Rational Conversations with Irrational People

One of my problems in life is I have attempted way too many times to believe that it is possible to have rational conservations with irrational people. I should have realized, after once saying the following comments, that any subsequent conversation was going to go downhill:

“Let me see if I understand your position. You are upset at me because you trespassed onto my property, which is illegal to do, to plant an illegal substance, marijuana, on my property, without my knowledge, and that my cows, who belong on my property, then ate your marijuana?”

The response was “yeah, man. So, what are you going to do about it?”

“What do you expect me to do about it?” I should have known at that point not to ask, but that failed to prevent me from doing so.

“I want you to talk to your cows.” The gentleman seemed to think this was a perfectly logical solution. I then offered my logical alternative, which is where I made my mistake.

“They’re your plants. You should talk to the cows.”

People from then on loved to drive by my farm and watch this spaced out guy talking to cows. “Are you paying attention to me? Don’t walk about from me, man, I’m still talking to you.”

Since we were grandfathered in and were one of the last farms allowed to see un-pasteurized milk, I always wondered if a cow that eats marijuana would then affect the milk in any way. I guess I’ll never know. Although, sales were sharply higher (no pun intended). And, the cows seemed happier. Plus, they seemed to stay up all night with the munchies eating a lot more grass (the legal kind) and they were producing more milk, so I guess it did make some difference.

Speaking of people having irrational conversations, how about the President of the United States, who lied about the reasons why he thought we had to go to war in Iraq, and who kept secret Defense Department warnings that the war could last a long time and had us believe that it would be a quick war, now finds faults with people who currently criticize him even though they initially supported his request to go to war? Now, that does not include me, because I was against going to war with Iraq for a number of reasons, such as we had Saddam Hussein contained where we wanted him so he couldn’t use the weapons even if he had them and I thought we should at least wait until the inspectors finished the job (where, it turns out, they would have discovered he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction). Yet, how can a rational person blame someone for being against their lie because they believe him when he lied to them? How can…oh, wait, there I go again: expecting rational conversation from an irrational person.