"I really find stonewalling such as yours really distasteful - it stymies any chance of a frank exchange of opinions and ideas - which is why I won't try again"

"I did suggest this statement may not be true"

I'm sure many readers of the thread had the same thought in respect of the 'I won't try again'. Another common rhetorical flourish is 'I think we're done here' when obviously nobody is 'done', especially the writer. And recently we have another dead metaphor with a similar declaration, the 'war of attrition' metaphor "You are totally ignoring what I have said and are now carrying out a war of attrition - not something I wish to be part of"

At this point the rhetoric becomes highly amusing. Because the same poster has used metaphor based on warfare himself, as in You surely are not claiming you put it up as an act of surrender, are you'. If you don't want to give the impression you are part of a 'war of attrition' then maybe give the military metaphors a miss. (Not sure how apt the metaphor is anyway, but there you go).


Also amusing because of the language of the poster, who emotively and I think it fair to say belligerently describes the views and points etc of people who don't agree with him as and I quote 'offensive', 'distasteful' while claiming, as far as one can make it out, to be objective and factual in his claims.


I am happy to do as Jim asks and credit him with a little intelligence.