Last night, I had what, for me, was a shocking conversation. My wife and I went out after bowling with a few friends and the Presidential Election came up. This led us to discuss who and why, etc. This, in hindsight, is something in the future that I should avoid discussing with friends. Why? Because much to my surprise, they all seemed to believe that George Bush has actually been a successful president. George Bush!!! One went so far as to say, "The reason you don't like George Bush is because he did what had to be done." To which I replied, "No, the reason I don't like George Bush is because he is the leader of the free world and the man cannot put together a coherent sentence. Not to mention that 'what had to be done' was apparently and invasion of a country which was completely unrelated to the attacks we were responding to; an invasion which was built upon the back of complete and utter fabrications."
The overwhelming opinion at the table was that the erosion of privacy that is going on right now is completely OK as the Constitution does not specifically grant a right to privacy. The argument being that if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you care? (Which is the standard argument for this and I should have been able to deflect it easily.)
I was flat out shocked that these, some of my closest friends, had such an opinion. This shock basically caused me to get very frustrated and I was unable to adequately articulate things like "The Fifth Amendment is intentionally vague for exactly that reason...it's called due process...innocent until proven guilty" and all that jazz.
My big problem is that I feel like that is such a naive viewpoint. People who don't care that their evey conversation is being listened to truly believe that their government is out for their best interests and will only use the information they gather to "fight evil". Blind faith. I have a far more cynical view of our government and it has done nothing in the past several years to convince me otherwise.
Unfortunately, I ended up snapping at one of my closest friends which I felt very badly about. I've since apologized, but still don't feel good about the way things went.
Lesson learned, though. Don't talk politics with your friends.
1 comment:
I agree with pretty much everything here regarding our train-wreck of a President. And yes, political discussions with friends can be extremely aggravating at times.
My true feelings on Bush and many in his original administration - not only are they all war criminals, but they have also committed treason against the United States. In turn, they should all be executed. Publicly. As you can imagine, this is a relatively extreme view and causes some people I know to become uncomfortable. Which is why I tend to keep it to myself. But I'm putting it out there, on your blog, in all its glory.
Keep up the blog!
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