I had to take my car in for new tires yesterday. (I noticed they felt bald - nearly hydroplaned a few times - in the last bad rainstorm, then did the "penny test" and concluded that it was time).

It's always a bit of a production getting anything done with the car. Because I live in a fairly small town, none of the places (as far as I can tell) have twigged to the idea of giving out loaner cars while yours is being worked on. (I think the expectation is that every adult is paired off, like on Noah's Ark, and OF COURSE there is a spouse with a car who can come get them and take them back. But anyway. I have to wait there).

So I waited. I had a book with me (didn't have time to run home and get a project) but it was hard to read. I've said before that I find auto-place waiting rooms just slightly less depressing than waiting at the hospital when someone you love has been admitted? I stand by that.

There were a couple other people in the waiting area apparently engaged in what was on the television or I would have looked for the remote and shut it off. It was one of the news channels. They were running a show where the MO was apparently to find two people with THE most diametrically opposed opinions on a topic possible, and put them together in a room. And bonus points if one of the people will stoop to ad hominem attacks.

So that was what was going on over my head as I was trying to read a book about C4 and CAM photosynthesis. And I could feel my blood pressure rising - not out of anger, because I actually felt somewhat detached from the issues being discussed, but out of stressed sadness.

I fear sometimes, when I hear people arguing and talking over each other like they were on this show, that we may be headed for some kind of a civil war in this country. Perhaps not a "hot" civil war in the sense of people firing guns at each other, but a war of sorts nonetheless. And it seems so stupid. I'd rather see two people with somewhat different points of view present those points of view, try to find points of agreement, try to discuss the sticking points without attacking each other, and maybe generate a little LIGHT on a subject, rather than just generating HEAT. But I guess I expect too much.

And I'm reminded of why I strictly limit my exposure to news channels.

Finally they had the tires all on. The one bit of good news is that it cost less than what they originally quoted to me; apparently there was some promotion going on for tires (Or perhaps they knocked a few bucks off because the tires hadn't come in on the day they PROMISED me they'd be in and I had driven out there for nothing).

I guess my other frustration with the whole news-channel-people-talking-past-each-other (because that's really what it is; people are talking PAST each other, with no attempt to listen to what the other has to say other than to maybe hunt for errors or statements that could be twisted around) is that in my opinion, arguing is not very productive, especially when there is stuff a person can be DOING. I would rather go out and pick up trash off the roadside than sit in a meeting for a couple hours and try to suss out WHY people litter and HOW to persuade them to stop - because I have no good answers for that. Or I'd rather go cook at a soup kitchen than sit in a debate about the root causes of poverty. It's just who I am. I'd rather shut up and DO something, even something very small, EVEN something that really doesn't attack "root causes," because doing something makes me feel better, makes me feel useful, and hearing problems that really have no good solutions argued just makes me feel worse.