Nigel Short mocks Wesley So.

You may or may not be aware of this latest tirade of GM Nigel Short who lept on to twitter in order to mock the poor start of Grandmaster Wesley So in the 2018 Candidates tournament.  Short not only mocked the sub par performance of Wesley who lost two games in a row but attributed the poor performance to an alleged abandonment by his deity.  An interesting perspective for someone who is a professed atheist.

 a room full of mirrors

What Short in all probability fails to understand is that his comments are not a reflection of those he seeks to vilify but of he himself.  For Nigel Short life is simply a room full of mirrors as evidenced by his unwillingness or inability to understand Wesleys perspective. He creates a fallacy and then seeks to attack the edifice that he himself created.  For example he asks, 'Did Wesley not pray fervently enough or perhaps it was Gods day off, a Sunday?'  The failure here is a failure to understand that Wesley was in all probability not praying for victory but for some other attribute, the ability to concentrate, for strength of conviction, for humility in defeat.  To Nigel Short bolstered by his own pomposity and held aloft with hot air floating around the internet like some drugged balloonist the concept is absolutely alien and what he cannot understand he seeks to mock. To my knowledge Wesley So has never attributed any of his fine victories to the intervention of his diety but merely wished to express appreciation. 

 Short claims that as a direct consequence of his mocking Wesley So he received his first death threat.  A rather fortuitous turn of events for it allows Short to play the victim creating leverage for his platform.  Whether he seeks to 'milk it', remains to be seen.  What we can say with some certainty is that he has little to worry about for by all accounts he seems perfectly capable of hoisting himself upon his own petard.  Will Nigel Short now confirm that Weslys fine victory over Aronian was down to a renewed interest by Weslys deity in his games of chess?  No? Then clearly Shorts position is logically untenable and cannot be substantiated by any reasonable argument. 

Will Nigel short attribute Wesleys victory to his deity? No? Then his position is logically fallacious.

 So what does it all mean?  In all probability Short was probably simply using the opportunity to express his atheism, to troll and bash a few Christians in time honoured tradition.  I have nothing against some good humoured trolling, just for the lulz, but it needs to be handled with skill and a detachment, an almost nonchalant playing Devils advocate type of approach.  Short having invested heavily in his atheism could not handle it in this way and his lack of objectivity led him to making some rather ludicrous and unsavoury remarks in a heavy handed manner.  Clearly he needs trolling lessons like all get out and to learn to walk lightly upon the ground.