If I start an argument with myself and no one hears it, am I really having an argument?

Speaking of not wanting to start arguments, my post last night depressed me, because I couldn’t figure out whether by voicing a thought, I might be guilty of starting an argument. I mean, my normal process in everyday life is to just throw private fits when I see something I disagree with. I’ll curse and swear, and hurl invective, whether at the newspaper, the TV, or some irritating blogger or commenter. I’d be embarrassed as hell to voice these sentiments publicly, and that probably has something to do with the way I was raised. When it’s part of what they call your “cultural DNA,” being polite can become a disease. It may be psychology, but it is unfortunately harnessed by sneaky control freaks in ways that aren’t well understood. Simple human good will — politeness, if you will — is the very backbone of that obnoxious leftist trope we call “political correctness.” But the mechanism is hardly limited to the left. Polite people who are on the right (whether conservative, Republican, libertarian, or even “bow–tied” — a status I had to go to great lengths to avoid) often find themselves wiggling in the face of angry yahoos spouting a steady stream of crackpot conspiracy theories or anti-gay pronouncements in loud voices. And if these loud voices are said to be grounded in religious opinions, then all the more caution is required. Just like a good liberal doesn’t dare offend the sensibilities of a hard left Marxist, people on the right don’t want to offend hard right religious conservatives. So they may squirm, but they say nothing. Some of it is politeness (which as I say, is cultural), and some  is a rational belief in coalition politics. FWIW, I’m a believer in the latter, and a hapless victim of the former. Which means I don’t like to say what I think, except at home, when I become unbearable, even to myself.  Not recommended if the goal is sanity, and as I said last night, it interferes with blogging. Actually, I was understating the case. When you’ve been blogging for nearly a decade as I have, the blog can honestly be said to have taken on its own personality. So when I write something, I cannot but be affected by it. Factoring in my “natural” (OMG, that word) politeness and the desire not to harm the “coalition on the right,” and I often find myself with very little to say. If in addition to that there is a chance that by saying something I might start an argument, then I am deterred from writing. To call this “writer’s block” is not accurate; I don’t know what it is. (It feels creepy and dishonest, but it’s “for the good of the cause.”)

Who “starts” an argument, by the way? The one who disagreed with something that someone else said, or the one who said something that was later disagreed with? Is this a philosophical question? Geez, I’d hate to get into that, because I have found that whenever you get into a philosophical question, you find that some of the greatest minds in history have ended up in disagreement. So it goes in circles.

When I saw M. Simon’s post from this morning I was unable to keep my trap shut. Unable to figure out whether to laugh or cry, Simon complained that his “Right Wing Brethren” are both decrying the militarization of the police while fully supporting Drug Prohibition, which of course supplies the primary pretext for the militarization of police. So I ventured something I probably shouldn’t have said:

I hate to diagnose this hopeless disagreement in psychological terms, but it may be that they are in denial. Or maybe they think that America’s pre-drug war period was a failed experiment with freedom. Some of them may simply hate people who take drugs, and take comfort knowing that the people they hate are at least criminals who ought to be locked up. The WOD is the closest thing to real culture war that we’ve got going, right? We cannot back down, or America will be destroyed, just like it was before 1914!

I think many of them honestly believe that legal drugs threaten “the culture.” Still others see it as a threat to authority. To established order. Yet they also distrust that same authority and established order, so analysis gets a little contradictory. I want to understand these people, but the more I try, the more I fear I cannot.

As the commie political officers repeatedly said in Dr. Zhivago, my personal sentiments do not matter.

What does matter is that no matter how much I hate the right, I hate the left more.

What an awful admission. Should I just quit blogging?