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Generally, when someone wants to seem like the adult in the room--or advocate for productive debate--the most common suggestion is to sit down on friendly terms with a person who holds opinions that you may find loathsome, and make a good-faith effort to encourage understanding. On some levels this is truth-in-the-middle-ism, but things like "deep canvassing" are beginning to bear some fruit with regards to personal diplomatic effort being the way forward in making (a portion of) assholes not be assholes. But then comes a tumblr post that makes the opposite argument.  I've seen this making the rounds, and find it hard to disagree. With the state of the US political parties today, and the legislation they want to enact, voting Republican for any reason come election day is ultimately voting for Actual Fascism. So what do you do? Maintain existing friendships? Disengage with what is increasingly seeming like a lost cause? Take a bit of both, and only engage with the friends you disagree with so long as you're trying to bring them around? I'm genuinely at an impasse, as someone who has active friendships with people who are, if not full-on Trumpenistas, describe themselves as "moderate Republicans" in an era where if the Republican candidate wins, I am likely at risk for getting publicly stoned for sexual deviance. Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 04:08
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It's not a cut-and-dry question. People have a range of views on different topics. In some cases you can agree to disagree, in others you need to cut that person from your life. It's easy to say, "I'm gonna cut anyone who is a Republican from my life" on the internet. It's another thing when you're maneuvering through society. I'm in Texas, so I'm friendly with a number of people (mostly at my workplace) with conservative leanings. They range from Trump supporters to libertarians to dudes who are fairly liberal but like their guns a lot. Depending on their politics and temperament, I'll either have the occasional political chat or just avoid the subject. Having said that, there have been a few cases where I've consciously decided to not get friendlier with certain people because of their political leanings or opinions. It's a case by case basis.
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Sep 13, 2016 04:56
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Mister Olympus posted:Generally, when someone wants to seem like the adult in the room--or advocate for productive debate--the most common suggestion is to sit down on friendly terms with a person who holds opinions that you may find loathsome, and make a good-faith effort to encourage understanding. On some levels this is truth-in-the-middle-ism, but things like "deep canvassing" are beginning to bear some fruit with regards to personal diplomatic effort being the way forward in making (a portion of) assholes not be assholes. I have a libertarian friend who I am pretty close to. We discuss politics, but its almost always at the theoretical level. When it comes to some of the downright heinous poo poo, we agree on it. But often, its just better if we don't talk politics. I also used to date a woman who was pretty conservative. But when we dated, it was pretty understood that we wouldn't talk about politics. In the end, there is no right and wrong way. There will be no one who is going to 100 percent agree with you on everything and its up to you to figure out how much you want to put up with. I never try to bring my friends around. If I debate with someone, its usually just bullshitting because I know the end result, yet I still do it anyways.
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Sep 13, 2016 05:25
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See actually I hate the ideas in the OP (the text in the image). That's just the left wing version of Glenn Beck wanting to build an island society of just Randian followers of his and wall it off from the rest of the world. God forbid we learn to deal with one others' opinions and try to actually engage in dialog. By all means, if that guy can't handle it he should just plug his ears and disengage, but honestly I think it's somewhat cowardly. Opposing ideas need to be confronted, need to be hashed out. Just retreating into like-minded groups is what's wrong with this country. I have and have had many friends with opposing political viewpoints. Some of them I can engage in dialog, some I cannot. As an adult I can decide on my own who it's best to not discuss politics with and who can engage in a mature fashion, and I can do this without simply ignoring people with differing views. I get that horrible policies do real damage but simply refusing to ever confront that or ceasing to try to show a person an alternative view they may not have considered, if this were ever the way the majority of people behaved we would surely rip apart into Civil War because we'd have lost all ability to have any sort of conversation. Hell, I find myself arguing with liberals I know almost as much as with conservatives I know. There's plenty of left-wing nuttery to go around, not that it's "the same and equal to" the poo poo Trumpsters say but they're not innocent either.
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Sep 13, 2016 05:37
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When you say opposites, what do you mean? Anyone on the "other side of the aisle", to borrow American parlance, or people who are as passionately as you about any given political topic except in the other direction? Because in the latter case, I can easily see that turn into a major issue in terms of keeping up relations with someone, as you move away from the "moderate" position.
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Sep 13, 2016 05:45
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I have plenty of friends who don't have the same politics as me. It's easy, you just don't revolve your friendship around the politics of the other guy.
