I have been stunned by the reaction to the election by my lefty friends and acquaintances. The day after the election, I was getting all these emails about how the people who voted for Bush are "idiots", etc. So I hit "Reply All" and wrote: "Hey, give us folks who voted for Bush credit for remaining riends with people who call us 'idiots'. I remeber how miserable I was when Clinton beat Bush (Sr) in '92, and I'm sorry you all feel that way today." I sent a kind, sincere email in response to the obnoxious ones I got. Well, you can't believe the hateful emails I got in return to my nice one. Friends-of-friends complained that I had hit "reply all"; strangers sent emails cursing me; I got an email that was a rant against God, even though I hadn't even mentioned God or religion in my email. There absolutely is a cultural divide in this country and the other side is obsessively hateful towards us. I only can hope that means the other side thinks they're going to keep on losing.
I am very sorry that you lost your friend.
You know, I think both sides play some part in the way our nation is divided - but I believe the left is significantly more to blame than the right.
Why? They call our President and anyone who supports them all sorts of terrible names and hate us with such vitriol as I have never seen in my 31 years. Additionally they believe the propaganda spewed by the far left leadership. Just consider this post from DU courtesy of PJ-Comix's DUmmie FUnnies:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1287096/posts
Now I detest Michael Moore for his arrogant and completely distorted view of America and our President but I don't wish him any harm like apparently some on the left wish upon us.
Again, I am sorry for your loss.
I live in Massachusetts and Thanksgiving is my least favorite holiday of the year.
At least my children have a brain.
Congratulations! It's always better to free your life from idiots.
=^P
It seems as if it is usually the leftist in these politically-mixed friendships who are the ones who can not resist injecting the political differences. I think Conservatives are generally just more polite (although not always, to be fair) and more inclined to take people as a whole package rather than just dwell on the political dimension. I had several friends of many years standing who I no longer communicate with because of their reaction to 9-11. No dramatic arguments, just a fading away of the relationship. Sad, but we can live with this when we know we are right.
Is there any way you all can avoid talking about politics?
She will be back when she is old.
Worse yet is to be related to them. I've already divorced one Lib, but have yet to fathom how to go about divorcing a string of cousins and aunts.
And a great big Unnngh!, Happy Thanksgiving to you!
After the War started, and before the election, I ceased contact with three persons and one relative.
I've made it to age 63. 30+ of those years were as a Road Cop.
Life is too short to put up with the BS the Libs propgate.
After the 2000 election she called me to tell that she could no longer be a friend of a person who she knew supported Bush. She could not be a friend to a person who had no morals and would support a man who had stolen the election. There is much I could have said to her at this point, but I didn't. I just said, "I am sorry that you feel that way and I am sorry that for all these years I really didn't know you." I gently laid the reciever down. I have never heard from her again.
Well, in a way she did. She is brain dead now is she not? ;)
Seriously though there are two options (IMHO):
If you both value each others friendship make visits with each other non political events. As the old adage goes, agree to disagree (I have taken this approach with several old friends).
Second, reevaluate your priorities and decide if hers no longer match with yours. If that is the case, cherish the fond memories.
It could have been worse.
Far worse.
Kerry could have won.
I'll trade phony friends for a Kerry loss any day.
Ah, but the trick is to remain in some way or other part of the ties that bind: our humanness. Read Solzhenitsyn, who tries to find the common bond with the jailor who stares at him, or St. Paul, who claims that we no longer look at people "according to the flesh." Of course this is far from friendship, but it may be the cause of friendship.
Sorry for the loss.
my dad became a Michael Moore-on. Believes it all. Before the election I told him it was clear Bush would win decisively, that he was closing in on 300 electoral votes and that Daschle would near certainly lose because the left had become so hateful and vitriolic. He thought such speculation was so proposterous he could only presume that I had become indoctrinated by some weird cult or something. After the election he sent me a picture of a campus in Florida that Michael Moore was at on election day noting "looks like Jeb stole the election again for Dubya" and I wrote back not to worry, that Michael Moore had been at that school and, at the time, he was interviewed there on MSNBC and, given the errant exit polls led him to believe there was nothing to worry about, he proclaimed that everything there was fine and everybody got to vote, etc. but that I'd warned about the left going so overboard as to have endangered Daschle. I noted that was ok, though, because, given all the hatred they'd espoused, the Republicans did pretty good again, picking up more house seats and another handful of senate seats ... (which must have been particularly painful because he'd previously told me the DemoncRAT Senatorial Committee was his favorite "charity")
It's not being a friend when you're the only one who makes an effort to maintain the friendship, that's being a lackey. Hopefully your friend will someday realize that what you had in common was more important than what you didn't.
I have not seen them all together since quite some time before Election day, so I don't know what to expect. From the little time that I have been able to spend with a few of them, I know they are bitter, and can hardly help making some kind of derogatory remarks about the President. It will be tough for me to shutup, as it usually is. I have found that humour goes a long way, however.