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I, too, lost a close friend due to politics. He was a teaching colleague. We ate lunch together every single day in school for 10 years. Sometimes we met for dinner if his wife had a night meeting with her organization. Once in a while, we went for a nature walk after school, to wind down. He helped me look over my home when I was considering buying it. He went to bat for me when administrators sought to attack me. We had a lovely 15 year friendship.

Then Odungo ran for office, and my friend, a liberal Dem, sent out emails to all his contacts urging them to vote for Odungo. I kept deleting the offensive emails, and finally sent him an email asking to be taken off his mailing list, because I found Odungo to be abominable and why. My friend wrote me back a scathing angry email and then blocked my email. Wow. He threw away a beautiful 15 year friendship for a piece of rotting trash like Odungo.

We remained estranged during Odungo's reign of terror I and most of II. I mourned the loss of my friend, especially for such a lousy reason. Then I received a phone call.

I finally got to see my friend again---as they were lowering him into the ground in a nearby cemetery. My tears were partially for the lost time we could have had as friends, had it not been for my friend's knee-jerk liberalism and automotonic loyalty to the teacher's union choice of candidate. It seemed a poor exchange.

Many people, on both sides, believe they have to be right and anyone who disagrees with them is attacking them personally. I have many close friends who disagree with me politically but I make it my goal to express myself without making it appear I am attacking them. I believe in the subtle dig.
I support their right to be wrong. However, I know which ones to jettison.

Oh, my heart cries for you. What does it mean to him that you don't trust his hero.? Alienating but enough to end a friendship? Your story, repeated everywhere, it makes me feel I cannot be myself with people. Must one never utter a political opinion, self-censor to keep peace? We were a tolerant people until the Communists infiltrated post WWI. Hillary, Bill, Obama, Jarrett, the recent government was commie, anti-Capitalism/freedom. I guess we're struggling against a communist coup while the left thinks if the commies lose, the planet will be destroyed and children will get sick and die and everyone will be forced to worship a State religion, I guess that they don't know that the leaders they worship hate all the people they control. They didn't study history of the 20th C. Oh,well.