“Well, you've gotta be crazy, baby to want a guy like me. Yeah, you've gotta be out of your mind … crazy.” Crazy - Icehouse
The
protagonist in the Icehouse song thinks that this woman must be crazy to like
him. If he were in her shoes, it sounds
like he would not make the same choice. Of
course, he probably doesn’t really think she’s crazy. He just doesn’t understand her decision
making process and is exaggerating for effect.
Which, I suppose, is what a person is doing when they say another person
must be crazy to think the earth was created in six days, to really believe
homosexuals are a threat to America, to vote for Obama, to try to take away
people’s guns because of one school shooting, to try to blame the financial
crisis on unions, etc. etc. The problem
is that this sort of exaggeration has an effect, and it is pretty negative. The effect is that the person being called
crazy is less likely to listen to, agree with, work with, and even compromise with
the person calling them crazy. This
crazy person isn’t really crazy. They
have reasons for believing what they believe in. They may not be good reasons. They may not be well thought out
reasons. But, they are still reasons. Their positions are not the result of actual psychosis. Rather than calling them crazy, which is the
easy way out, us ‘sane’ folks should try to figure out why the ‘crazy’ people
think the way they do and try to explain to them why we don’t think that
way. “You gotta think differently baby”
doesn’t capture the confusion of love nor does it make for catchy song lyrics,
but it works better in politics.
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