Student in the Parent's cafe - etiquette?

[driver]

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I don’t want to argue with them, I want to make them sit at a table and write: “I won’t substitute pretentious put-downs for honest argument when I disagree with someone’s opinion” 100 times. But that’s condescending, isn’t it? So I end up erasing my post, or rewriting it to take out all the good parts, and just addressing factual errors that I think are beneath the talent level of the poster.

So, in “taking out all the good parts” you save yourself from condescension, and become merely presumptuous. With particular self-backpatting due to your advanced age and acquired wisdom. I think a certain etiquette is called for in the Parents’ Cafe, just as it is called for at the parents’ dinner table…but that doesn’t require snootiness on our part, I think. There are other ways to teach these young whippersnappers–without turning them off. Wow…just saw your latest. You are really uptight. Go out on the parent’s porch and have a smoke or something.</p>