Good point. I didn't consider that a chief thrill for Michael might be exploring how much this charming daft persona lets him get away with.

Plausible. Still. As a part of afterlife adminstration fairly familiar with the scoring system that seems to be at least partially based on conventional ideas of morality, he might be expected to know the conventional stance on the ethics of kicking puppies.

And let the frustration get the better of him? Surely kicking a dog is not how an angel would express frustration. That's what I meant by "deliberately undermining his persona".

Thanks for the info! I still don't understand why he would deliberately show them a darker side to his character at this point.

First of all - what a brilliant commentary on the cosmic horror of the typical sitcom's eternal reset-button.

Like many other commenters I also found the show a bit too shouty and repetitive to stick with.

I imagine people who want such a scene are not just interested in Sherlock's precious feelings. It's lot a less clear how Molly can move on from these events.

Okay….

You do clearly think that a lot of people who hold a certain view couldn't have possibly thought it through. You've gone on at some length as to how stupid most people are, and how I was a bit naive for assuming other people would have thought it through as much as I had. So that line of thinking is apparently not…

I used a connotation of the term you were unfamiliar with. It's not wrong, just because you were likely to misunderstand it.

When used as a noun, the phrase "a democracy" is often used as substitute for the continental European concept of a Rechtsstaat.

For the third time: I said you were treating others like YouTube commenters - which was I misundertanding, which I already admitted! - not that _you_ were_ a YouTube commenter. But even when I misundertood you, I didn't claim that _ you_ were_ the YouTube commenter.

So you don't think you're owing me an apology at all? Seems to me our misunderstandings were not entirely one-sided.

Or maybe it didn't accomplish much, because Hitler started to send his critics to camps soon enough. Apparently he didn't think that sort of thing could never harm him.

Again: My impression of you treating other people like YouTube commenters was based on the already acknowledged misunderstanding that you were being relevant and referring to the discussion _at hand_, not some abstract discussion happening somewhere else.

That's where you misunderstood me. I said that you were treating_other_people like YouTube commenters, not that you were a YouTube commenter yourself.

You complained that someone called you a moron. I was just speculating why you might have annoyed someone enough to resort to that kind of name-calling.

Of course I was making assumptions about you! I never claimed that it's possible to have a conversation without making any assumptions at all.

Until the next election. If the USA remains a democracy, which is admittedly doubtful now.

The conventional wisdom is that in order to have a good-faith argument, you have to start by giving your interlocutor the benefit-of-the doubt. You can't be surprised that people weren't keen on engaging you on a productive level, when you came in presuming they couldn't have possibly actually thought through their…