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Sep 13, 2016 05:47
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The whole point of that post is that a lot of social politics deals with which groups of people have which rights. The fact that certain groups see other certain groups as subhuman is hard to dismiss as a "political difference" or whatever
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Sep 13, 2016 06:21
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Anecdotally, I've never been long-term friends with a political conservative who didn't end up backstabbing me or screwing me over so I keep my dealings with them to a minimum. Our beef is usually not even related to politics. Additionally the way they treat my other friends who are black or women is very problematic. They're much more likely to have racist or sexist attitudes and make inappropriate comments about minorities and women which makes me dislike them on a personal level. When you spend a year of your life dating a black woman like I did, the racism from white males just jumps right out at ya and you can no longer filter it out or ignore it anymore. EDIT: When I say "political conservatives" what I mean is basically the people who are going to be voting for Trump in 2016. I can deal with conservative-leaning moderates and whether or not they vote for Trump is pretty much my litmus test. I also cannot be friends with people who spam Bernie-or-Bust poo poo into my newsfeed even after Bernie conceded and told people to vote for Hilldawg, because I think that's a pretty solid litmus test of self-delusion and narcissistic traits. Sergg fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 06:29
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Death Bot posted:The whole point of that post is that a lot of social politics deals with which groups of people have which rights. The fact that certain groups see other certain groups as subhuman is hard to dismiss as a "political difference" or whatever Except I presumably (hopefully?) didn't become friends with someone over shared politics so if social politics clash on issues that don't really impact either of us why would that matter? The post seems to be intentionally broad, too; most people won't interact with a reservation or even meaningfully vote on anything involving one except maybe something with a casino so who cares what they think and, outside of maybe a couple conversations, why would it ever come up, and why would it get need to get heated if it did? And that doesn't begin to touch on lived experience differences. I used to be close friends with a guy who had real problems with gays/rights as a class (he was fine with individuals) because he was raped repeatedly as a child/teen in foster care. His experiences don't make his views right but the nature of experiences means that topic is just a wasteland and I would just redirect to something else when it came up (mostly during the gay marriage thing). Other than that he was a pretty good guy.
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Sep 13, 2016 07:46
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I'm liberal as all hell but all of my best friends of the past 10 years or so have been either ignorantly conservative (as in they were raised that way and never saw a reason to think differently) or weirdo libertarians who each had their own bizarre focuses so yeah I'd say so Some of them are open to discussions and very chill and with others we just avoid talking politics together.
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Sep 13, 2016 07:48
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I should mention that I'm gay and they're all very socially liberal when it comes to lgbt stuff though otherwise we probably wouldn't be as close
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Sep 13, 2016 07:51
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I'm curious at what point some of you are willing to draw the line. Are you okay being on friendly terms with someone who clearly holds deep seated racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. views so long as they don't bring them up when they're around you? The idea that you can separate a person's politics from other aspects of their personality has always seemed ridiculous to me, given that political views don't simply form in a vacuum. Not trying to criticize anything anyone in this thread is saying in particular, but I do wonder if the kind of open, vitriolic hatred that's building up on the right isn't in some part due to our cultural willingness to safely push toxic political views aside and pretend that they don't make someone a bad person.
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Sep 13, 2016 11:00
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much like the wise and prudent stalin i purged all the trots and other insufficiently revolutionary quislings from my life ages ago
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Sep 13, 2016 11:11
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I dated a lolbert for about 5 months and we tried to not talk about politics but she would weigh in with horrible takes on the reg. I broke up with her via a text message and left her stuff with my doorman after she said some vile poo poo about teachers, knowing that both of my parents are in academia. I was 31 at the time. I feel no shame. I hope you enjoyed my anecdote.
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Sep 13, 2016 11:26
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William F Cuckley posted:much like the wise and prudent stalin i purged all the trots and other insufficiently revolutionary quislings from my life ages ago Red Salute o7
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Sep 13, 2016 11:27
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It's almost impossible to separate someone's politics from them because their politics is fundamentally how they actually feel about other people. I mean, that's literally what politics is: How people are treated and should be treated. It may be possible to be on friendly terms with someone whose politics rate you as a second class citizen but it's doubtful you'd ever truly be their friend.
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Sep 13, 2016 11:30
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Paradoxish posted:I'm curious at what point some of you are willing to draw the line. Are you okay being on friendly terms with someone who clearly holds deep seated racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. views so long as they don't bring them up when they're around you? The idea that you can separate a person's politics from other aspects of their personality has always seemed ridiculous to me, given that political views don't simply form in a vacuum. Speaking for myself, no I couldn't do that. But no one I know is like that, to my knowledge. At least not anyone I spend significant time with.
