In this job, it helps to have stock phrases. That way, you don't have to think up something new and clever every time you answer an email. Not when something old and clever will do.
For instance, if a reader writes to me, confused — my lucid, well-reasoned argument is just crazy to them — demanding I hold their hand and explain it to them again, perhaps using a felt board, I barely pause.
"Sir, I have found you an argument," I reply, quoting Samuel Johnson. "But I am not obliged to find you an understanding."
Not many actual Nazis write. But when imitators and admirers share their thoughts, to stretch the term, often in an argot I call the Fascist Plural, "We were amused at your feeble Semitic attempt at..." I often deploy a line that is my own, though well worn from use.
"You know, the whole Nazi thing didn't work out so well for the Germans."
What I'm really saying is, "Look to history." Because history is a guide.
We see how hatred blows back in the face of the hater. The old adage "hatred is taking poison and expecting someone else to die," is true, and on a national scale, multiplies. Didn't end well for Hitler. Despots, surrounded by yes men, make awful blunders. Mao's Communists remained in power, so got to write their history. But 30 million Chinese died in Mao's incompetence-induced famines.
They don't teach that in China. Squelching history is what totalitarians do. And budding totalitarians.
This past week, the U.S. Interior Department announced it will be putting warning signs outside the Smithsonian, advising the displays within are hopelessly biased (every accusation of this administration is a confession) because they include bad stuff, and not the cavalcade of greatness leading up to the apotheosis of national joy, triumph and achievement of Donald Trump, Imperator Supremus Maximae Gloriae.
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good column
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