People who like to argue

My brother likes to argue. I think that he could argue about everything. If we do anything with my brother, at some point his voice will get very loud.

Sometimes he is "preaching to the choir." He hears something that he doesn't like, and he immediately wants to argue about why it is a bad idea. He hasn't even stopped to find out if anyone disagrees with him, he just starts yelling. Last year or the year before he was asking about movies I had seen, and I thought that I would tell him I heard that JJ Abrams was making a Star Trek movie with the characters of the original Star Trek, but using younger actors. He got upset and started yelling about what a bad idea it was. I was the only other person in the room. No one was arguing with him. I wasn't even offering an opinion about anything, I just thought that he'd like to hear what the latest rumor was, and he just started yelling about how wrong it all was.

Other times he will say something, and we tell him that we think he's wrong and why we think he's wrong. And then he wants to argue about what ever it is and convince us all that he's right. And we're like, we don't care. And he has to yell about a few more points. We still don't care. More yelling. Buddy, you don't get it. We really don't care. The subject matter isn't that important to us, and we don't want to talk about it anymore. Even if you end up winning the argument, who cares? Trying to win us over isn't going to do anything for you. Even if we agreed with you on the subject, we are not in a position to do anything about it. So let's talk about something else.

I think that my brother just likes to argue. I think partly this is because he misses Dad. Dad and my brother used to argue about everything, and now my brother doesn't have anyone to argue with. So now he tries to make an argument out of everything.

I get less and less interested in arguing about stuff as I get older. There's the stuff that I don't care about enough to argue about. This year that includes most political stuff. In fact, most years now that includes most political stuff. I just don't know of any candidates that share enough of my views to even bother to vote, so I'm certainly not going to get into an arguments about who is better. My answer to everything on that subject is going to be d--none of the above.

The only arguments that I bother with anymore are things that are only moderately interesting to me. I'll argue which Star Trek movie is better or what I would have done differently on last week's Stargate, but that's about it. And even that isn't fun if you're talking to someone who will make a big deal out of that.

The real important stuff I don't want to argue about either. The serious life and death stuff like religion is all stuff that I decided a long time ago, and I don't need to talk about it anymore. I know what I know, and no one is going to change my mind, and if you seriously try to change my mind it would probably just be an upsetting conversation that would serve no purpose. And while I'm supposed to try to get everyone to see my point of view on that stuff, I rarely bother with it anymore. If it isn't going to end up saving someone's soul or something, I just don't want to get into it.