Another pointless argument? Hand me the remote control
I need a remote control for life.
Click.
Sometimes, I just want to throw in the discussion towel and call it quits. It’s absolutely no fun talking to certain people any more.
So many of them have their emotional fists in the air all the time, bracing for a fight in person or online, hoping to find someone who’ll argue and then subjecting all of us to the often-ugly confrontation.
I hate senseless quarreling. Fortunately, so does Husband Richard. In fact, when we owned and ran Cambria’s bakery, two of our favorite co-workers pulled us aside one day.
Baker Paul Franco wanted to ask us a personal question.
“When do you argue?” he asked with a sincerely quizzical expression on his face. It seemed that, in all the decades that he and cake-decorator wife Molly had worked together, they’d never come across a married couple working side by side that didn’t clash a lot, loudly.
“Kathe and I don’t fight,” Husband Richard replied. “We don’t have time, and so far, we haven’t had an issue that was worth putting our marriage in jeopardy, because bitter arguments can do that. We disagree, sure, but we do it politely, with respect. And if we can’t change each other’s beliefs, we agree to disagree. So far, it’s always sorted itself out.”
Why can’t more humans be like him?
We’ve all had to listen to individuals who are firmly, immovably entrenched on opposite sides of an issue, and who are determined to loudly debate with anybody on the other side.
I hate it. Especially when the bickering is about topics that don’t concern me, or at least not enough for me to get my jeans in a knot over them.
Or the debaters are arguing over issues about which I can do absolutely nothing.
Or when I care deeply about the topic at the center of a verbal onslaught and disagree with the argumentative one’s views. But I absolutely know that, sure as I stand there, a flea has a better chance of permanently affecting an elephant than I have of convincing the other person.
I have plenty of other, much more entertaining ways to waste my time, thank you. Waxing my garage floor, for instance. Alphabetizing my pantry shelves. Sorting through a stack of to-do filing that dates back to the turn of the century. Braiding the fringe on my afghan.
Of course, you and anybody else are entitled to have strong opinions. That’s good, right? It means you’re engaged with the issues and life in general. You care. I get that.
Likewise, it’s great when you express those opinions. Politely, calmly and quietly, with respect and courtesy.
But when someone disagrees with you, and then the two of you spend the next hour angrily stating and restating those differing opinions at increasing intensities and volumes, when the argument escalates online and when it’s bloody well obvious from the get-go that neither of you will be changing anybody’s mind anytime soon, give up!
I’m leaving the convo. See ya, dude. Bye.
Pounding your perspective into my head and the ground is an informational migraine in the making, like the verbal boxing matches we’re getting from many TV pundits.
In the good old days, hosts of news-related commentary shows did what I called “hit-and-run topics.” They’d hit a subject hard, stating the news and their opinions about it, and then move on to the next cause du jour.
Now, many of those anchors focus on just one issue for the entire hour — or day, or week or month — repeating over and over what’s wrong with the opinions and people on the other side of the aisle.
Why do they assume I’m so dumb or gullible that, to really understand the point they’re making, I must be subjected to the same argument a dozen times in one show?
Move on! I get your drift, and if you haven’t convinced me in five or 10 minutes, trust me, it’s not going to happen in 30 or 60.
And how about when the program’s disagreeing guests play the “I can argue louder than you can” game in an interrupting and overlapping point-counterpoint brouhaha? Then, instead of intervening and insisting on civility and good manners, the host actually joins in the shout fest!
How rude!
Remote, please. Click.
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 5:15 AM.
