Opus 2012-226, On the Street: How to End a Pointless Conversation

This morning I was talking with an acquaintance who is retired.  He was a businessman who was successful in manufacturing and production.  He employed thousands of people during his time and I would guess is a multimillionaire today.  He never married and has no children.  He is working hard to give back to his community.  He donates his time and large chunks of money. 

He was successful because the current epidemic of tax-and-spend was not in place when he was in business.  He was successful because he worked hard and took risks.  But he is a man of the left.  It is like the right side and left side of his brain never talk.  He has forgotten most of what he knew that made him successful.  He follows the stock market and investments constantly.  In that area he is aware but when it comes to the obvious he is ignorant. 

He had never heard of “American Exceptionalism.”  He is totally unaware of how our current president goes to other countries and tells them America is nothing special.  He brought up the “fact” that we need to find a way to limit people to one child because of a lack of resources.  He did not know that the birthrates of all the developed countries except the U.S. are below replacement level, thus he still believes in the myth of overpopulation.  He never heard of the book The Population Bomb that forecast the world would dissolve into chaos in 1980 because of too many people and not enough food. 

I enjoy talking to him.  He is a good man even if he lives in denial and ignorance.  When I get tired of the nonsense, though, I know how to get him to look at his watch and say he has to go.  I simply start pointing out what Al Gore would have called “inconvenient truth.”  The one difference is that the things I point out are really true, not the product of my Progressive dream land.  I start quoting words and citing numbers.  He has to go.

So if you ever want to end a conversation with a liberal, just start listing all the facts you know.  They have other things to do than brush up against reality.  That might be inconvenient.

homo unius libri