toeknee

Should I have done that?

My girlfriend’s dad, Greg, is a huge conservative.  He has a “Thank you George W. Bush” bumper sticker, and he despises Obama, not to mention he makes his opinion very loud and clear on Facebook.

He and I are Facebook friends, and from time to time I will comment on what he says, and a passionate little debate will follow.  I haven’t posted on anything of his in a long time, because it wasn’t worth it… and then the election happened.

I’m actually fine with the results.  It doesn’t reflect my ideological standpoint, but that’s the thing about a democracy: one person doesn’t control everything.  Elections are happening all the time - the political landscape is always changing, and to expect it to always be as liberal as I am would be foolish.  Plus, it would be extraordinarily draining on me to expect that, because it’s not the reality.  All I can do is keep fighting for what I believe, which brings me to the slightly uncomfortable situation I put myself in.

I just ripped into Greg regarding Rand Paul.  He kept straying from the topic and talking about abortion, Obama, and other basic conservative talking points.  Instead of accepting this and letting him control the conversation, I laid it all out there, called him out on being a biased liberal hater, being a hypocrit regarding Bush vs. Obama, his inability to form a logical argument by pointing out every logical fallacy he commited, and the way he avoids the topic and instead pins any particular viewpoint of mine into the category of “liberal,” and then uses that to paint me in the way he views all liberals, which means he makes assumptions about what I think and what I support, but also about why I support it — he creates a whole persona for me and then ignores what I actually said and responds as if I was just blabbering about how much I love Obama, welfare, big government, lots of spending, etc. I know that was confusing, but that’s how I feel when I’m talking to him.  Eventually, the topic is so far off what I was even bringing up that I can either fall into the trap and start talking about what he wants me to talk about, thus giving up on what I wanted to talk about, or I can call him out on being completely out-of-his-mind bad at keeping a debate on topic and relevant.  I know it doesn’t matter how much sense I make or how much clearer and logical my arguments are, he will never accept anything I say as true, and he will continue to do whatever he wants to do.

My dilemma, then, is should I have even said anything in the first place?  Normally I would say it’s worth saying, if only to try to present another viewpoint on a public forum, but given that it is my girlfriend’s dad… should I have done it?

  1. shlewkin answered: yes, even if he debates it, at least the words are there for him to remember…
  2. tonyhead posted this