Yesterday, I sat down to write about Hillary Clinton. I wanted to write about how her recent stern retort in the Congo was interpreted as “losing it”. How the papers then went on and on attributing it to how she’d recently been “overshadowed” by Bill’s rescue mission in north korea . How if the situations were reversed, no one would ever dare ascribe what boils down to jealousy, to a man.

I sat down to write about it, and I couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t work up the requisite lather to expound on the media misogyny. It’s been happening a lot lately. A couple of people I know recently wrote impassioned blogs about the healthcare fiasco – blogs that got lots, and lots of comments and debate. And for a split second, I regretted not writing one of my own – but only for a split second. See, I know what kind of time and effort and energy goes into crafting a blog post like that. There’s research and reworking and balancing the right amount of emotion with facts. But mostly, you need a burning desire to engage the debate.

I’ve known for many years that it’s not possible to change people’s minds. That people’s beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecies is such a truism that there’s a technical term for it: confirmation bias. People seek out information that confirms what they want to think, not information that contravenes it. If people want to believe that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim socialist Nazi, or that the 9/11 attacks were a government plot, or that man never landed on the moon, then no amount of objective information will change their mind. It’s like trying to argue with people who believe the world is flat. In fact, it can harden their resolve in their position, rather than weaken it. The more people invest in their beliefs, the more they have to lose if they’re threatened, and the harder they will fight to preserve them.

In short? Head, meet brick wall.

So when I rant about something political, I don’t actually believe I’m influencing anyone who doesn’t want to. When I’m ranting, it’s because I’m angry and venting, not because I think I might convert anyone from the other side. I have, however, previously always been happy to engage the debate. Pointedly so. Vociferously so.

And now… I’m just not. I’m tired or arguing just for argument’s sake. If it won’t make any difference in how people vote or think or behave, why bother? And I’m more than a little saddened by the extraordinary capacity for people to belief outrageously outlandish things, out of a desperate need to protect their own self interests at the expense of others. Arguing against stuff like that just seems like so much wasted breath lately. Wasted time and energy that could be put towards other things, rather than plugging away behind a computer hoping that if i just come up with just the right turn of phrase, my position will be so convincing that people will have to agree. Debating can be fun, but getting all worked up to debate well is soooo draining. More and more, I find myself letting the debate go – because life is too short to spend it throwing sand into the wind, and I’m getting too old to care much what other people think.

all the above? i sat down and wrote all that out yesterday morning. then yesterday evening, i read this, which is, on the face of it, about feminism, but the upshot of which is: you gotta represent. people don’t change their minds overnight, and maybe they sometimes don’t change them at all, but when they do, it’s because they hear about stuff and think about stuff said by people for whom it matters. people who are not an abstract hypothetical, and who are not an anonymous statistic, but people who hold their beliefs dear because they lie at the core of who they are and how they live their lives.

it’s given me a lot to chew on. do i, in some small way, influence people who might otherwise not be swayed? or is taking on the debate as futile and hopeless as it feels sometimes? does it invigorate me, or sap my energy? a few years ago, this wouldn’t even have been a question – am i just getting soft with age?

i know that in my real day-to-day personal life, i represent. so the question that i’ve been mulling since yesterday then, is: is this blog an extension of that? or does time spent debating here on the page take away from time spent *living my life*?

i’m not sure i know.

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