Both sides of the ketchup bottle

Filed under:General — posted by rcviper25 on 9/19/2005 @ 2:30 am

The other day I heard a really good explination of the two different views taken by Liberals and Conservatives. The simile was that different political views are seen as if looking at two different sides of a ketchup bottle, both sides see something different and yet both are right. This was so simple and so right. The person from whom this quote came went on to state the nessessity of people to see both sides of an issue. I was glad to have heard this because I realized that I had already taken this approach. The reason I did this was so that I could strengthen my arguments against people of the other view point during the election, but I have since found that it gives me greater wisdom to know the whole issue instead of only one side. If everyone applied this to their own views this world would be much wiser and therefore relieve me of a lot of headaches. There are two issues, however, that I simply can not understand no matter how hard I try.

The other day, my roomate was playing a videogame involving a certain spy by the name of Sam Fisher. I’ll assume that everyone knows what I’m talking about and move on. Well, we had a guest in the room, a girl who claims to take a moderate politcal view point. While playing, my roomate got himself into a sticky situation and was forced to shoot one of the terrorists in the head. I didn’t think anything of this, but the girl who was watching said, “That’s terrible.” My roomate turned around and said, “He’s a terrorist!” and then turned around and proceeded to stealthily take out one guy after another. The girl continued to mumble under her breath every time another terrorist was killed. What I fail to understand is this… Why are there people in this country that simpithize with terrorists? I can understand why people don’t like the war in Iraq. I can understand why people don’t like George W. Bush. And, although I don’t agree with either of these two view points, I do respect them. I can not, however, respect the view point that says that ridding this world of terrorists is “terrible”.

The other view point that I just can’t seem to grasp is how President Bush can be blamed for Hurricane Katrina. The last time I checked, man can not conjure up a hurricane and direct it where they want. How can anyone in their right mind blame a single person for a hurricane? How can anyone in their right mind stay put when they have a weeks warning that a massive hurricane is on a collisioin course, for that matter? I told my roommate the other day that was like someone telling all the students here that a scud missle had been launched from Russia and would impact College Station in a week. I told him I might hang around for one or two days, but when that missle hit, I’d be in Kansas. Maybe it’s just me, and I’m “to far to the right” to understand. But if someone could explain these two things to me I’d sure like to hear it.