OUCH! “Don’t Say Another Word, Please.”

Come now, and let us unreason together

by Reg Green

It has become a commonplace that political differences are now so malignant that to ward off a disruption of relationships, discussions about them are often best avoided, even at the family dinner table.

I hate that. I’ve always thought that talking about a disagreement (besides having the thrill of a good scrap) would likely lead to some sort of accommodation.

The other day, however, I came across a quote from Jonathan Swift that I had shoved aside many years ago as being too defeatist but now sounds depressingly realistic: “You cannot reason a person out of something he has not been reasoned into.”

As we’ve all discovered, since the day after we said “I do,” our spouses are hopelessly irrational. So it looks like the outlook for a coming together of minds at home is quite bleak.