Canneded

Patient reader, you may be pleased to know that I have signed off from commenting on the Macho Response. This was forced by the Crackle emcee, in his typically flatfooted way, impugning the Left as being the sort to lie and exaggerate.

Okay, I want you all to think of that blue suede shoes song "You can do anything you but lay off of those blue suede shoes" Well I'm like that with lying. I've always hated the whole enterprise of untruth and my earliest plans for a then fanzine (the only way to get your viewpoint out if you weren't an officially sanctioned 'writer')was based rigidly on that notion. You can say I'm deluded, you can claim my conclusions are ill considered and illogical, you can tell me I've lived a cloistered life and wouldn't think that way if I'd had more experience. You may be talking through your hat but okay.

But don't ever tell me I'm lying.

All those years of carefully cultivated lessons in logic and instruction in decorum will explode in a ball of feather and you'll find yourself with a good old fashioned punch in the head.
Well I couldn't do that over the World Wide Web so I did the next big thing and challenged him to cite one case where I had been caught doing either. Naturally this conversation came down quickly. Reader, if you can bear the equivalent of wading through raw sewage, please do revisit that history of comments on his blog. In among me handing him his ass on a plate, can you see any personal examples of lies or exaggerations on my part?

That's his problem: baseless assertion. He let's you on to comment because, like all people who deliberately choose to limit their thinking, he knows he's right and that nothing you can say will hurt his position.
He'll merrily contradict himself from one exchange to the next, repeat an accusation you've already countered previously, trail off with some weak rejoinder, and all the while think that he has you to rights.
A more logical person would take the sum of all that he and the other person has said and formulate their next response; researching as necessary.

You can argue that we all have an agenda - mine, to counter the effects of religious doctrine - is even similar to the Crock emcee's; but what distinguished us is that he will state that someone is a liar or fraud - a very serious allegation - and leave it hanging as if, by saying it, he has made it so.

suffering from an ugly case of full-blown rationalism

Puh-lease. That's a very Humpty Dumpty idea on what rationalism is. Replace the 'r' in rationalism with an 'n' and it works though.