(I PROMISE THIS WON'T BE A POLITICAL RANT)
I started Twittering many moons ago, mostly on political topics. In the process I followed (and was followed) by a number of other political junkies. One of these folks was @ToBeRight. His views are diametrically opposed to mine on almost every subject, except when I'm grousing about Obama as the used car salesman of hope.
We throw a lot of data at each other and we also aren't above throwing rhetorical bombs into the Twitter-verse. We're both totally opinionated and smart. It's fascinating that we can take the same situation and facts (except if provided by Faux News --couldn't resist @ToBeRight) and arrive at completely different conclusions and proposed solutions.
The civility of our 1-to-1 interaction should be a model for our democratic process. Yes, we've done some tongue-in-cheek bashing of each other--for Thanksgiving I DM'd him with "Happy Thanksgiving to my favorite right-wing nutjob" and he keeps taunting me for having once been a conservative and losing my way.
But it really goes to prove that sensible, intelligent people can have honest disagreements about how to approach problems. That doesn't mean we agree on anything. If you're in doubt about that, visit his blog: www.toberight.com
It also doesn't mean he's changed my mind on issues or vice-versa.
Not sure where I was going with this, but I can't help but believe that we might be better served as a nation if all our elected officials had grown-up discussions... then vote and let the chips fall where they may.
(FYI, I got the OK from @ToBeRight to mention him in this blog.)
