Reasonable Discussion

I don't think that all reasonable discussion necessarily has to be logical discussion, logic is only one of the various tools that we use to make sense of our surroundings. I figure that, as long as we don't get violent or abusive, we're being reasonable. My original position was that gays shouldn't be allowed to get married because that's not what marriage is for. I believe that your original position was that they should be allowed to get married so that they can have equal access to the tax breaks and other economic advantages that married people have. I then said that I would rather see those benefits denied to all married people than to see gays gaining equal access to them. At this point you should have realized that my opposition to gay marriage wasn't entirely based on logic. The truth is that I have an emotional bias against gays, maybe not against individual gay people, but against the idea of people being gay, and against the idea that they have banded together to form yet another special interest group that seeks to dominate the political scene.

I have admitted that my paranoia about Blacks and gays taking over the world might be just a matter of perception. I don't watch a lot of TV, but it seems like what little TV I do watch is becoming more and more dominated by Blacks and gays. I suppose that it's all relative after all. Fifty years ago there were very few Blacks on TV, and no gays at all. Hell, they didn't even talk about regular sex on TV back then. I didn't even own a TV during the late 60s and early 70s, so that's likely when the transition began. It probably wouldn't have seemed so dramatic if I had been watching all along but, when you go away from someplace and then come back, any changes that occurred in your absence are more noticeable. Then there's the fact that I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I'm old now, and that's what old people do, wax nostalgic about the good old days and bitch about how the world has been going to hell in a hand basket ever since. If we don't do it, who will?

I admitted that my little anecdote about Cleveland was an unscientific observation. When you think about it, it makes logical sense that the entire government of Cleveland should be Black, assuming that Cleveland, like most big cities in the East, now have a predominately Black population. This is no big deal because the Whites have largely abandoned the inner cities, and I suppose somebody has to live there. You have told me that Chicago is only about one third Black, one third Hispanic, and one third White, which is probably why you have a Lebanese mayor. What's really scary is that we have a Black President of the United States but, then again, he's only half Black and he doesn't really act all that Black, so maybe it's all right. We had a Catholic president once, but he never did turn the country over to the Pope, and we haven't had another one since.

I think you're right that Northern people like to brag about their hard winters. It kind of sets us apart as a hardy breed, doesn't it. Garrison Keillor, who hails from Minnesota, claims that cold weather builds character, and he ought to know.

This reminds me of another amusing anecdote: When I was working at the paper mill, we had a Black truck driver come in from Alabama. He had never seen snow in his life and, as luck would have it,  his first trip to Michigan occurred during the Blizzard of '78. Coming up I-75, he drove through a long stretch of state forest, maybe 50 miles, before coming to the lights of the next town. His first impulse was to be relieved at returning to civilization, but then he thought, "People  actually live here? What kind of people would live in a godforsaken place like this?" By the time he backed up to our loading dock, he was a nervous wreck. He couldn't decide what would be worse, going right back out on the road, or spending the night among the cedar savages. I assured him that we weren't so bad as all that, and that he would be safer laying over in Cheboygan than going back out in that mess. I don't know what he finally decided to do, but he was sure about one thing, that he would never come back to a place like this again, even if it cost him his job.