I Spoke Too Soon...

There's a new Directional Driller (DD) that works nights here. Engineers and DD's share the logging unit (office area) alone so you get to know the person fairly well. Sometimes it's a good thing--the last DD cooked me bacon on a daily basis--and other times you just wish that person would never talk to you.

This DD is nice, but I was warned before working with him that he is very political and likes to voice his opinions whenever possible. I had avoided such discussions with him until today, when I got grilled for about an hour about my beliefs on "big government", health care, gay marriage, abortion, Obama's religion, Obama's alleged U.S. citizenship, atheists, self-identified liberals, the Mosque being built near Ground Zero, the public school system...to name a few. This DD doesn't identify as a Republican or Democrat, but as a "Constitutionalist" who is a devoted listener of Alex Jones (http://www.infowars.com/). He suggested I give it a listen, and I probably should because he's already asked me if I have gotten the chance.

It's very hard to have any sort of productive political debate with someone like him as he's convinced that everything he knows is fact. For example, he asked whether I thought Obama was a citizen. I said yes, to which he responded, "Then why won't they release his birth certificate?" I replied that I was pretty sure they had released that, and he replied, "No, if you look at it, it isn't an actual birth certificate." How do I argue against that? I personally haven't looked up the copy of his birth certificate because I feel no need to. Call me an optimist, but I don't believe there was a master conspiracy to make Barack Obama president. The DD then asked me if I knew that Barack Obama's name used to be Barry Santos. No, I did not know this. The DD says, "There is a recording of him calling a radio station and he says, 'This is Barry'." I pointed out that Barry used to be Barack Obama's nickname. He didn't reply. He also asked me about Obama living in Indonesia, which is a Muslim country. I told him he was a child when he lived in Indonesia; it wasn't his choice. (Inside I thought, And so what if he were a Muslim?).

For the other issues, I played dumb for the most part. For some of the topics I didn't need to play dumb because I honestly don't know very much. I don't know a lot about the health care plan for example. So I let him talk. I doubt he knows very much either, but he thinks he does and I can't pretend I do, so it's impossible to debate him on anything. I don't have good reasons for supporting universal health care, but people whose intelligence I respect do, and that's good enough for me. But I supposed that's what he's doing as well...we just respect different people.

We found common ground on a few issues. We both agreed that marijuana should be legalized (he doesn't like government telling people what they can do in their own homes...you know, unless you're gay). Um...I think there were some more things we agreed on but I can't think of any at the moment. I know there were some things I pretended to agree with him on, but mostly because I lacked the mental energy and evidence to support my position.

I can't say I'm happy about spending my nights with this guy. I will continue to pretend to not care about politics and not know anything about anything and be apathetic about gay rights. Fine.

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p.s. -- When I was watching Ugly Betty in the trailer earlier, the DD walked in as the character Justin (flamboyant young teenager) was talking in his usual sassy tone. The DD then started talking in a stereotypical gay voice, swishing his hips and said, "We're different and that's okay because this is America!" Yes, it was awkward.

I, of course, said nothing.