Fear is often the common denominator for so many of our limiting choices: Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of ridicule, and at one level, it makes sense to avoid those risks.

In those three weeks, I posted and commented a few hundred times. I entered into one disagreement that was a decent, human exchange. I thought, for the moment, that wow, these conversations don’t have to be as stupid as people say they are. That didn’t last.

1. Grifting takes skills.

2. Grifting is done on many levels and in many places.

3. It’s not called grifting if you give the marks diplomas at the end.

If you listen to someone argue their point, and they call the other side Nazis, they want you to stop thinking. Stop thinking and join them in their righteous battle against monsters. Now, they may have a righteous cause (they do in their mind, for sure), but that doesn’t mean they have a righteous argument or a righteous plan to make things better.

“Every ideology creates popes of acceptable thinking and behavior, a priesthood of community organizers, devout followers who are saved and saving those around them, and the heretics who get in the way or disagree.”

We need to think about the future and ask a few questions, like Who decided we have to gender the future? And pick the winning gender? Is that even possible, a winning gender? Around 17 million men live in poverty (for women it’s higher, around 20 million)

The message is clear: if people won’t listen, stop talking and leave. Quit trying. Embedded in this is also the rejection of compromise to be liked or accepted. He doesn’t say, “Focus group that message and tell it in a different way.”