The Inner Monologue

Let’s be honest—your political opinions are about as deep as a puddle after five minutes of drizzle. You’ve curated them carefully, selecting only the choicest bits of confirmation bias, and you’ve arranged them neatly in your mind like a trophy case of unexamined convictions. How brave. How original.

But here’s a radical idea: What if you’re wrong? And not just a little wrong—spectacularly, humiliatingly wrong. The kind of wrong that makes you question why you ever thought reading a single op-ed or watching one YouTube rant qualified you to have a stance at all.

For the Left: Let’s Pretend Welfare Will Bankrupt America (Because Math Is Hard)

Oh, you sweet summer child, you think society should help people? How quaint. Let’s put on our cold, capitalist monocles for a second and consider that maybe—just maybe—endless redistribution has a teensy-weensy sustainability problem.

• The National Debt Is Just a Myth, Right? We’re already $34 trillion in the hole, but sure, let’s add another few trillion in entitlements. What’s the worst that could happen? (Hyperinflation? Collapse? Nah, that’s just conservative fearmongering.)
• Work? Who Needs It? If you pay people not to work, shockingly, some won’t. And when productivity tanks, who exactly is left to fund this beautiful utopia? (Spoiler: The rich will just leave. They have options.)
• Fraud Is a Right-Wing Fairy Tale Except when it’s not. Billions leak from welfare systems annually, but pointing that out makes you a heartless monster. Better to just ignore it and hope the magic money tree never dies.

See? That wasn’t so hard. Now, do you still think your position is obviously correct, or do you just like feeling morally superior without doing the math?

For the Right: Let’s Pretend Feeding Starving Children Is Good, Actually

Ah, the rugged individualist. You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps (ignoring the fact that phrase originally meant an impossible task), so why can’t everyone else? Well, let’s try something wild: empathy.

• Starving People Don’t Make Good Citizens Shockingly, a malnourished, desperate underclass tends to increase crime, lower productivity, and destabilize society. But sure, let’s cut food stamps—what’s the worst that could happen? (Riots? Oh right, those are “law and order” issues, not policy failures.)
• It’s Cheaper to Feed People Than to Jail Them A meal today is cheaper than a prison cell tomorrow. But fiscal responsibility only matters when it’s about denying help, not preventing bigger costs down the line.
• Jesus Would Definitely Hate This Unless you’ve found the secret Gospel of Supply-Side Economics, Christ’s whole thing was feeding the poor. But hey, supply-side Jesus is a convenient rewrite.

Funny how the “Christian” right can quote the Bible on abortion but suddenly develop amnesia when it comes to actual charity.

The Horror of Changing Your Mind

The real tragedy here isn’t that you might be wrong—it’s that you might realize it. Nothing is more terrifying than the moment you actually listen to the other side and think, Huh, that’s a decent point.

• The Most Religious Should Be Able to Argue for Atheism (Because if your faith can’t survive a little scrutiny, how strong is it really?)
• The Wokest Progressive Should Be Able to Defend Free Speech (Because if your ideology can’t handle dissent, it’s a cult, not a movement.)
• The Libertarian Should Be Able to Justify Taxes (Because roads, police, and not living in a Mad Max hellscape are kinda nice.)

The truth is, most people don’t have opinions—they inherit them. They absorb them from their tribe, repeat them like catechism, and never bother to ask: What if the other side has a point?

So here’s your challenge: Pick the opinion you hold most fiercely and argue—honestly—for the opposite. If you can’t, you don’t understand it well enough to defend yours. And if you can… well, you might just realize you were wrong all along.

And wouldn’t that be embarrassing?