Christian
My view is that the problem with the examples is they both seem to be personal opinions (because although the first one seems more contained, the correlation/causality of both events is a opinion) and these are usually the problem in discussion, because them people feel the need to put their own opinions, and usually it goes down the hill after this.
I don’t think that personal opinion on these topics is a bad thing. There’s even a complex legal concept about when an opinion can be so steeped in truth that it becomes fact. For example, if I said, “Climate Change is progressively becoming a larger problem” and somebody else said, “It’s my opinion that it isn’t,” that second opinion isn’t nearly as steeped in truth as the first, and the factual basis of the theory makes the statement true, just on a relative basis.
Is it a bigger problem than every single other for every single person? Maybe not. But absolutism is rarely the case.
Anyhow, I think that the idea of what is or isn’t political is too much of an opinion in and of itself that even saying “No politics!” is a political opinion…
For example: can we discuss American football? Because that is just fun for me because I gamble on it… But holy fuck, is it a political calculus for a large portion of the country.
Anyhow, @dpuff, @admin, @fortynickel, I trust you guys to set the rules because even if we were to take opposing views on this discussion, I still don’t think that any of you are tribalistic dipshits who would let one person get away with murder while handing out jaywalking tickets to another.