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Sep 13, 2016 13:48
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I feel the more important question is what their politics says about their character. Someone who believes that some other group of people are inferior, or is okay with denying rights, is someone who is fundamentally anti-social. Someone like that it's not enjoyable to be around, not reliable to trust, and potentially destructive to everyone else around them. On the other hand, if their difference in beliefs to you is more due to different assumptions about society, different 'knowledge', then there's no real reason a productive relationship cannot exist. Distinguishing between those two cases can sometimes be difficult. But you can't have a productive debate with someone who does not want one. So if you want to save yourself some trouble, it's important that you do make that distinction.
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Sep 13, 2016 14:03
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Reasonable people can disagree on economics, or political affiliation, or how much respect religious belief merits. I count among my friends Marxists and Randians, Republicans and Democrats and Greens and Libertarians. It's more difficult for me to befriend religious fundamentalists, especially Christians and Muslims, as those two religions are inherently supremacist (evangelism is nothing if not cultural imperialism). If you are someone who hates people for immutable characteristics like race or gender or sexuality though, I don't have any time for you, and hope you die soon.
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Sep 13, 2016 14:35
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Discussion is important. You can generally tell who you can do that with without hurt feelings or arguments etc. I have friends from all walks of life, and the majority can have a civil/good discussion even if they don't agree with someone. I've had a few acquaintances on facebook that I've tried to do the same with, and I could usually tell when it's best to stop/before it turns into an "argument".
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Sep 13, 2016 14:38
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If what you're asking for is an argument in favor of being friends in spite of political differences, it really depends on context. If what you're talking about is stuff like the OP, where your friendships and political allegiances have to align and you can't be friends with people who are part of "the problem," then the issue with that is just the sheer difference in scope between broader politics (especially national level) and personal discussions. The premise of "these laws affect people" is completely broken because unless your friend is famous, their opinion has almost zero impact on what laws get passed, and has much less actual effect than a huge amount of other things that they could do. What someone thinks has less effect than what button they press when the grocery store cashier asks if they want to donate money. I have never seen anyone say "I refuse to be friends with someone that won't register as an organ donor," why is that?
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Sep 13, 2016 16:16
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OneEightHundred posted:If what you're asking for is an argument in favor of being friends in spite of political differences, it really depends on context. If what you're talking about is stuff like the OP, where your friendships and political allegiances have to align and you can't be friends with people who are part of "the problem," then the issue with that is just the sheer difference in scope between broader politics (especially national level) and personal discussions. The premise of "these laws affect people" is completely broken because unless your friend is famous, their opinion has almost zero impact on what laws get passed, and has much less actual effect than a huge amount of other things that they could do. What someone thinks has less effect than what button they press when the grocery store cashier asks if they want to donate money. I have never seen anyone say "I refuse to be friends with someone that won't register as an organ donor," why is that? So it's ok for your friend to think Black/lgbt/muslim people are subhuman and don't deserve equal rights as long as he can't act on it on a national level?
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Sep 13, 2016 16:26
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I couldn't be friends with a Freeper tea party nutjob type Republican but luckily I don't run into a lot of people like that, my work is like 2/3 Republican but only a couple Freeper types who have since retired and moved to Arizona.
MaxxBot fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 16:33
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I had a close friend for many years who was a diehard Randian; he leaned Republican for its fiscal policy but loathed the party's Moral Majority elements. I am a card-carrying liberal; an ex-girlfriend's father used to call me "the pinko," which gave me Rob Reiner flashbacks, and said friend referred to my beliefs as "communist" more than once. Through the nineties and into the 2000s, we were good friends and argued and discussed politics quite a bit. He came far enough around to vote for Ralph Nader in 2000 instead of Bush. I told him things were getting scary in that we were agreeing far too often for comfort, and I'd know that the Republican lunacy wave was fading when we started arguing again because it'd mean he was finding elements of the GOP platform that he could believe in again. My dad is redeemable. He doesn't watch Fox News or listen to talk radio, but he does get waves of FWD: FWD: FWD: and Facebook asshattery sent his way. He correctly diagnosed the Republican primary as a clown car and Trump as a buffoon, but he's equally repulsed by Hillary and is prone to repeating whatever the Right-Wing Meme of the Day is (Hillary's being replaced as a candidate! Hillary's coming for all our guns on Day 1! People who cross Hillary keep being found dead!) I do my best to provide deprogramming and encourage him to fact-check what he hears/reads. Sometimes it takes. My mom still thinks Sarah Palin is the answer for what's wrong with America. I see her on major holidays and always keep an escape route handy. delfin fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 16:41
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socialsecurity posted:So it's ok for your friend to think Black/lgbt/muslim people are subhuman and don't deserve equal rights as long as he can't act on it on a national level?
