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pretty good post, you already covered a lot of what I would have said.

beyond the basic chess or checkers questions of how to use rhetoric against someone when you're not feeling generous (rhetoric is a lot of fun and worth some study imo, especially for those with a sadistic streak!) but setting that aside cuz snark is fun and most of us do it and that's obvious ...

the part where you say "consider every argument avoided as a triumph", that's an important distinction for me: arguing in good faith with my friends or loved ones or people that I want to reach for understanding with, in that case, I completely agree with you.

but those types of conflicts are usually about confusion/bad communication, which is why they're a waste of time as you say but I'm always also sorting confusion conflict from REAL conflict.

Real conflict is everything. It's the whole damn world of suck, much of which we are opposing as anarchists. Two intractable positions, sometimes held by enemies, sometimes when at least one of the two isn't emotionally ready or physically able to acknowledge that what they're doing is squaring off with their enemy.

That conflict isn't a waste of time at all imo. Arguably it's the only worthwhile use of time? Unless you're a conflict avoidant person haha