Today, on the way home from a Christmas event, I stopped at Wal-Mart so that my daughter could use the bathroom. I pulled onto the little access road that borders the parking lot, and prepared to turn into the parking lot. One car was turning right out of the lane that I was hoping to turn left into. I had no stop sign, and the car would not have been an impediment in any event, so I began to turn, only to have to swerve when the driver of the car second in line to get out of the lane pulled into my path. I honked, and went on to the next lane. The driver of the other vehicle sounded her horn a good half dozen times as she drove off into the night.
This little parking lot vignette illustrates two things that a critical thinker needs to be aware of when it comes to politics. First of all, when someone disagrees with you or points out an error in your thinking, just asserting that they are wrong and you are right is seldom the way to go. It is important to be open to the possibility that you are wrong. Second, it is important to be aware of the ad hominem fallacy, both in the arguments of others and in your own arguments. I was very tempted to include a few details in my description. The car was not the newest. I believe it was an old Chevy Cavalier. The driver had a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in days. Her clothes did not look to be straight off the runway. All of this would have jazzed up my prose, but it has nothing to do with whether the woman was right to honk. All too often we poke fun of and/or attack someone when we disagree with them. This just distracts us from the problems that we are presumably trying to solve.
The bottom line, I suppose, is that discussing politics isn’t much different from driving in a parking lot, or a million other mundane tasks. There is a better, more respectful and productive, way to go about doing it.
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