I Want to Be Friends With Republicans

The New York Times ^ | November 2, 2013 | David James Poissant

[2ndDivisionVet]

The trouble started the night Jeff, one of the guys I drink and talk about God with, announced that he’d been summoned to court for the Zimmerman trial jury pool. We’d kept politics out of our Wednesday night meetings, which are held on my back porch, the six of us seated at an old dining room table propped next to my broken hot tub (Florida short-sale homes come standard with broken hot tubs). Instead of Bible Study, we call it our Tavern Ministry, and while we were often drunk halfway through, a churchlike decorum had always held sway. Once the case came up, though, decorum collapsed.

I wanted George Zimmerman behind bars. With Sanford, the town where he killed Trayvon Martin, just a short drive from my home, I wanted to know that I’d never run into him with my daughters at the grocery store or on a late-night walk around my neighborhood.

But Jeff wasn’t so sure that Zimmerman was guilty. Another friend agreed. It was complicated, he said. He didn’t get why so many lefties thought the shooting had something to do with race.

“Let’s not go there,” I said. My wife, Marla, had warned me that some of the guys were conservative. But I liked who they were on Wednesdays, and I didn’t want politics to change that. Still, Jeff kept on, others chimed in and finally I said, “O.K., let’s go there.”

We’d been meeting for a few weeks. We’d come together the way men in suburbia often come together, which is to say that our wives are friends....

[OldNewYork]

I wish I had a better answer than what has been my modus operandi: grin and bear it. You don’t get to choose your family. But you can choose your battles. There are times when there’s an opening to, gently, ask the relevant question, or explicitly, but calmly, stand up for yourself and what’s right. But you have to work with the knowledge that they think they’re the holder of the keys to the kingdom and that they are the bigger person in tolerating you.

[Macoozie]

I’m polite to everyone, unless and until they are impolite to me. I DON’T turn the other cheek.
When having a conversation and a Liberal says something that is incorrect, I correct them. I don’t let the lie continue.
I don’t avoid them. I live my life and speak my mind.

To steal and ruin a great line; it’s not what they don’t believe to be so that’s truly annoying, it’s that everything they believe to be true isn’t.

[GreyHoundSailor]

Completely concur with you. At this stage in my life, I’m now basically just looking for opportunities to give liberals seizures. I joined our local conservation commission and already one far left loon who was a member for nearly 20 years quit because he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me. So far, retirement is proving to be successful.

[Bullish]

I actually do have liberal democrats as friends but there's no debating with them. You can never even get a real discussion of issues off the ground because liberals have a different set of made up ‘facts’. You just end up arguing about what is and isn't true. Therefore you a huge impasse when the liberal will not even stipulate that the statistics you have are true numbers.

It's frustrating as all hell to try and argue with a pig headed, brainwashed ignoramus. I've concluded that it's a complete waste of time and breath.

[Hostage]

We know who Dr. Thomas Sowell is because we are consumers of those who write scholarly insightful articles on issues of our time. We value truth-telling and appreciate those who articulate perspectives that resonate truth to us.

Those that haven’t heard of Dr. Sowell are those who ‘choose’ not to seek the truth. Almost everyone today has access to the internet. Very few people have an excuse for not having found such people as Dr. Sowell if they are genuinely interested in political news and views.

Rush Limbaugh recently provided an important insight about conservative media. Conservatives lead all literary and broadcast media conduits in sales and viewers. Where conservatives lag is with the ‘popular culture’, the film and entertainment form of media.

For example in the 1970s Norman Lear’s and Bud Yorkin’s ‘All in the family’ was tremendously entertaining for it reflected the blue collar culture back into America’s living rooms but with the conservative as a bigot and the liberal as a reasonable, enlightened and hopeful prospect for the future. It was more effective at forming opinions and political perspectives than most any other form of ‘news’ broadcasting.

For conservatives to appeal to the blue collar voter they must be entertaining and have the ability to laugh at themselves.

