Absolute Value

I’m a little wary of people who deal in absolutes, mathematicians and theoretical physicists excluded. Whether a person is talking about the death penalty or detergent, tones of moral certainty irritate me.

It’s like the wise Zen house mother at my private boarding school up North always said when I was growing up, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take it all and there you have the facts of life.” (Oh, did you go there, too? Wasn’t Blair fabulous?)

Say, for example, a novice blogger posts a YouTube video of a certain politician making an ass of himself for all the world to see and someone else intimates that said blogger should not have posted this particular video because it might detract from the twelve people who read this blog’s liberal and Democratic party sympathies.

The question is not why did the blogger in question (oh, fine, it was me) post that, rather why would it bother someone who already supports him and continues to support him? It’s not a doctored video, as far as I know, it’s the truth. It’s part of who he is and whether we like it or not, we’re just going to have to accept it.

If you’re ashamed or disturbed about the video, that’s no reflection on me, it’s a reflection of your unwillingness to come to terms with your own doubts about him.

The real issue has nothing to do with Joe Biden and Dunkin Donuts. The real issue is that some people just don’t want to accept that everyone is a mixture of things we like and things we don’t like. Sometimes, a detergent gets out the stain, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, a vice presidential candidate is smart, and, sometimes, he can be stupid.

Of course, I believe in making decisions about issues. I’m very decisive thank you very much.

I’m just suggesting that people proceed with caution and instead of saying, “this is the way it is,” they might be better off saying, “this is what I believe, given the information that I have at this moment.”

That way, you won’t feel like a loser when you find out how wrong you were in your criticism of me.