I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we in the United States are quite polarized these days. And if you haven’t heard that you’re an idiot. (See what I did there?)
And IMSBHO (in my should-be-humbler opinion), the problem is that, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we all feel like we should be free and brave enough to share any damned, hair-brained thought that might pop into our little heads. And we have cheap broadband internet to afford us the opportunity to do so.
Now, I am not saying that my thoughts are better, more “right,” than yours. (I WILL say that, at some point – but I’m not saying it right now.) Right now I wish only to assert that some ideas are better than others. This “false equivalence” that the contemporary media seem to fall back on so facilely instead of, oh, say, evaluating whether some utterance or act is worthy of reportage, is, um, facile. And stupid. “Well, you think my candidate/party/brother-in-law did something dastardly? Well YOUR candidate/party/brother-in-law did this other dastardly thing.” OK. Nobody’s perfect.
But some deeds are more dastardly than others. So, if you are some crazy millennial who sleeps without a top sheet but with just a duvet or comforter, and I prefer a top sheet, or if you like the look of sneakers with a suit, or if you think George Clooney is not the handsomest man in the world, OK, let’s just agree to disagree on that. But if you think the earth is flat, or if you think that some piece of cloth has no chance of stopping some rogue covid molecule from infecting you or, more importantly, my wife, or if you think science is a poor way to gather new information to steer our behavior in a society, then, no, I will not just agree to disagree on that one.
“Oh, so you think bestiality is a bad thing? Well, let’s just agree to disagree.” No. Sometimes you’re just wrong. You can be brave, and free, AND wrong.