For example, Jackie Mason has the ability laugh at his Jewishness and it is hilarious. It makes us love Jewish people because we can smile at their foibles that are as real as those of non-Jews. Do we have a conservative that can laugh at conservatives and make a large swath of democrats and republicans warm to conservatives?

Imagine a 201X sitcom like ‘All in the Family’ but with the roles reversed where the liberal is a bigot fascist and the ‘Meathead’ is a conservative that merely wants a simple and clear understanding of the American way, where men are rugged and women are feminine, where homosexual marriage is portrayed to be what it is in reality; freakish. Meathead wasn’t funny, Archie Bunker was funny because of his stupidity and his ridiculous circular logic.

The liberals still own the popular culture. Conservatives own the intellectual culture. To attract the middle, conservatives need to be attractive via the popular culture.

[jmacusa]

Haven’t checked. I should though. My Dad,(a widower) has his retirement, Soc. Sec and Medicare but for some reason his retirement package didn’t include a prescription plan. My one younger brother works for the same firm my Dad did, a high end construction management firm in NYC. I haven’t spoken to him in awhile.It’s kind of a given that we’re (meaning me) aren’t supposed to discuss politics. They’re free of course to mouth off when they want to, usually my one younger sister starts up(she worships Obama) When I fire back that’s when the discussion ends because I’m a conservative, i.e a “Republican hater’’. My youngest brother lives and works in NYC and is very far Left as I once was. We haven’t really spoken to each other at all in the eight years since my mothers funeral. I love him but I don’t like him and he feels the same towards me. The last time we did speak was when Obama was first elected. I put him on notice that if the poop ever hits the fan, meaning a civil war and if he gets me in his sights he’d better not miss because I won’t. I’m serious. This is how much this son of you-know-what has effected one family in America. I think now I know how they must’ve felt in 1861.

[jmacusa]

My fathers politics are a mass of contradictions. He worships Franco like he were Jesus Christ. Communist, socialist, fascist, doesn’t matter. A dictatorship is a dictatorship. You either live on your knees with a gun to your head or on two feet with a pistol at your back.

[DesertRhino]

Agree with them on EVERYTHING. Say how the Obamacare website was actually so intelligently built that it was above everyone’s ability to “get it”.

Ask if the turkey being served was free range and humanly slaughtered. (it never will be)

When they mention gay marriage, say you agree and sincerely ask if anyone knows how they do it in the poop hole without getting poop on Mr. Johnson.

Pipe up as to how you cant understand why people are opposing his desire to fight in the side of Al Qeida in Syria. Say you support Al Qeida too.

When they take the bait, don’t give an inch. Be deeply hurt. Explain how the power of their arguments has persuaded you.

After dinner when they ask if you want more tea, ask if they have any cough medicine and skittles so you can make “purple drank”, like Trayvon. You hear it really gets you off.

You might as well have some fun.
PS,, never ever under any circumstances let them know you are faking. This will drive them mental.

[Mamzelle]

Obama sows misery and hate wherever he goes. And it just gets worse...

[jmacusa]

Mais oui, Madame. Quell tragique.

[krunkygirl]

thank you both for your suggestions:
one decidedly sane and serious, the other
deliciously cloying and manipulative. lol

i really have reservations about acting out the
“big Lib” persona ‘cause, by now, I’m pretty sure they
know that would be a big lie! i don’t press my
conservativism at family gatherings, but, when
politics comes up, I don’t pretend to be other than what I
truly am either. i don’t think they’ll fall for it, but it will be fun
to give it a try! (all except one sister-—a radical
liberal who taught alongside Ward Churchill @
Univ. of CO @ Boulder. she is scary liberal! you
have to worry about potential violence if you
cross her...)

