Friday, December 18, 2009

Dare I? Politics... Part I

Talking politics can get kind of ugly. If I'm talking to someone on a different part of the political spectrum, I often walk away from conversations about politics with my hackles raised because I feel like I was constantly under attack. This is pretty weird since most people I talk to about such matters are generally reasonable people. So, why can't we have a simple conversation?

Reason One: People often assume that because I am a follower of Christ that I am politically conservative. This is not a good assumption. I agree with a lot of liberal ideas. Does this make me a bad person? I tend to think not. :) However, I have found that some people will make fun of or attack things that I believe because they assume that I am politically conservative like they are. I try not to be offended, but it certainly does not feel great. Not a good way to get into a civil conversation.

Reason Two: We're all so convinced that we are CORRECT. Uh oh!!! Picture a conversation between two people who completely disagree but neither person can imagine that his or her view has any flaw. Defenses certainly are going to quickly go up. How can anything productive happen? (As a note, this happens when talking about God too. I think that people feel attacked by Christians, and I can understand why. I'm not saying people need to compromise beliefs, but I think we should definitely be more conscious of how we are treating people.)

Reason Three: So cliché, but I'm going blame the media. :) Seriously though, I think that to keep ratings up, news networks are spreading hate, maliciousness, and lies. It's just so much more interesting when there's a conspiracy theory afoot!! I think both sides of the spectrum are guilty, and this makes all of us unsure about what is truth. It also gets people who believe the maliciousness extremely riled up. How can we make good decisions this way?

I'm sure that there are other reasons too, but these are the ones I've been thinking about recently. I'm going to do a second post on more thoughts related to this subject.

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