Well-Written Revenge by Roache

One Rebecca Roache, writing on the blog "Practical Ethics," (please note, this is not "Roach," but "Roache") has penned what amounts to an autobiographical revenge drama, wherein she holds forth on the topic "If you’re a Conservative, I’m not your friend." If any conservative were confused about her stance prior to this splenetic writing, let none be mistaken henceforth. She is definitely...defiantly...not your friend, and wants nothing to do with you, and will not engage with you, and may not acknowledge your existence.

What Ms. Roache has done, and the reason she has done it, is summed up in one line: "One of the first things I did after seeing the depressing election news this morning was check to see which of my Facebook friends ‘like’ the pages of the Conservatives or David Cameron, and unfriend them." So, without any doubt, this is revenge; revenge on those who are conservative or, at least, profess to like David Cameron, for daring to win an election, and to do so in what was apparently (to this U.S. observer) a surprising landslide.

Ms. Roache notes that this has "This marked a change of heart" for her, as heretofore she had tried to "remain engaged with such people in the hope that I might be able to change their views through debate." Without having to read more than the first two paragraphs, we are instantly made aware that there is no action or statement or debate or argument (memoir, blog post, tweet, etc.) by any individual friend that has caused a change of heart - rather, Ms. Roache is depressed by her preferred party's loss, and is taking it out on her electronic "friends," by "unfriending" them. She does not even mention if anyone of them said anything about the election, or even actually supported the "wrong" party - it is enough that they have Cameron among their likes.

These conservatives should count themselves lucky to be rid of a megalomaniac of Ms. Roache's status among their Facebook friends. Ms. Roache shows herself to be a progressive goddess of the first order. For instance, she has firsthand knowledge that her own Facebook feed "today is full of posts and debates by compassionate, liberal people," but, even having plunged her conservative Facebook "friends" into the outer darkness of lacking her friendship, she knows "[t]he rest of the country isn’t." The rest of the country, after all, is under the sway of the "Murdoch-owned, pro-Tory press" which is "much louder than the voice of reason." That there may be people who are independently-informed, reasonable, conservative thinkers, is so far afield for her that she bothers not to engage them in any way, but simply dismisses them in a series of logical fallacies that runs the gamut from ad hominem to strawman. Reasonable conservatives, you see, simply do not exist.

Ms. Roache closes with:

For these reasons, I’m tired of reasoned debate about politics—at least for a day or two. I don’t want to be friends with racists, sexists, or homophobes. And I don’t want to be friends with Conservatives either.

(There is some sort of other fallacy at work there - perhaps "guilt by association," a form of association fallacy...)

Ms. Roche's conservative (former) friends, if they have an ounce of reason, are now rejoicing that this "friend" is no longer. Any person who changes her feelings about debate with you due to nothing you have said, or perhaps even done, without attempt to discuss your own reasoning, is not a person with whom one could have a civil debate. In reading over Ms. Roache's screed, one cannot help but be struck by the feeling that her attempts to change a conservative's mind about any given position would simply be emotional non sequiturs, punctuated by her assumptions that, whatever one's conservative belief, it is automatically without logical support and akin to racism, sexism, or homophobia in its provenance.