Merely Cultural Statements

We went to the annual "Beer and Benedictines" lectures at St Anselm's College at pub night.  We hadn't planned on the pub being taken up with that, but it was fun. Engineerlite cornered the Benedictine priest for conversation afterward, and I cornered the Chem professor who discussed fermentation and its history. We went on for about ten minutes, and I got to hit the information about Gobekli Tepe and the fermentation of wild rather than cultivated grains, and the myth of unsafe medieval water requiring mixing beer in with the family supply and other such oddities, and a good time was had by all four.

But then the prof inexplicably wanted to go to more modern events and complain about how terrible it was that Trump had been such friends with Putin, at which I mildly demurred with some statement that I thought Donald was always convinced he could do business with people and therefore put on that appearance, but actions told a somewhat different story.  People who are not knee-jerking Democrats know that this could be stated much more emphatically, but I didn't.

Predictably - and I saw where all this was going even as it was unfolding, he went on to say that "at least" Trump had just been indicted. A quick exchange revealed that he does not understand some of the issues involved about what the underlying crime is and is not, and that the need to make a very solid case when prosecuting someone from the opposition party is heightened. Again, I thought I was mild in my pushback about this. He didn't seem to quite get what I was saying. They seemed to be new ideas to him. He was unsatisfied.

He then said he thought Biden had been doing a great job in Ukraine. We had not come near this subject in any way before this. I allowed that the situation was impossible, and the fact that we were not actively in WWIII was worthy of some credit. He was clearly annoyed at this point, and said he thought it was really important that we strengthen the power of NATO. Well, it might be.  It's one of the POV's that has circulated since the beginning and has some thoughtful adherents. Another POV, that extending NATO membership has been unnecessarily provocative, and Ukraine is only 50% worth of our attention is one of the competing views, which also has some thoughtful adherents. 

I took no position.  What I wanted to say at this point was "You are making cultural statements, attempting to declare what your social group is, rather than strictly intellectual and foreign policy statements.  I'm not convinced you actually know much about these issues."

I didn't of course. But even hard science professors at Catholic colleges seem to be making their political decisions on the basis of tribal identification at this point. It's part of why I doubt that "better education" is likely to have much effect. This gentleman has a 99th percentile ability to deal with numbers and data. He doesn't use it - for personal reasons, whether emotional or social. 

When my oldest was about five or six and I had just started reading "chapter books" to him, he asked about one of the characters in the Lloyd Alexander series "Is he on the good team or the bad team?" I think this is bout the level we are playing at here.  "Are you on the good team or the bad team?"