"Don't try to teach a pig to dance. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig."

This a lesson about Twitter I should have learned a long time ago - the pointlessness of trying to educate someone who is unwilling or unready to learn.

Most people aren't interesting in learning, and when you say something they don't want to hear, they just block you, or worse.

We have a generation raised on Oliver Stone, Aaron Sorkin, and reality TV.

Politics isn't exciting enough, so they gravitate to demagogues who make it exciting - Trump, Bernie, AOC - and vilify the people actually trying make a difference and change things for the better.

The football metaphor -

It used to be that people treated the parties like football teams. Saying Republicans had a point about something was like saying Auburn had a stronger defensive line - might be true but you don't say it in a bar in Tuscaloosa.

But it's even worse now.

Now it's fantasy football -

People are invested in actual players at the expense of the team.

How many Clevelanders stopped cheering for Cleveland?

I'm really asking, because I don't actually know.

Coaches have to make decisions based on the strengths and limitations of the whole team, the strengths and weaknesses of the other team, and the rules of the game.

What they DON'T do is listen to parents taunting them from the cheap seats over their own kid's playing time.

Someone said to me:

"Sally, you're examining scenarios like a bookie, but you aren't talking to gamblers. They're die hard fans and you're telling them their team won't make the playoffs before the season even starts. I wouldn't like it either."

I thought that was pretty smart.

When you put it like that, I understand why objective observations make people irrationally furious.

It's like I'm yelling "War Eagle" at a Bama game and then trying to justify it by pointing out Auburn has a far superior quarterback.

That will get you killed in Tuscaloosa.

When people make comments I view as illogical, I hear them as challenges to my expertise and judgement. Then I get upset and I want to defend myself.

But I should be hearing them as, "Yay Alabama! We're Number 1!"

It's a meaningless taunt and I don't have to take it personally.

Legislation isn't a football game.

And it definitely isn't Rock'em Sock'em Robots.

Some people who seemed to understand what Bernie was doing wrong have fallen for the same destructive bullshit when it comes from a prettier face.

I used to say Christian Laettner was really hot.

My guy friends would lose their damn minds because he was so overrated

We were both right. We were just interested in different sports

I certainly never suggested or believed my opinion had any bearing on his value as an athlete

Let's not even talk about tennis in this context.

I'm not a complete masochist.

Trump exposed Republicans for who they really are.

Many conservatives believed it was, "Come for the racism, stay for the limited government and conservative fiscal policy"

But evangelicals and racists don't believe in small government. They want to use government as a weapon.

And conservative fiscal policy is intrinsically racist

Ben Howe from Redstate once said,

"Where do you go when the only people who seem to agree with you on taxes hate black people?”

as if the two were unrelated.

Now people have been forced to recognize the racism is baked in

On our side, I thought we all agreed there was nothing wrong with Bernie's policies, it was his scorched earth tactics, purity politics, and lies that were the problem.

But the ideas I always thought were laudable goals in the abstract did not stand up well to scrutiny.

What's worse, I learned people I thought were on my side are actually fine with purity tests, vilifying dissent, and straight up deception from their own team

So when I made the exact same argument I made against Bernie: "These tactics hurt our cause" I was cast out as a heretic

I laughed the other day when someone said, "You're doing Twitter WRONG"

but I'm starting to think it's true to some degree.

I'm trying to have a political discussion in a bar where people are just trying to talk football.

They aren't interested and they don't like me for it.

My friends in DC are on Twitter but they aren't down in the mud where I am. They say what they want to say, they engage in intelligent debate, and they ignore the rest.

They don't try to engage or convert every single person who dissents. They ignore idiots and bad faith actors.

I never know where these threads are going when I start them, but I've reached a point I've been mulling for awhile.

I can't spend so much time in my mentions.

Not every comment is worth a response, and not every troll is worth my attention.

Let stupid people stay that way.

The conversation my favorite part. I love my "friends" and "teammates" and "allies" and I love debate, but I need to do a better job of picking my battles.

Let people treat AOC like Britney Spears.

Let people agitate for VP like it's American Idol.

It doesn't matter.

Because what I say doesn't really matter either. I'm just some girl on Twitter.

The result is going to be the same. Either they will figure out they're wrong, or I will learn I was wrong.

But I'm not going to hear it from them, just like they aren't going to hear it from me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not going to stop saying what I want to say, and I'm not going to back down from challenges and spirited debate.

I'm just going to stop trying to teach pigs to dance.

/fin

It's tweets like this that make everything totally worth it.

https://twitter.com/HopeLoveLaughMA/status/1288208635697549313

This kind of validates my point. It's the threads- the ideas themselves - that convince people, not arguing with individuals.

Then again, it's engaging in the arguments that inspire and inform the threads.

https://twitter.com/slmorris555/status/1288205150398681090