In working to communicate non-violently with one another, there is a form of verbal violence that I find very difficult to steer around: the brutality of violence against logic.
 
Whilst the rest of us watch our Ps & Qs, hold our punches and bar our holds, half-wits get a free pass. Here to my mind is the Achilles heel of NVC and most mechanisms of popular consensus: the slowest common enumerator. Critical, analytic tongues are held to standards of civility, but a cowhand’s wag is excused in light of his circumstance, because it’s the best probably he can do.

By design therefore, a non-violent conversation cannot get beyond what the best arguments can prod out of a cow.

As a lesser gifted person myself, I am unable to bear fools gladly. For my benefit, I have a suggestion for an amendment to the NVC code. I’d like to insist that non-sequiturs, and other such imbecilities be considered forms of communication violence. They inflict profound violence on one’s sense of energy, time and passion. They should be as off-limits as knee-jerk retorts.

Or perhaps it would be simplest if half-wits and cows be let to eat only at the children’s table. Camaraderie among all human beings is fine for fiestas, but if there are understandings to be reached, conclusions to be drawn and work to be done, let’s excise the ne’re-do-much.

Or let’s lambast and skewer the damn imbeciles before they befuddle consensus with the rapacity of their foolish lumber.