Weird Day

Today, at work, one of my older male coworkers started a battle.

What kind of battle, you may ask? A cooking battle? A dance battle?

Oh, how I wish it were a dance battle. I would have dominated (not that I didn't dominate this battle, either).

No, my coworker started a battle based on politics.

Now, I'm fine with discussing my politics because I consider myself pretty up to date. Plus, I honestly don't care if someone is Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, etc., especially if they are educated. If they are educated and have reasons for supporting their political party, all the power to you. Everyone has different priorities that can change this (teaching, abortion, etc.). I do, however, get annoyed when two things happen:

1) People are uninformed and are just part of a party due to family/celebrity influence. My dad is more conservative, my mom is more liberal. They are respectful of each other because they are well informed of their positions and have reasons for their stances. Fine. But if you're just being dumb and basically contradicting yourself with your stances, or are spouting off "facts" that aren't really facts, that annoys the HELL out of me.

2) Extremists start slandering. According to some extremists, Obama's education was paid for by Saudi Arabia (when if any presidential family was close to the Saudis, it would be the BUSH FAMILY! Do people not follow oil and all of their dealings in the 1990s?) and Bush was in on 9/11 (WHAT?! Why would this even make sense? It wasn't close to an election year and did you see photos? Homeboy was pissed. Also... I don't think he's a good enough actor to pretend to be so surprised and shocked). One extremist (either far left or Tea Party) can say something and then people start spreading it around like it's fact when it's really just one person's opinion.

I don't particularly want to discuss politics on my blog because it's a touchy subject. But today, an extremist attacked my RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN to support any party I want. He kept telling me my opinion was "wrong". When I said, "well, again, that's your opinion. I think I'm right.", he told me I was part of the reason America has had issues. Then he offered to send me some stuff online to prove that he is right.... to which I replied, "I can send you stuff, too. It's the INTERNET. There are thousands of documents supporting each side... it doesn't mean any of them have any sort of truth to them."

Then...he tried to lie to me about the media.

And that's when I had a real argument. See, as a journalism major, I've seen a lot of the inside of the media industry. He tried to tell me that ALL media is being silenced about a particular topic because one branch of Government has stopped it.

Uh. Hello? Free speech? Free media?

The great thing about America is that we have free media. Our journalists don't get killed or threatened for posting less than positive articles on politicians. And there are media outlets on both sides of the fence: NY Times is pretty liberal while Fox News is definitely conservative. Why would BOTH be quiet on purpose if it's a hot-button issue that the Government is "Covering up"? They wouldn't. It would be a big story and as citizens, we would have a right to know. And media outlets understand that. They are the watch dogs of power, they don't cower under a threat from the Government.

I honestly don't care that this man supports the party he does, but what I do care about is his aggressiveness regarding my stance. I have that right. We all do, no thanks to his crazy views.