I just got back home after spending a week with family and friends in Arizona. These trips are always fun — seeing family members, playing with the kids, and so forth. They also result in a lot of interesting exchanges, which usually end up with me biting my tongue.<\/p>\n
I know, on the blog I may seem to be a politically assertive person at times. But in real life, I’m more of a don’t-rock-the-boat type. I don’t want to start inter-family wars (there are too many of those already); I don’t want to take offense at statements that are often made without a second thought; I want to relax and play with my kids and not argue. (People get surprised and offended when you argue with them, unless the context is “let’s discuss X” — which is, for example, the environment this blog tries to establish). <\/p>\n
And so I bit my tongue many times during this vacation. Highlights included numerous anti-gay remarks; one relative asserting that all Catholics are dumb; and another who was surprised that our son refered to Martin Luther King positively, and asked my wife if we were going to teach our son “the truth” about Martin Luther King (presumably, that he was an evil communist).<\/p>\n
And of course, there were also the usual random remarks about Clintons, liberals, and so forth. <\/p>\n
I get a lower dose of this than I used to. I’ve made clear over the years that I’m just not interested in discussing the secret conspiracies behind the United Nations, or the dead bodies of the legions of people who the Clintons had secretly assassinated, or the conspiracies of the medical establishment to keep people perpetually sick when all they really need is radio waves broadcast into their bodies to destroy the parasites that the medical establishment won’t tell you about.<\/p>\n
I didn’t always bite my tongue, but even when I spoke up, it was guarded. For example, I deflected one conversation (“Most universities are forcing their students to watch X-rated movies, in order to hook kids on porn”) by asking for further details (the source was “I heard it on talk radio”) and then adopting a carefully neutral position myself — “If it’s true that universities are forcing students to watch X-rated movies, that would be a bad thing; however, absent further facts, I’m going to withhold judgment.”<\/p>\n
I wondered, after I got home, how much of the tongue-biting was vacation-related (I just wanted to enjoy myself, not argue about the merits of Bill Clinton for the upteenth time) and how much of it was more than that. If I weren’t on vacation, would I be less inclined to bite my tongue? (I guess the only way to find that out would be to move back to Arizona).<\/p>\n
Sometimes I think that my tongue-biting is a trait that I’ve developed, specifically as a Mormon. It is something that I do quite a bit in church, after all. But maybe it’s just that I’m a non-confontational person. I wonder if it’s a cultural thing, or if it’s just me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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