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Has anyone ever accused you of being judgmental? Did you ever wonder how they arrived at that conclusion without judging you? Tonight, I shall rant about a senseless admonition that no one actually follows. Usually when you get chided for being judgmental, you haven't done anything wrong, apart from stepping on someone's toes.

Typically, when people tell you not to be judgmental, what they mean is be aware that you may not have all the evidence to arrive at an informed opinion on a person's behavior. The most famous example of this is Chekov's story, The Mourner about a woman who fails to control an unruly child on a train trip. Her fellow passengers make the determination that she is a not proper mother until they find out the purpose of her trip is to accompany her husband's casket back home. I am fine with that kind of advice. Get the data you need to make informed decisions.

Making judgments is a survival skill. When we tell our kids not to hang out with hoodlums, we're instructing them to make judgments on other people's character, as we should. One of the most important jobs we have as parents is installing values in our offspring. They will inevitably reach their own conclusions on those values, but at least we get them pointed in the right direction. I'm pleased to say that my son and daughter are firmly anti-racist, and always have been. Both of them have traits I admire and seek to emulate as well. They are good parents. They've made good financial decisions. Not only that, but they work hard.

There are a great many things I will not judge people on:

  • The number of tattoos or piercings they have
  • The kind of car they drive (unless it is a new, off the lot Tesla)
  • The clothes they wear
  • The color of their skin
  • The use of profane language
  • Their sexual preference
  • Their gender identity
  • Their nationality
  • Their job

Things I will judge people on:

  • What kind of computer operating system they prefer
  • The items in their grocery cart
  • Whether they know what to do when they forget their password
  • Whether they will use a search engine to find out the answer to a question
  • Politics
  • Religion (if they belong to one that uses one of the categories above to judge people)
  • If they start whispering when they describe another person's race
  • How much they tip

The good news is that quite often, the result of me being judgmental is that I find that I admire something about a person. My judgments are usually more positive than negative. It's only in the case of modern MAGA behavior that I will unleash the thunderbolt of eternal damnation on your ass. Anyone who starts making excuses for the Fascists gets assigned to the bad list for all eternity. I'm old. I don't have the time or energy to put questionable people on a rehab program. If you back the fash, you're dead to me. Next, please.

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