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Sep 13, 2016 16:55
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AMA about dating someone who would have been fine with pulling the lever for Ted Cruz in November.
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Sep 13, 2016 17:00
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rudatron posted:Someone who believes that some other group of people are inferior, or is okay with denying rights, is someone who is fundamentally anti-social. Someone like that it's not enjoyable to be around, not reliable to trust, and potentially destructive to everyone else around them. Well, not necessarily. As long as you happen to be a member of the same demographic they belong to, they could be just as enjoyable to be around as anyone else. My personal feeling is that I could be friendly acquaintances with someone with bad political views (I probably unknowingly am already), but I couldn't be close friends with someone who believed bad things. It's impossible to truly separate certain political opinions from a person's character/personality. If someone believes, for example, that the poor are in their situation due to making bad decisions, it definitely says one of the following about their character - either they're a nasty person who looks down on millions of people for no reason, or they're really really stupid. Neither of those characteristics is good in terms of fostering friendship. Obviously this is only the case with political beliefs that are clearly wrong/harmful, though. I may disagree with mainstream American liberals, but their beliefs usually aren't explicitly and/or directly bad and tend to (in my opinion) stem more from a misguided attempt to address the same issues I also care about.
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Sep 13, 2016 17:37
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I'm a Trump supporter and generally keep quiet about support of right-wing causes. A lot of people think i'm a huge liberal because I generally post a bunch of extreme race/gender nonsense ironically on social media, as its the most socially acceptable way I know of supporting Trump's campaign. I am generally friends with people of all political persuasions and like to listen to what they think. I don't see any point in trying to convert people. I privately donate to advance causes that I think are important, and change my own personal habits to align with my politically incorrect, but highly predictive models of crime, real estate values, educational policy, and other social/economic issues.
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Sep 13, 2016 18:00
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on the left posted:I think are important, and change my own personal habits to align with my politically incorrect, but highly predictive models of crime, real estate values, educational policy, and other social/economic issues. In other words, you actively avoid black people. Are all your friends of 'diverse political persuasions' aware of this?
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Sep 13, 2016 18:26
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Nevvy Z posted:In other words, you actively avoid black people. Are all your friends of 'diverse political persuasions' aware of this? I don't actively avoid black people, I have plenty of black friends. I don't have any friends who didn't finish university or work a professional job though, and this really cuts down on numbers (basically i'm down to people I went to grad school with re: minorities). The master stroke is that my habits are not any different than white libs, who also generally avoid bad neighborhoods and cross-class association.
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Sep 13, 2016 18:31
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twodot posted:Your reasoning needs a consistent basis. If your concern is real impact on people then a private racist has basically no impact on people. If your friend is out shouting insults at black people, then we can start talking about real impact again. If your concern is purity of thought then purge away. That's the issue, though, isn't it? Even if they go only as far to not hold those beliefs themselves, but then later vote for someone who does because of unrelated beliefs, isn't that a concrete action towards denying your rights, no matter how abstract it may seem? A Buttery Pastry posted:When you say opposites, what do you mean? Anyone on the "other side of the aisle", to borrow American parlance, or people who are as passionately as you about any given political topic except in the other direction? Because in the latter case, I can easily see that turn into a major issue in terms of keeping up relations with someone, as you move away from the "moderate" position. It's definitely mostly an "across the aisle" context for me. Avoiding people who sincerely believe others should inherently have less rights for whatever reason is easy. Avoiding otherwise nice people who don't necessarily believe in doing so, but due to political necessity vote for someone who does, is the bigger problem. Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 18:33
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Nevvy Z posted:In other words, you actively avoid black people. Are all your friends of 'diverse political persuasions' aware of this? Please don't take the very obvious bait. For what it's worth I have a coworker that I consider a friend, and we have tons in common on just about any topic other than politics and religion. And I honestly enjoy talking to him about those subjects during breaks and lunches when we can. We joke and laugh when we do it, even when we take some petty shots at one another I'm still his friend and I like him as a person well enough. But I don't think I could ever be real friends with him outside of the work place because it would simply be too tiring either avoiding the topic of politics or talking about it every other subject, because he is very good at spinning tangents towards this or that political position that he or I has, and sometimes I'm not any better. So while I have disagreements with all my close friends about tons of stuff, the more disagreements there are and the more pronounced they are the more strain it puts on the friendship. Eventually the differences become too vast for someone to be anything more than an acquaintance.
