of value, that is, worth while) on Facebook are generally not of much relevance to the larger world. FB is organized that way because its principal function is to allow people to enjoy spending time interacting on the platform while enabling FB's advertisers to make money from this; thus, while I for instance can both speak freely here and say things of substance, few people will read them and those who do may not be very interested.

As for your claim that your "observations" deserve recognition, note that I do recognize them. In fact, recognition is an interesting concept in this case, because it generally is taken to mean that the other person is "validated" as having said something (which is a claim of sorts, normally to be saying something that is intended sincerely as true and/or right) in a practice or "game" (this term has been giving philosophical meaning, as something serious that has real stakes and not merely those of children's make-believe; it is not mere "play"). Usually people want to be recognized even more as persons who are in some way appreciated. (Note too that you make a claim in your post both that you should be appreciated for opinions that you claim to have the factual character of "observations," and that those who disagree with you are probably just being gratuitously unpleasant, and should be counter-appreciated, let's say).

I conclude from this that your prejudice against people whose mores differ from you in liking argument, which you think is often or typically (perhaps with them) gratuitous and unpleasant, and maybe antisocial and deviant or abnormal, that this prejudice is used by yourself to justify a general attitude of hostility towards: at least intellectuals, and it would seem also those Jews who are, and they in particular, it must be noted, since you mentioned that you dislike them, or many of them, for that reason.

I could be justly ridiculed perhaps for engaging in discussions like this one that are one-sided, since you are not interested. Like most people, you prefer to spout your opinion but don't like being contradicted. This makes you a pretty apt subject for Facebook and maybe Twitter even more so. Twitter doesn't even allow argument, and it disallows it by the simple and efficient ruse of limiting people to a few characters, so that, making use of a tendency implicit in the English language (which is not shared quite by certain others, including French), which is to speak, write, and "think" by simple declaration of apparent fact. The English sentence as usually written permits you to say "X is F," but not "X is F, because Y is G." Almost no one ever says that in English, though in French there are a host of related syntactical constructions that are quite common.

You are a person who likes interacting on FB, probably for the sake of some combination of the enjoyment of doing so rather than being both lonely and bored, and spouting off about what and who you like and do not like.

That these are "observations" is a false claim, though most Americans would not see that this is so, because our language favors speaking in that way. Could you, for example, say, "It is my observation that many Jews are manipulating, exploitative, and dishonest"? Or that many Jews have any other qualities (that you propose as meriting dislike)? You have said this, although the fact that you have done so is not very important, because what you say on FB obviously isn't (and is written in a style indicating that). What you say typically is not very important, and few men and women of virtue could or would much care. That I appear to care too much about things that most people do not is certainly true of me. That would indicate to me only that I either stop interacting with people who speak as you do, or recognize that I do so only for purposes of my own external to any pitiable hope of influencing people like yourself.

But do note, I do not fail to recognize that you say what you say, nor that you believe that you are right to say these things, for whatever reason you wish to give, including that they are "observations," though actually they are something both less and more than that, and less innocent. I am sure that you don't care much about that either. I am also sure that this is not a problem for you and people like you, though it is a problem for me and people like me. People who think like I do have been murdered by people who think like you do. Of course, you are innocent of them. Though the things you say are not. For better and worse, you will almost certainly be able to continue saying them. We can in our different ways (actually) both be reassured that your doing so is of little importance.

Of course, and partly for that very reason, I don't really write things like this for you, only in response to things that you and some other people say. I think these questions are important, and I can see that you do not. Am I ok with that? In general, no, though as far as you are concerned, yes. You are ok with it, clearly, though there have been and are many people, too many, who think much as you do who are not ok with it. And then see what some such people will do. They will say that they are not ok not only with something I have said, but with me. And they will make that a problem. They will make it a problem for me. That will not be a good thing. I could then be faulted and fault myself for a foolish verbal engagement. The others would have at least legitimated certain kinds of crimes, though, thankfully, in rather insignificant ways. Most likely.

Hatred of people who argue or intellectualize or say things that others find contrary is rather deep in this country. I suppose that does not bother you. It does bother me, of course.

I should end all diatribes like this with a statement of gratitude for giving me the opportunity. I always find that my thinking is a little bit sharpened by the opportunities provided by what other people say even when it is quite foolish, and inconsequentially so.

If your desire is to feel innocent, I don't think you need to much worry. That you are in the company in this respect of many if not most "normal" people I cannot doubt. To me, that would be an unhappy condition; to you it must be a happy one. (Your happiness about this only seems troubled, and but slightly, by your off-handed protests about people whom you might fear would trouble your calm if it were possible.)

(A philosophical point: There is no such thing as an observation of a fact that merely reports on a perception or experience that presupposes no concepts whose applicability is not subject to doubt and question. You cannot say that you perceive that something is the case, or that this thing exists or has this or that property, and defend the claim that it does on the ground that you have "seen" it to be such. I cannot, for instance, see that a rose is red and not yellow without applying a concept that I 'know' of independently of my perception.

This is a conclusion of some consequence, because it deprives perceptual experience itself of all innocence: No one merely sees something that is the case. That means that there are no truths about what exists or what it is like that are true prior to or independently of all argument. If you apply this conclusion to your observations about people, you will realize that the predicates you apply to them do not just come from them as seen by your perception. One of the conclusions this leads to is just that people are responsible for what the say, and think, and "observe.")

You are a person who is unafraid to publicly aver to certain prejudices about social categories of people. You ought to not do so. You ought to choose not to just not say these things, but also learn not to think them. You could do that if you were to begin to question the things you believe. Not doing so leads one to folly and this folly can harm.