A revelation .... of sorts

While sitting in the opening session at the Second Indiana LEED Symposium last Friday, I had a little revelation. The opening speaker was a dynamic self-described "lefty from San Francisco, which means "I'll believe anything"" who was relating how CB Richard Ellis has gone green as a corporate strategy.
Mid-way through his talk he sidetracked into a rant on how evil the right wing of our political structure was and how backward and uninformed they were. While not entirely unexpected, it was certainly unnecessary and somewhat discordant in an otherwise positive talk.
At that point I realized that both sides of our political discourse have fallen into the habit of demonizing the opposition rather than allowing them the courtesy of ideas firmly held in antithesis.
As I sat there, I kept thinking, "Dude, I'm already sitting here, I may not vote for your guy but you don't need to further antagonize me by offending me."

It would seem to me that if you want to win converts to your cause you have to convince them of the rightness of your argument.

You aren't going to do that by belittling them.