HOW TO AVOID FIGHTING WITH TROLLS ...

Recently I politely asked to be removed from a right wing e-mail news letter, which is written by a local acquaintance. I don't need to post any of his "news" letters. You'll understand why I asked to be removed from this list once you read his response (blue lettering) to my request, and my follow up response (at the bottom). 

Here's the exchange ...

From: Mark Martinez [mailto:mkmartinez@csub.edu]
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2014 10:24 AM
To: _______@att.net

_______, 

Please remove me from you your e-mail list. Thanks in advance.

- Mark 

******* 

________@att.net> writes: 

Mark A. Martinez, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Political Science
California State University, Bakersfield 

Dear Mark, 

Typical academic  - can’t handle the free exercise of ideas. Your crazy ideas about diversity and political correctness are destroying this country and the students who are exposed to your regressive “progressive” ideology. Am I wrong about the source of ACA and the immigration bill – or are you also pushing for an end to fracking which we’ve been doing in this county for 40 years? 

We ran into two Hispanic oil field workers recently at a local bar. They were angry at their parents who told them to vote for Obama because “he’s one of us.” One said, “I just got $200 more taken out of my paycheck because of that idiot’s Obamacare fiasco.” 

Richard O’Reilly exposed you for what you really are in today’s LTE’s. 

You’re the 2nd professor from CSUB to ask to be removed from my mailing list in 2 days. Before that, the last one who wanted off was a communist law professor from McGeorge LS who got mad at me for not supporting Sandra Fluke in her quest for free contraceptives. 

The arrogant academic can’t handle different viewpoints. The real academic rejoices in finding ways to keep the privilege of freedom to pass on to his students. You must be doing something right – I’d be happy to learn just what it is that justifies your paycheck. 

Thanking you in advance for reading the Declaration of Independence to see what it meant by “sending out agents to eat out the people’s substance.” 

Kindest personal regards 

________ 

 *******

_______: 

I subscribe to numerous conservative and right wing news sources. But I chose to subscribe to these sources. I don't know how I ended up on your list, but you surely did not ask me, nor did I petition you for your e-mailed "news" letters.  

So you know, I read many of your posts but did not find the arguments informative, nor persuasive. If I thought that your posts measured up to the conservative sources that I read regularly (which I often disagree with) I would not have asked to be removed from you list.  

If you want a genuine audience start your own blog and see how many people you get to follow you.  

Here's a lesson you should learn from this experience. Don't expect people to follow you - and to have their e-mails accounts stuffed with your views - simply because you gain access to their accounts. The Federalist Papers are an excellent source for understanding what this means. 

Finally, ______, academic freedom also includes the freedom to reject ancedotal evidence, rants, and inferior arguments on their face. That's all that happened here. 

- Mark 

At the end of the day, because I don't want to open and read the incoherent rants of an anecdote-filled news letter doesn't mean I am opposed to the "free exercise of ideas." It simply means that there are better and more coherent sources for what my conservative friend is trying to say, and that I have better things to do with my time.

Getting sucked into a cul-de-sac of ignorance is not my idea of an enlightened exchange of ideas. So it's better to ignore the source.

This is how you avoid fighting with trolls :-)

- Mark