ONY, not sure your approach would work
either. that’s why the conundrum. I visited with
another sister this past June. we took a long walk together,
alone, and the conversation turned to politics.
(you should know that both she, and her husband,
are public school teachers in full support of
Common Core, blah, blah, blah.) the discussion
didn’t get too testy or ugly-—we each let the other
say her piece, but it ended with palpable tension. hmmm.

I did find a reasonable excuse (no $$-—true!) not to attend
a gathering in California this past weekend-—yet another sister’s wedding
-—to her long-term “partner”.

as you can see, the issues are many in my family!

kg/nancy

[TADSLOS]

YOU LIE, Poissant.

NEXT.

[driftless2]

That would be great, but I wouldn't hold your breath. The liberal conquest of mainstream entertainment is almost totally complete. Since lib billionaires run the networks, they certainly won't hire conservative writers or promote shows that depict a positive view of conservatives or a negative one of liberals.

Take this hit tv show on Showtime "Homeland." It's won a lot of Emmys. But it's a liberal piece of crap. My wife and I started watching it, and I started noticing all the typical lib influences. Large amounts of foul language including the f word liberally used by both sexes in mixed company. A negative view of the War on Terrorism. The heroine is a hysterical, semi-lunatic who loves bebop jazz. The head of her CIA department is black. (spoiler alert) Two marines who were captured by Al Qaeda are turned into sleepers. Now I can barely stand to watch it even though my wife still likes it.

Libs are genetically incapable of depicting a fair view of of conservatives. Conservatives must always be bigoted, hateful, subhumans who barely have the right to exist with the superior people, liberals.

[Hostage]

The MSM (New York - DC Media Complex) is losing readers and viewers year over year. They are in decline.

Here’s an info nugget for you to ponder. In 2008-2009 during the financial collapse a lot of newspapers and media outlets came to Washington with their hands out pleading that they should receive a bailout because of their importance to the social infrastructure. There were also many calls for the return of the Fairness doctrine. Not one conservative media outlet asked for a bailout or subsidy. One award winning CNN reporter exposed a story that CNN was paid to spike stories and to broadcast paid-for lies.

My sister is a reporter for the Wall St. Journal and has often published on the front page. She asked me a couple of months back for ideas on how the WSJ could reach more readers and internet viewers. Her husband is a reporter for the Boston Globe. Both are aghast that the Washington Post and the NY Times were sold for a fraction of their market value just 10 years earlier. They are sensing the decline.

The field of mainstream journalism is unstable and the liberal voices grow more shrill and less credible. People are waking up including the low info voter types because of the lies of Obamacare.

History repeats. All it takes is for one or two major lies to get exposed and the whole media complex comes off the tracks. It happened in the Soviet Union and it is happening here.

Sure the Media Complex seems to wield considerable power and they do. But they are declining. Once they lose viewers and readers to other persuasions, they are lost forever unless the liberal media outlet changes its delivery and perspective. But once a viewer or reader discovers a conservative outlet they stick to it.

There is competition and the long trend favors conservatives. Conservatives are winning.

[driftless2]

"low info voters"

But that's the problem...the nos. of low info voters grows every year. A lot more people easily led by lib demagogues. And although a decreasing subscriber list for lib papers might be seen as a positive sigh, that just might mean older libs are dying out, and younger libs just don't read any news. But when a lib demagogue gets on tv and promises them the world, they listen attentively. I have a very pessimistic view of the future.

[trebb]

I have no liberals, democrats or other disturbed individuals as friends. I like it like that...

Agreed - I have to respect someone to like or befriend them so they are acquaintances.

Many have further distanced from me (many thought that they saw someone they wanted to be around because of how I act and take care of business - then they discovered that much of what I do is because of my Christian/Conservative viewpoints) so we don't have to resort to forced politeness. More than a few tried to argue politics/religion with me to "change me", but soon discovered that 9much because of FR) I was actually aware of many facts that their one or two party-liners couldn't crack and I gave them enough facts to make a dent in their belief systems - nothing pisses them off more than to have a little truth creep in...

[EveningStar]

bump