A Nice Change

Last weekend, I ventured up to Tahoe for a little spring skiing. Aside from narrowly avoiding a sunburn and badly overpaying for dinner, I also engaged in numerous political discussions with my skiing companions.

Every one of us is originally from the East Coast, and every one of us was basically a Democrat - but what a difference! In San Francisco, I'm often made out to be a bloodsucking Republican due to my beliefs that homeless people, while often sick and out of luck, are often bad people or lazy or both, that not all criminals can be rehabilitated, and that the United States, although it has its flaws, is not the world's worst country.

These ski trip folks, while we disagreed on many issues, were usually rational, and spent time making their arguments factually and logically appealing rather than attempting to make me feel sorry for people. And, as a result, I often found myself changing my opinion due to well-conceived arguments. Which, refreshingly, is the basis for a healthy democracy.

This underscores the much-ballyhooed but ultimately correct assertion about San Francisco - people here are too liberal to take seriously. I never knew what a real bleeding-heart liberal was before I got here - and they annoy me just as much as the Republicans (okay, maybe not THAT much, but a lot). Reintroducing (via imported minds) intellectually accurate arguments was a breath of fresh air.

Maybe (dare I say it?) it's time to get out of this town...?