Politics

Photo courtesy of The Politic

There's an old piece of social etiquette that declares that one should never discuss religion or politics in polite company.  I am, by my very nature, a very political person and this isn't a rule I find particularly easy to follow.  There are certain issues that get my hackles up, and if you push the right button I will go from 0 to liberal bitch in about 2.5 seconds. 

I try to refrain from political discussions on the internet.  I'm not usually very successful at that either.  There are a lot of offensive posts and mudslinging out there right now (it is an election year), and while I can ignore the first 20 I see, it seems the 21st one (or whatever number) is bound to make it impossible for me to keep my mouth closed.

I have yet to see one single post from my liberal friends declaring all conservatives morons. I have yet to see one single liberal person I know post a meme that insinuates that people who don't agree with us lack intelligence.  I have, however, seen numerous posts and memes from my conservative friends that either state directly or insinuate emphatically that we liberals lack intelligence and common sense. 

That infuriates me.  I'd never post that I think all conservatives are morons.  I would never question your intelligence because your view differs from mine.  I might question your ethics, your logic, or your reasoning. I might want to know what buttresses your opinion, what support you have for your view.  I might interpret what you use as evidence you are correct in a completely different way than you do, but I won't ever say "You're a republican so you must not have a brain."  That kind of claim is absurd, immature, and frankly lacks intelligence itself.

There are certain issues we can all meet in the middle about.  There are a lot of issues where I can find a middle ground, a lot of issues where I could meet you in the middle and we could find some compromise that would probably work better for our country than what the idiots in power are doing (and yes, they're all idiots--the majority of those ridiculously wealthy white men have no clue how the rest of us live on a daily basis and therefore have no idea how to accurately represent the people who voted them in). 

There are other issues that I cannot and will not ever compromise on.  There are issues that I see as clearly defined right/wrong, moral/amoral.  There are issues you see that way too.  That doesn't make one of us smarter than the other. That doesn't make one of us better than the other.  It makes us human. It means we have vastly different life experiences and therefore vastly different interpretations of the world around us. 

And if I get really mad or you get really mad...well, that just means we both care. Doesn't it?  I think it's great to be political.  It's good to be involved in the world around you and active in selecting our country's decision makers.  It's not great to call names. It's not great to make assumptions. It's not great to call me evil because I don't agree with you.  It's not great to assume your way is the only way.  That's what's wrong with our country right now.  There are too many people who are one-sided and all of those one-sided people refuse to work with the other side, and so nothing is ever repaired.