Outnumbered

The church service is finally over. I have done my duty and gone to the church that I've been asked to go to for weeks. Only lunch is left before I can get back to the safety of my dorm room. The conversation hovers around civil discussion, and then it happens: politics. Some guy I don't know makes a subtle anti-Democrat remark. I've seen this kind of guy before: pays no attention to politics, but has been told his whole life that the word "liberal" is a swear word. These are the people I enjoy rubbing the wrong way, because it's so easy to. I don't even have to say what I believe. All I have to do is bring into question what he is saying, and it will disturb this guy to no end.

"Why do you dislike Obama?" This is the way I start the conversation. I can see the excitement in the guy's face; he finally has the oppurtunity he's been waiting for in order to perform his rehearsed speech. It's not so much an argument as it's a memorization of a limited number of words. After a certain point, there's nothing left for this guy to say. His argument is not strengthened by data or opinion; it is built on the fact that he has numbers. I am sitting at a table filled with conservative Christians who think the same way my adversary does. When he doesn't have something to say, one of his friends will think of something new. His problem is that he doesn't know I've been outnumbered my whole life and have become used to it. I start in with a political discussion, but his argument towards politics isn't that thorough. He has to revert to what he thinks he knows. He takes the quick religious route where he tries to use the Bible against me. He doesn't know that I've been raised in the church my whole life. I have more responses than he has questions, and more questions than he can answer. I've had this debate before, and it always ends the same. I will not run out of things to say, and he will run out of rehearsed lines. He will be forced to show his true inability to civilly discuss both politics and religion. For him it is about winning the argument. For me it is to see how far the discussion can go. He can't win.

The discussion ends when he changes the topic, as if by some way he is accepting the victory. I start off with a question. He "answers". I respond with more questions. He does not answer a single one.