Politically Inactive…

I don’t care for politics.  Or more specifically, I don’t care to discuss politics.  People are so steadfast in their positions that any discussion to the contrary is perceived as a personal attack and they, then, respond accordingly.  So when people ask me my opinion on a certain topic, I usually give the generic answer of  "I haven’t really been keeping up with that" and go about my business.  But I do have opinions.  I want to be able to speak my views without people thinking I’m some ignorant nutcase who needs to be shown the light.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about writing down my views here on OD, but I’m a bit hesitant about doing so.  If OD offered a way to have an actual (intelligently held) debate about something, I’d jump at it.  I don’t think leaving notes is a good way to do that, considering that you can’t add hot links, can’t change fonts to express emphasis, and there is a character limitiation (300 I think).  This makes it very difficult.  I’ve thought of just taking away notes completely for these posts, but I think that it’s wrong to throw my opinions out there and have no way of receiving rebuttals.  In fact, I would welcome opposing view points to show me where I may be wrong or to point out a way something could be interpretted differently.  I think that is how people evolve intellectually. 

The conclusion I have come up with is to not allow notes.  I am a member of several message boards and we have active debates there, so there is no reason to have another one here.  I am going to set aside one day a week and voice my views on topics I find.  I’m sure people will have varying ideas, but what it comes down to is that I pay for this space and I don’t want to (and can’t) use it as a debate forum.  If you want to debate, you can go to tehsoapbox.net.  There are plenty of topics to choose from.  I haven’t decided yet which day I’ll do this on, but I’m leaning towards Wednesdays.  I’ll mark the topics so that those who don’t want to read them won’t have to…