Lost an Old Friend Today. Politics and the Personal

11.24.04 | mlmr

[mlmr]

I lost an old friend today. No, she didn't die. She screamed at me for my many-year metmorphisis from rad-liberal to conservative. She doesn't understand why I have changed, and is unable to listen because she is filled with bile, anger and hate. She wishes Bush evil and hates US policy. She has turned into a Michal Moore robot.

We have not been close friends for many years but I did enjoy keeping in touch. Because of our thirty year history I have treated the friendship gingerly but with great fondness.

Politics is hell.

[Xenalyte]

Getting out of academia and into the real world was what did it - that, and working for an investment management firm that taught me TONS about economics and politics and the dynamic between the two.

[MWS]

I had a similar experience a couple weeks ago. I've had a friend for about 3 years. We got along great. We've talked politics many times at the bar - we'd both get passionate about our ideas at times but we always had respect.

Last time I told him I wanted to avoid politics. We did for a while, but it crept in. He was trying to convince me that I'm a crypto-Democrat...it really cracked me up. Anyway, gay marriage came up. He was trying to claim that President Bush won reelection because of the gay marriage measures on the ballots. I pointed out to him that those measures arose due to the Massachussetts court decision legalizing gay marriage. He asked me what was wrong with that, after which I told him that it was a court decision, not a democratic one. He basically started arguing that it should be legal because it's just right, to which I simply responded that I disagreed.

That just blew his mind - that I didn't accept gay marriage. I told him I had nothing against homosexuals per se, but that I simply did not believe that two homosexuals could marry. He didn't get mad. He just had this surprised look, turned to me and said, "Matt, I like you a lot, and you're a great guy, but I just can't associate with someone who sees things like that." He then paid his tab, said bye, and walked away. He was calm the entire time. Neither of us got worked up about it.

It surprised me. We had talked about much more charged stuff like that. It hurt a bit, I admit. I suppose, though, that if he feels so strongly about the subject, I just won't bother him anymore.

[mlmr]

It surprised me. We had talked about much more charged stuff like that. It hurt a bit, I admit. I suppose, though, that if he feels so strongly about the subject, I just won't bother him anymore.



Read "Vision of the Annointed by Sowell. Learn how leftists tick....there is a reason he walked away. You were too evil for him to associate with in public.

[F16Fighter]

I have ONE insane liberal friend.

I give him slack because we grew up together, and he doesn't get strident or nasty about it.

I have a brother-in-law who overheard me discussing Kerry with his cousin at his and my wife's 50th Anniversary and family reunion.

The loony buttinski grew so incensed, he physically threatened me with his parents directly across from him.

Rather than cause an obvious scene, I got up, danced with the wife, then left. That was this past September.

P.S. -- Needless to say, the moron has been non persona grata in my presense and will be until further notice.

[ThyWillBeDone]

Hey, mlmr,

Just wanted to tell you that I commiserate with you, as many others here obviously do too.

I had a very dear, very bright, old friend from way back in our elementary school and high school years, who I had lost touch with for over 30 years (we are both "baby boomers"), but we fortuitously got in touch with each other again (through email) after all those years, and have corresponded through email for a number of years now, and rekindled our long-dormant friendship. She is an American who now lives in a country which was formerly part of the Soviet Union (in the Baltic region), and she is an avid anti-war pacifist, with vastly different views from my own now on religion and politics and other issues, but until this election season, we've somehow managed to overlook our differences, and stay in touch and maintain our long-distance friendship.

Before this election, we did have some political and religious discussions, sometimes a little too overheated and admittedly a bit too harsh on both our parts, and after Kerry's defeat, she emailed me a copy of an article by a Canadian writer who, among other things, credited the re-election of President Bush to the many "paranoid crazies" who voted for Bush (implying that I was one of those "paranoid crazies"). When I tried to respond to that insulting email she sent me, I found that my emails were automatically rejected and deleted by her newly modified email setup, and a nasty message was returned to me which informed me of the "block" she had put on my email address so that I could no longer email her, and the automatic blocking message she returned contained a little insulting dig at me as well.

We've not had any additional contact since that time.

She is obviously now sort of an anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-European, pro-Muslim, pro-socialist, and pro-Michael Moore "ex-hippie", still sort of stuck in the 60's (like the comedian "Gallagher"), trying to reprise the antiwar efforts that arose during the war in Vietnam, when we were both very young. She even sympathizes with the terrorists who hate America, and who have killed many innocent human beings for that reason, and feels they have some good, valid reasons to have done so. Needless to say, I've argued with her very strongly about these issues.

In the past, she has always tried to portray an external persona of herself as a "loving", "peaceful", "tolerant", "kind", "open-minded" person. However, it now appears to me that she has finally revealed herself (after all these years) to really be quite a phony, bigoted, intolerant person towards others who happen to disagree with her point of view, and that she is really kind of cold, callous, and heartless about the cruel torture and mass murders committed by such people as the barbaric tyrant, Saddam Hussein, just as many other liberals have revealed about themselves recently. She does not appear any more to me to be a loving, peaceful, tolerant, kind, compassionate, decent, respectful, "diversity-admiring" person. Sadly, she now appears to be just the exact opposite of all those things.

