Crap Tests

Low Level Crap Test
You could see it, as plainly as daylight. Her posture, the facial expression, the choice of words and the tone of voice, the dismissive smart-aleck responses — all of it carefully tuned to fluster and distract the other person from the meat of the discussion. She had asked a question and realized the initial answer was not what she wanted to hear. Perhaps it was a bit complicated, contrary to what she already believed, or whatever reason you might infer. It didn’t matter. Everything in her manner says that you are stupid and she’s going to trip you up and prove it.
A precious few people are talented enough to do this consciously. Most people have it drummed into them at some point in their development and do it with only a minimal bit of consciousness, if any. It’s the subtext of how they face everything challenging their personal mythology.
Your specific response depends on the context, the relative position. It may call for a simple, relaxed, “Never mind.” Walk away because it’s just not worth it. Too often that’s not an option. If you are verbally talented and of a strong character, you can simply call them on it. Even better if you ignore it and stick with the matter at hand, as if you were talking to someone altogether reasonable. However, you may need to add just a bit of patronization to counter the attack.
The biggest problem is how effective this form of attack is on most people. It is intended to push your buttons and create a confrontation so she can walk away justified in rejecting your counsel in the future. You must be the one conscious of it as an attack.
Statist Crap Test
Defenders of the state will demand to know who will build the roads if we cut back on the state and taxes. The unspoken assumption is we simply can’t live without those roads.
Of course we can. However, we need not do without them. The communities that need the roads will build them. People forget the state as an institution is a blasphemous insult to God. His Laws provide for no such beast. His Laws presume a tightly knit community of people who form a stable social structure by observing His revealed guidance on human behavior. To call it “clannish” is accurate but implies something evil. God wired us to live that way, so it’s right.
Each community is supposed to decide for themselves, and whether the leadership of some other community is nuts is none of your concern. The state is infinitely worse as a system of human politics; instead of random potluck bringing the occasional ogre to leadership, the state guarantees no other kind will ever rise to power. Only by random luck do you ever get someone decent.
Further, God designed us to live under Eastern feudalism, not Western. All your nightmare tales arise from the latter; you probably have no factual knowledge of what the Eastern feudalism looked and felt like. It’s a shepherd community, where the tribal elder is your blood or covenant kin who is mostly hands-off. Yeah, libertarian eldership. If you need a road between your community and some other, you get together with them and negotiate a common interest. Outsiders have to negotiate passage. Sooner or later someone will get smart enough to enjoy the advantages of open trade and will keep the barriers low. High tolls are a way of keeping trade away.
There’s nothing wrong with a higher civil government keeping the peace, mostly in terms of genuine defense. There’s nothing wrong with a tiny civil government demanding feuding communities come to terms and get on with life. There’s nothing wrong because that civil government must arise from the collection of communities that it governs. It has to be that which is chosen by them.
Who will build the roads? Wait and see. It won’t matter because what we have now is relentlessly evil. Quite literally, just about anything would be better.