As they say, don’t talk politics

I was chatting with a friend at work Thursday afternoon when someone who sits nearby joined in. Somehow the discussion turned to government regulations and after a short while this other guy was getting quite angry about this topic. There was no way to just discuss this with him, his viewpoint appeqrs to be the only one that matters and any competing ideas are so wrong and dangerous they have to be literally shouted down with vulgar language.

In a nutshell, his contention was that the government required banks to make loans to people who could not afford them and that this is what has lead to the current economic problems. At the time I was too flabbergasted at his reaction to respond but it occurred to me later even if that was the case, the banks were not required to structure these loans to fail or make them without performing due diligence. Our current problems were not the regulations fault but greedy banks looking to grab whatever they could damn the consequences. (Of course, there is a lot more to this topic but I will leave those books to someone else to write.)

I don’t care for induhviduals who hold such extremist views that a simple debate is just not possible. The only way to discuss current events with these induhviduals is when one just agrees with everything that is said, that is not a debate or discussion though.