Well, I appreciate everything, I'll try to be more vocal if you guys really want to read what I have to say. I'm not afraid of conflict, but I see little profit in it. I was defending Ramona, for his honesty and not necessarily his name calling. He's never called me names before in any of our discussions, I suppose he does it to you guys 'cause you guys do it to him. I don't know where it started, but it's really easy to stop if you try. So I'm not going to make accusations of childish behavior, you all know what needs to change.
The tone of these discussions is wildly organic and lacking in direction. Perhaps that is the cause of my vagaries, and it works to my advantage because I don't want to be associated with a party line, for that leads people to make assumptions about me. My goal, if I have one, is to provoke thought like Sinner, and hopefully change some minds once in a while. That's understandably very hard to do in this group. Yes, multi is a knee-jerk kind of guy, and he knows it too. But sometimes he's very open to new ideas, once you get past his inital reaction. I have observed that he's only stubborn when his intelligence is challenged. None of us here are easy to offend, we've got pretty thick hides, but to insult one's intelligence all you have to do is lump a person into a monolithic group like the political Left or Right and suddenly that person becomes very defensive. It's a failing of the political spectrum, it tries to be all encompassing but it's painfully inadequate when it comes to identifying individuals' beliefs. Basically, the words Liberal and Conservative are four letter words and I try not to see people that way.
Choosing sides? I try to align myself with people who have good ideas, and everyone has good ones and bad ones. I won't agree with everyone all the time, but when I do I hope I'm not attacked by my allies because of past disagreements. It happens all too often, and it makes it impossible to move forward on any new subject. If I disagree with you once I'm not your enemy for life, am I? I tend toward conservativism, but I won't always choose that side because it's not always right. But for some reason I find the so called liberals on this board easier to identify with, but maybe that's just 'cause they're as nerdy as I am. On the other forums I think more like Jack, multi, and Ramona, but on this one I think more like Sinner, span, and scoobie. This has a lot more to do with personality than politics.
I'm not gonna spout a lot of BS like 'All you need is love' and 'Can't we all just get along?' because it doesn't work like that. But I think open mindedness is much more fulfilling and entertaining. Hey, that's just me. You guys do what you want.
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