I, like you, am very disillusioned, sad, shocked, dismayed, and quite disheartened at this turn of events, and by what I consider a betrayal of the trust of an old friendship, and even the actual loss of that friendship forever, which I had always thought transcended our differing viewpoints and perspectives. For some reason, this election apparently forced the "real" person inside many of these liberals to surface, and the vitriolic hatred and intolerance they felt inside to come blasting forth at their "enemies", who simply sought to preserve the safety and freedom of America by supporting a candidate who has already proved he is willing to really do something real to combat terrorism, and to fight evil tyrants who deliberately murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings.

I understand how you feel, and I feel for you too. It is a wrenching experience to have a "friend" brutally attack you (in a spiritual sense) in such a way. However, as someone else suggested in this thread earlier, it appears you are not really "friendless" -- you have many friends right here, who fully respect you and your values, and who (I'm sure) would never turn on you and viciously abandon your long-time friendship like that person you spoke of apparently has.

You have my heartfelt "condolences" and my best wishes for your future, that you will find truly faithful new friends who will never turn on you or abandon you, just because of your divergent beliefs.

[an amused spectator]

It's sad that some people are so ignorant and narrow minded that they will let their militancy come between themselves and their family or friends.

LOL! Your knife cuts both ways.

I've been careful, as a militant conservative, not to estrange my liberal friends. I have an advantage, as I am the Big Dog intellectual in the leftist intellectual circles I occasionally visit.

[Snoopers-868th]

As years progress good friends fall by the way-side for many reasons. Some people "grow" with age and others do not or in a different direction. Fact of life.

[Recovering_Democrat]

My wife and our good friends came of age in the 1960's and never followed the lunatic lib Baby Boomer trail of whining losers. The whining losers we have weeded out of our lives got on that Baby Boomer Trail of Whining Losers and have never left it.

Sadly, I think too many are still there. My loved ones KNOW the right way, but their habit is set...

[mupcat]

"..... Our liberal neighbor with the yard full of democrat signs confided to my husband yesterday that he'd voted for Bush......"

You know, I have always felt there were many, many on the other side that did the exact same thing. Sort of like the old saying about no atheists in foxholes.

[Not A Snowbird]

Why the signs then?

He's been a democrat his entire life and has always voted for the democrat. When it came time to make a choice, all alone in that booth, he just couldn't do it.

[mlmr]

As years progress good friends fall by the way-side for many reasons. Some people "grow" with age and others do not or in a different direction. Fact of life.

True.

[mlmr]

Except for the country of current domicile, your friend could be my friend. I have watched her for many years stay in the same fifteen year old anger at the Viet Nam war. She hasnt changed and iota.

[Xenalyte]

I have experienced their hate at meals when they thought that everyone there was a leftist-bot. They are intolerant and scary.

That happened at my seasonal job. All lefties but me, all either young or foolish. Easy pickins.

[Xenalyte]

If your "teeth-bared, nostrils-flaring liberal" sister is one of the smartest people you know, I'm thinking you need to widen your acquaintance.

[mupcat]

"My radical, militant, commie-atheist mother-in-law is coming for Thanksgiving dinner"

Ooooo would love to be a fly on the wall for that gathering! Keep us posted if anything interesting happens.

[Auntie Mame]

I know what you mean. There's a health board I visit where they're all flaming libs and they really got carried away after the election. No one was countering their outrageously bigoted and hateful posts so I stepped up to the plate. Interestingly, it brought some other right thinking posters out of the woodwork.

There's no way I could counter all their posts, there were 50 of them and only one of me. And besides, they were out of their minds with hatefulness. One person even advocated killing the President and no one (except me) denounced that lovely post for over four hours, it just sat there. Yes, I emailed the site owner and asked it to be removed, and it was.

However, it's pretty interesting to stir up the hornets and watch them buzz...... for a little while at least.

[budwiesest]

Many Freepers will be connecting with friends and relatives on the other side

My advice: be the one holding the carving knife.

The left is wounded and, like any self-respecting game animal, dangerous. Delve into politics at your own risk. Better to talk about football or high gas prices.

At some point you might try to insert the fact that once Iraq is liberated, free non-camelhumpingtheocrats will be in control of the world's 4th largest oil reserve.

"Gentlemen, start your engines." Then, take them outside to view your new 3/4 ton diesel crewcab. Heck, take them for a ride.

[Xenalyte]

If your niece needs any advice about Houston, drop me a line . . . we HATters are a friendly helpful bunch!

[lonestar]

It's been my experience that conservatives are more tolerant than libs when it comes to maintaining relationships.

Years ago I had two friends who couldn't have been more opposite; he a Goldwater Repub and she a McGovern Dem. They loved to discuss politics with each other--argue! Neither got angry and they respected each other's opinion. He said he loved to discuss politics with her because she was the only liberal he had ever met who could actually explain her position.

He was one of the most conservative people I've ever known, wasn't interested in talking too long about anything except politics. He ran for Congress once; died of AIDS.

He was my buddy.

[The Flying Dutchman]

It was Old Sarge.