First of all, Shawn, even though I know I’ll regret it, why not concede to a beautiful day in the middle of a cold winter? In other words, hope to see you at the after-party at the café.
Anyway:
“Lmao he yawned as though to play being indifferent. Another cover for him not understanding what the hell we’re talking about.”
I would suggest that it runs deeper than that. First I would point to a revelation I had in the midst of our discourse:
“We’re still waiting for a real argument, John. BTW: San Diego: not a lot of poor people there. I can see what it is you are fighting to hoard. It all makes sense, now.”
California is not a cheap place to live in general. San Diego is even higher end and has a price tag to match. So we can now see what it is John is working so desperately to defend. What we are basically dealing with here is the kind of cheap tactics that people in John’s position have to resort to in order to defend what cannot be defended in a discourse which assumes a goal of working out a compromise that works for everyone involved. Once again: people like John are like teenagers who have been busted at something commonly known to be wrong, but will throw everything on the table in the hope that something sticks.
In this case it is a kind of rock star nonchalance that, while lacking any real content, is meant to impress us with its form. And John’s yawn was an expression of that nonchalance meant to impress on us that we are not part of an in-crowd that he happens to be part of. And this is important because it is not just John engaging in it, it is popular cultural figures as well. On an episode of Bill Maher’s Real Time with Marlee Maitlin as a guest, Maher started to talk about manmade climate change to which Maitlin cut him off and said:
“Surely Bill, you don’t expect me to ride a bike to work.”
What the tactic comes down to is that we are supposed to be so impressed with their sense of entitlement that we should consider our arguments for social justice little more than sour grapes or like we should so desire to be like them as to want to think like them in order to be part of that in-crowd. And this nonsense gets propped up by corporate media. So it’s no wonder they should feel so confident in this tactic when all really works for is other people like them: the very reason it is so dependent on the in-crowd mentality.
This, of course, is delusional as was pointed out in an experiment I believe you reminded me of: one in which subjects were asked to play monopoly and certain individuals were given advantages that, of course, led to their winning. What was interesting was how the ones that won, when questioned about it, ascribed everything to their individual choices.
And this delusional aspect of John is all too clear in the way he resorts to these cheap tactics while acting as if he is making the strongest argument on the string. It’s a little like the circular argument of the sociopath:
I have power because I am right. Therefore, I am right because I have power.
He’s doing well. So he assumes that everything that comes out of his mouth or he writes is doing just as well. He’s like a dumb beautiful blond female at a party describing her “philosofical” beliefs and thinking she must be right and profound even because every male there is listening.