Windbag
Offering your opinion comes with hazards, even if an increasingly reactionary government hasn’t yet backed its equation of dissent and treason with police action. Even if your audience has solicited your opinion. Even if your opinion is informed and intelligent. Especially if your opinion is informed and intelligent.
Thursday evenings, I go to the local library to attend a small writers’ group meeting. Typically, I’ll pop into a room provided for un-library-like activities, like talking, eating, getting a cup of coffee from the occasional snack bar, and using cell phones. (Since I walk down in the mid afternoon, I need to eat something before the meeting starts.) Usually, a few other people will be there, too: teens “studying” while they gossip, or a couple guys playing chess, or any of a few regulars. Three weeks ago, I made the mistake of interjecting into a political discussion-slash-debate that had veered way off course, both from its original subject and from some basic facts. When someone is just patently wrong, the nerd in me can’t leave well enough alone: I have to do my part to dispel ignorance, as I expect others to correct my factual errors. I had some time, so I tried to straighten the matter out, including relevant observations from various subjects.
The local library yahoos are not of the same intellectual caliber as my fellow political observers on the Well. I’m a smart guy, but on the Well, most of the participants are much smarter (or at least better-informed) than I, a healthy contrast to my usual environment. Although I have my moments, in general I absorb far more than I contribute. In the library, the situation is reversed. I think I was the only one to know that Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, for example, or that she has already announced, repeatedly and publicly, that impeachment of Bush is no longer under consideration (if it ever was).
Suddenly, I’m the local expert on all things political, legal, historical, and especially scientific. Obviously, I don’t know everything, or even all the relevant details, on such broad subjects, but I’m the best the local yahoos have on hand, and now they want my opinion on everything, whether or not I know much about the topic, and whether or not I have the time to participate. I don’t want to be rude, but I find myself needing to be firm in a refusal to get involved in every bull session that drifts through the back room.
Spreading knowledge is good, especially to a willing audience. That’s why I go to the Well: to receive the wisdom others spread. I’m not sure that’s really what I do in the context of the local yahoos, though. Being taken uncritically on subjects of which I have only a passing knowledge just substitutes myself for some other windbag.
Which is entirely different from what I do here. I can trust you to sample other sources.
...Right?