Exactly. Prompt the other party to exercise the smallest amount of critical thought and you can watch it all unravel. It’s fucking exhausting, but that’s what it takes.

I once heard someone drop some nonsense in a conversation about how “San Francisco is a dirty place.” Not only is “city = dirty” a common right-wing trope, but it had zero place in our conversation. It was just kinda parroted nonsense ham-fisted into our dialogue. I simply replied: “I’ve been to silicon valley and the touristy parts of downtown, and what I saw was a nice clean place; I can’t speak for the rest of it.” The guy stopped for a sec and said “well, I haven’t been there myself so I guess I can’t either.”