The Direction of Intention

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My friend Arnie and I had a great debate today. He is conservative and I am liberal. I appreciate my debates with Arnie because neither of us feels the need to negate the other. I try to see things his way and he mine. We explore ideas, check realities, and ask questions. We discuss and debate – we rarely justify and defend.

It is amazing to me how much conflicting data we bring to our debates. Of course, his sources are different from my sources and that is the point: we are talking about the same sequence of events and his sources report the exact opposite of what my sources report – and both sources call themselves “news.”

How can “news” have opinions about who is culpable in the actions of government or why did this or that happened? News, to be effective, does not ask the question, “why.” News, to be useful, has to divorce itself of opinion.

I might point to deregulation while Arnie points to too much regulation – it is what we heard on the news. Our histories do not line up at all. I suspect the truth is, neither of us really knows what we are talking about – our opinions are reinforced by news sources and pundits that are biased at best. We are too quick to pull data and statistics from our holsters but if you made me bet my life on the substance of my data I’d pause – I know my news source is more vested in entertaining me than informing me – but I use their data anyway! I want to be right! I am left with a feeling that neither of us (none of us) really knows the truth of anything. We defend our point of view because… it is ours and we heard it on the “news.”

Todd, my Canadian friend, told me that Americans are too quick to claim territory; we are too quick to defend because we skip over the dialogue phase. Today, what Arnie and I did, according to Todd’s observation, was definitely un-American . We listened to each other.

There is one thing to which we both agree – and are absolute in our facts: this country is off the rails.

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