I Am Robot, Hear Me Whirr

It’s funny to me how soon Nathan seems to have forgotten my post last year in which I explained that I am consistently frustrated with people who believe that because I don’t agree with their point of view that I must be just fighting the opposite point of view just to fight with people. I don’t really like fighting. He might be thinking of Miguel.

Recently, I wrote a piece in which I stated that, while it can be subjective, opinion can also be entirely wrong if it defies fact. Miguel is actually working on a rebuttal trying to explain why my statement is wrong. And again I simply state. Go ahead Miguel, try it. Bring home somebody and have sex with her in front of your wife. If you’re still alive after that explain to her that in your opinion you did not have sex with somebody in front of her. If you’re still alive after that explain to her how your opinion is not wrong because it’s subjective. Go ahead. I’ll miss you.

To be fair, he takes half a page and sort of agrees with me anyway.

Now I’ll explain why that pertains to Nathan’s post from yesterday. My roommate, Loren, gave me the opinion that universal health care was the “only” way to fix the health care crisis. Nathan gave me the opinion that there is nothing to be fixed. Both of these opinions cannot be right if either of them is right, because one presumes no crisis and the other presumes a crisis. Even Miguel should be able to see the logic in what I just said.

Both of these views are narrow, and I’ll explain why. In my opinion there is a problem (I’m not sure if I’ll call it a crisis or not) and in my opinion universal health care is only one way to fix the problem. That is my very (and I will emphasize the word VERY) clear opinion. That is not me saying, “Hey Loren there is nothing to fix, oh, and hey Nathan, universal health care is the only way to fix the health care crisis.” If I was doing that then yes, I would be arguing opposite points with everyone just to argue.

My opinion is still: there is a problem and universal health care is only one way to fix it. Fundamentally, I disagree with both Loren and Nathan, but not because I have an “opposite” view but because I have a different view; a third view.

Now I believe that through logic I have proven that I am not arguing to Nathan that light is dark and then to Loren that dark is light, so only Miguel should be convinced at this point that Nathan’s opinion that I argue the opposite point of view is correct.

So let me address something specifically that Nathan said. Chris and Miguel are always like “Oh Nathan, we see that you swallowed some Rush Limbaugh rhetoric and puked it up on your ‘Matt Drudge is God’ t-shirt.” I’m paraphrasing. I don’t know what Miguel’s explanation for this would be, but my explanation is simply this: Ok, fine maybe you weren’t listening to Rush Limbaugh, but you also weren’t listening Keith Olbermann. Fine you didn’t get your news from a link provided by a right leaning Matt Drudge, but you also didn’t get it from a link provided by a left leaning Michael Moore. You’re getting your conservative news somewhere, and I don’t believe you are balancing it out with liberal news. If I am wrong about this belief, I apologize.

This is what I’m trying to say. I’ve read books by both Michael Moore and Sean Hannity. I’ve listened to radio shows hosted by Mark Davis, Rush Limbaugh Howard Stern, Russ Martin, and Dave Ramsey. I’ve watched Fox Business as well as MSNBC. I’ve read arguments for universal health care, and articles against universal health care. I voted for Ross Perot in 1992, but have still read articles written by people who opposed him. I don’t feel that Bill Clinton should have lied under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and I don’t feel that the American people should have been deceived about why we’re fighting in Iraq. I am socially liberal, and I am economically conservative. I believe in less government the way that Henry David Thoreau described it, not the way that the Republican Party describes it.

A closed mind has an opinion and will not allow information to interfere with that opinion. An open mind also has an opinion, and may also not allow information to interfere with that opinion, but will welcome the chance to review that information. Where having an opinion fails is when you fall into the closed mind category. My belief is that if your opinion can hold up to scrutiny then you have a good opinion, but if your opinion can’t hold up to scrutiny then why would you want to continue to have that opinion?

A good example of this is the opinion that a woman would not be mentally stable enough to be president of the United States of America. It holds up to absolutely no scrutiny. Seriously. None. I mean according to Miguel it’s a valid opinion because it’s subjective, but it holds up to no scrutiny. There have been great female leaders throughout history, and there have been nutcase male leaders throughout history. Nonetheless, go look up what happened to Walter Mondale. That was not rational thought at work. That was hard line Democrats voting against their own party out of fear of having a woman president. And I bet Margaret Thatcher was laughing her ass off.

So Nathan, in closing, read some Michael Moore books, watch some Rachel Maddow, and listen to NPR a little this weekend. I’m not saying you have to change your mind. I’m simply saying that when you open your mouth to speak your point of view, if you can say, “I watched Sicko the other day, and I noticed that Michael Moore showed the best of Canadian health care while showcasing the worst of US health care,” as opposed to, “Michael Moore is a liberal hack,” then there aren’t as many people who will tell you that you get all your opinions from Rush Limbaugh. People don’t even try to say things like that to me, because they know they’d look foolish in the hospital explaining that I clocked them in the head with a book when they called me a “Michael Moore loving liberal,” and that the book was called “The Way Things Ought to Be.”