It is not often that I have personal conversations on my blog, however I feel that there is some political importance to the conversation I had with my very beautiful and smart…and…Republican…girlfriend.

As we were both pouring over “the Facebook” we stumbled upon our mutual friend, Ashley Anderson’s, photo of himself in his “survivaball…” Please see below:

Now, if you are like my girlfriend, you probably have no idea what a Survivaball actually is, thinking that it was some sort of kids toy where you put them into a ball and roll them around.  “No” I calmly explained, “it is actually a protest device that eco-friendly people use to protest climate change.”

I then promptly pulled up this site, and showed her this video:

Her response?

“OOOOOOH, it is so cute! I want one”

This, naturally, makes me slap my hand to my forehead.

“Look,” she proclaims “it has eyeballs…and hands! I WANT ONE FOR MY BIRTHDAY! Tell Ashley to get me one.”

Now, I love Jill very much, but it is times like this that I realize I have to convert her to a worldview that recognizes the problems our world faces. Now, although she is a dirty, filthy, Republican, she also is not the uneducated type who us liberals so like to make fun of.  She will look at a situation and take in the information to come to a conclusion – it is just that, based on her upbringing, she comes to different conclusions than I would. Indeed, before this comment we had an exchange on healthcare reform were each of us was entrenched in our ideological view points.

But this is where I want to get to the heart of my post. We must understand that there are smart people who disagree with us.  All to often we are concerned with grandstanding that, in the end, only pleases us and does little to convert people who don’t know the situation. We must talk to each other rather than talk at each other – it is the only way we can have an open and honest political discussion and, hopefully, work together to make the world a little bit better.