Also Entitled to My Opinion

It is eloquently written in an earlier diary, to paraphrase, that it is time to stand up and question the factual basis for opinion in our culture.

I agree, we have a duty to each other to question how an opinion is formed.  To encourage each other (as Americans, not just party members) to formulate opinion based on research and understanding.

However, we’re about to embark on a long journey into a General Election.  And when we do, we should also be very careful of what we reject.  Because often we reject opinion because WE THINK it’s “just emotional baggage.”   And often we forget that one person’s emotional baggage is another person’s lifetime of experience.

Please, leave a little space for "emotional baggage."  When a woman tells me "We need a woman in charge for a while."  That may be an emotional rationale, but it's grounded in a reality I cannot fully understand. This reality may have affected her life over decades.  This reality shouldn't be overlooked.

Before we decide that people are patriots only when they have knowledge, let’s ask ourselves: Is someone only a "real patriot" when they learn what they know from an approved source?  Who decides which of those sources is approved? Democrats?  Republicans?  Ralph Nader?  Consumer Reports?  Does it come from a book?  TV?  What if I can't afford any of these?

What of a black man who makes a lifelong commitment to learning from his experiences?  What if he has been economically displaced by white men his entire life?  What if that FACT makes him distrust white men?  What if that FACT makes him know that Mitt Romny will likely screw him over?  What if that life-long fact (which is also grounded in statistical reality, BTW) makes him express this opinion: "I'm voting for someone other than a white guy."

What would we say to that?  I wonder if we would let our lack of information about his situation and history lead us to the conclusion that he is some uninformed, vapid, silly opinion spewer?

Life is full of people who have informed opinions. More often than not, these opinions are informed in ways we cannot even fathom.  More often than not they are informed and known of real life experiences that then drive human beings to engage in the human expressions of feeling, imagining, and reacting.

Often, people are more informed than we presume to “know” they are.  Often those people suffer not from a lack of knowledge but from a lack of the communicative resources to express that foundation of real-life experience.  Often people are not allowed to express the basis for our "emotional baggage"

As we approach a general election, before we impugn people who don't express opinion in a way we think is informed - before we say “these people don’t have a brain” I ask us all to take a deep breath, and hold the mirror back to ourselves.  Often they are informed in ways that WE are not taking the time to understand.