You seem to be a smart enough guy that can make sense of what I’m trying to say better than I can express it.
These days the worst thing to do in the face of absurdity is to draw attention to it. There’s just too many people living right now whose entire sense of self and security comes from subscribing to some absurd ideal that’s only tangentially—or at best orthogonally—rooted in a common interpretation of a the past (i.e., a tradition.)
My approach when dealing with these kinds of people used to be “When they go low, step on their backs!” but I’m beginning to realize that doesn’t leave a good impression for my opponents who are arguing in good faith nor does it set a fine example for my colleagues, particularly the more naive ones.
My favorite counter of late is something more like a barrel roll where afterwards I can either disengage or attack from a more sophisticated vantage point. Then I can only hope that a conscious observer can pick up on my attempt at being tactful, adopt it for their own use and spare themselves the troubles of the deeply troubled.
Although I’m not opposed to becoming more familiar with the tech and potentially translating some of the more memetic aspects of the Datastar community’s ideals into the robust kind of propaganda model that all open source projects thrive under and deserve in the year 2025.
The problem with that is you go down to their level. There's no winning against a team of professional mud slingers in the mud. Even if you would win, that'd just make you one of them.
I'll push back a bit in that I'm still out here helping other devs and making cool stuff so not exactly like them. Happy to have head to head with actual code and some modicum of stakes on the line.