Ignorance & Hypocrisy

Things have been quiet on Quora for a bit, so I was pleased when a fellow popped up to entertain me the other day. He seemingly took exception to this response I posted a couple of weeks hence:



Mr Curran (who appears to be some sort of ‘Irish-American’ / ‘plastic Paddy’^[i]) was so enraged, that he didn’t trouble himself to address any of the points I raised, and instead treated us to this badly-written outburst:

I’ve long thought that the whole ‘steal the gold’ thing is a good Litmus test to check if someone knows anything at all about the Boer War; basically, if anyone declares that Britain wanted to ‘steal the gold’ of the Transvaal (presumably by having British territory invaded by the Transvaal?), one can be certain they know absolutely nothing about the war.

And, as in the case of the unfortunate Mr Curran, if they add that the wicked British also wanted to ‘steal the diamonds’, it confirms they are utterly ignorant not only of South African history, but also of South African geography. And so I pointed this out to him:



The increasingly-ridiculous Mr Curran ignored all these inconvenient realities, and instead double-down on his stupidity, spewing out this semi-coherent / light-on-punctuation rant:



Quite what any of this babbling nonsense had to do with the initial question, or my response to it, I really have no idea, so I replied thus:



Needless to say, Mr Curran vanished at that point, slinking sulkily away, tail decidedly twixt legs. Clearly, for reasons known only to himself, he has some sort of issue with the British denying supplies and intelligence to their enemy during a counter-terrorism campaign. Indeed, judging from a quick scroll through some of his other half-baked responses, Mr Curran appears to be cursed with a rather passionate hatred of the British in general (not that we will lose any sleep over that)… but what I found particularly interesting was this response he posted a couple of months ago, with respect to a question about the American Civil War:



So there you have it: Mr Curran defiantly declares that ‘denying resources to opponents’ is an ‘old custom of warfare’… but not, of course, when the British do it. Then is utterly reprehensible, apparently.

Poor old Mr Curran serves as a textbook example of both the mind-blowing ignorance, and the sheer hypocrisy, we encounter when it comes to the Boer War.


NOTES:

[i] Aside from his humiliating foray into the Boer War, Mr Curran posts frequently to lambast, mock, and ridicule the British defeat at / evacuation from Dunkirk – an event which took place some 18 months prior to his much-loved America entering the war. It is more noteworthy still that, in the ultimate clash of good vs evil, his equally adored Republic of Ireland remained neutral throughout.