A former reader (of all of three days) told me my posts were too political and boring. That’s interesting feedback. Not the boring part. That’s not interesting by definition. I already know I bore some people. But it is interesting to ponder what she might have meant by “political”?
She could have meant a number of things. It is obvious, even to me, that some of my posts have political content. It could be that she doesn’t like to read about politics or didn’t enjoy my particular political interpretation in one or another of my posts.
But there is another thing she could have meant that I think is more interesting. She could have surmised from one or another of my posts that my political preferences differ from hers. That is, she could have inferred that I am too liberal or too conservative or too whatever. Having drawn that conclusion she may have then decided that nothing I could write would be of interest to her (let’s ignore the uninteresting fact that she also found my posts boring).
This relates to something I’ve been pondering for years. Do one’s words necessarily reveal one’s politics? I’ve long thought that it is possible, though perhaps uncommon, to comment on the politics of a situation or to form a judgment about government policy independent of influence of one’s personal political preferences. Am I naive or misguided to think this? I find this line of thought far from boring, even if some of my prior readers might have. What do you think?
