Advocate.

As in devil’s advocate. It’s an unfortunate colloquialism, but it describes me pretty well.

I’ve decided that I need to give up trying to explain my opinions, beliefs, and thought processes; I should just confess that I am inclined to disagree with you in general. Don’t get me wrong – I do have opinions, but my most dominant opinion is that you should be willing to question your opinions.

I think we all develop opinions for dumb reasons. There is usually an equation involved. Something like this:

A=B and B=C, so A=C

I support you, you support him, therefore I support him. Something like that. Opinion by association. Opinion as a package deal. It’s sort of like a package you choose from Dish Network. Yeah, there may be some channels you don’t really want, but you’ll take them because they are part of a package that contains a lot of things you do want.

Let’s take politics, for example.

I know that if you believe that capital punishment is wrong, then you also believe that abortion is okay, global warming is real, homosexuality is natural, Bill O’Reilly is insane, big business is all bad, Iraq was a huge mistake (we didn’t care AT ALL about those poor Iraqis. FREE OIL!!!), there were NEVER any weapons of mass destruction, and George Bush is the dumbest man alive. I call this the Enlightened East Coast/ West Coast Lib Package. Many of these opinions aren’t particularly related to each other, but they are all part of the package deal, so you must have them all.

Contrarily, if you believe that capital punishment is the answer, then abortion is wrong, global warming is a hoax, homosexuality is an abomination, Bill O’Reilly is a pretty sharp guy, big business is the American way, we had no choice but to rid Iraq of it’s evil dictator (oil..? WHAT? NOOOO….. we hadn’t even thought of …. I can’t believe you thought we…. NOOOOO), we JUST missed those weapons of mass destruction, and George Bush is really quite smart – he’s just a poor communicator. This is what I call the Amurican Patriot Package .

At what point did we agree to package our opinions in this way? I do it. We all do it. Usually, it’s in response to people of the other “package” trying to force their package on us (I might need to re-word that). I suppose it’s a show of solidarity. It’s a way to unite with other people subscribed to our package.

The downside? We have basically reduced ourselves to a society consisting of two opinion packages.