User:Woozle/LwaC/2014-01-29

It finally occurred to me that I should post about my weekly #LunchWithAConservative. I use the label "conservative" for lack of anything better; in some areas he's fairly progressive, especially considering his generational background -- but he frequently falls for what I see as right-wing talking-points, and this can make it difficult for me to remain calm and enjoy the meal.

Fortunately he is also well-educated (retired college prof) and so isn't completely off in the rightwingiverse. (For example, one never has to worry about him questioning evolution.) What he does come out with, even despite this, is still more than enough to make me worry about my blood pressure if I had blood pressure issues. (So far, I've been lucky in that regard.)

Here's some of what I learned during yesterday's meal:

• Global warming: there may be something to it, but there's so much alarmism on the subject. It's sort of like the End Times -- a kind of religion of the Left. Also, melting glaciers and ice caps are individual data-points, and you can't extrapolate a trend from that. There are a few serious climate scientists who dispute the idea that it's as bad as all that; see Richard Lindzen, for example. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Lindzen -- Oh, and corporate funding doesn't present a conflict of interest or seriously affect scientific validity (this from a much earlier conversation, so I didn't even try to bring up Lindzen's corporate connections). He did at least concede that rising tides would pose a bigger problem now than in past warming cycles due to the much larger population living in endangered areas.
• Political correctness is horrible, and is an attempt to alter the language. Using the word "nigger" as a general term for "pariah", however, is not. (In a conversation earlier this year, "it's changing the language" was used as justification for opposing gay "marriage", because it's more important to keep the language consistent than to give gays more rights -- because why should society condone anal sex? Or something like that.)
• Having everyone's vote count equally would be a problem because then politicians could bribe the public with their own tax money.(I asked repeatedly for historical examples of this. I also suggested that, even if it were true to some extent, it would surely be better than what we have now, given that right now we have the powerful voting themselves bread and circuses at the expense of society. He neither agreed nor disagreed.)
• Occupy protesters in Oakland smashed shop windows. I said that this was probably done by infiltrators, and the conversation moved on to something else.

In last week's conversation (and the one before, I think), I also learned that the Toyota Prius is better referred to as the Toyota Pious, because of the holier-than-thou attitudes of the owners of such vehicles... because trying to use less oil is kind of silly and pointless, I guess, since global warming is mainly hysteria and fearmongering, and electric cars are a dead-end anyway (or something like that) because batteries can't store enough power.

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Well, I hope you found this as edifying and enlightening as I did. Be sure to join us next week when we'll be learning even more exciting new things.

Bye now!