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Sep 13, 2016 18:41
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Half my extended family won't talk to me anymore because I gently pointed out that they were racist shitbags. Nothing of value was lost tbh.
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Sep 13, 2016 18:48
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Sergg posted:Anecdotally, I've never been long-term friends with a political conservative who didn't end up backstabbing me or screwing me over so I keep my dealings with them to a minimum. Our beef is usually not even related to politics. Additionally the way they treat my other friends who are black or women is very problematic. They're much more likely to have racist or sexist attitudes and make inappropriate comments about minorities and women which makes me dislike them on a personal level. When you spend a year of your life dating a black woman like I did, the racism from white males just jumps right out at ya and you can no longer filter it out or ignore it anymore. Yeah. For awhile I could tolerate my families islamophobia just because I could shrug it off as them being backwards. That kinda went out the window when they started become a large part of my social life, and I regularly find myself literally shaking with anger during our arguments and its made family gatherings a miserable ordeal. Even before my temporary disowning.
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Sep 13, 2016 18:50
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Mister Olympus posted:That's the issue, though, isn't it? Even if they go only as far to not hold those beliefs themselves, but then later vote for someone who does because of unrelated beliefs, isn't that a concrete action towards denying your rights, no matter how abstract it may seem? twodot fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 18:50
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This blacksentai's tumblr makes them sound like they're 13 and most of their posts appear to be about video games or sci fi franchises. So unsurprisingly the argument is really poorly written. It's vague, offers no examples, and doesn't even try to distinguish between small-scale disagreements and profound ones. This sounds like an angsty and wounded teenager's diary. If this helps them deal with the systemic racism they face then more power to them, white folks have been writing and publishing dumb, self indulgent tripe like this for centuries, we might as well let teenagers of all races self publish this crap as well. But why are you holding it up as some kind of interesting idea worth seriously debating?
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Sep 13, 2016 18:56
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"Politics" are your fundamental values and view of the world, it's hard to ignore those sorts of things in relationships. But pretty much no one I know or spend time with has horrible views because I don't like to hang out with horrible people. It's generally not something that sneaks up on you. That nice person you've known for years doesn't turn out to be a nazi or "race realist" or what ever unless they're only the most superficial of friends and you see them only in a vacuum. Maybe if your whole world and life are purely middle class white people it's easy to "avoid politics" or treat it as some purely academic thing that only effects other people. There's certainly differing opinions though. There's certain people you can't talk about Israel or Palestine with, perfectly good views on every other subject but a massive blind spot/bias there due to their family. There's meat eaters, vegetarians, and militant vegans, but everyone mostly remains respectful. Some people think states/governments are bad and some sort of anarcho-communist solution would be most idea, while others think a strong state would be needed to maintain and organize an ideal society. Some are a little deep in "social justice" buzzword land but you can still have reasonable discussions with them. Those are the sort of normal political differences a social circle can have. But I'd pretty quickly cut anyone I could out of my life who was an outright homophobe, sexist, or racist. You'd be gone pretty quick if you aren't down with a robust and well funded network of social services, or think if people don't want to get shot by the police maybe don't act or look like a thug.
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Sep 13, 2016 18:58
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I think it depends on how they express their views. I'm not going to turn someone away from me if they see things the opposite then I do. I will turn them away however if their simply an unpleasant person to be around. I've known pleasant and unpleasant people on all sides of the political spectrum. I realize this leaves me open for "tone-policing" arguments but I think common sense takes precedence there: If your mocking and making fun of someone due to their race, age, sex, or religion then your simply not someone I wish to be around. Anecdotal evidence time: An LGBT friend of mine was in turn close friends with a rather homophobic Fundamentalist Christian. The fundamentalist friend is sweet, just very sheltered and genuinely believed that "gays shouldn't marry because God says so." Somehow this LGBT friend has managed to stay friends with the fundamentalist friend for over 10 years now. During that time the Fundamentalist friend has confided that simply being friends with a LGBT woman has changed her views on things and helped her come to the simple revelation of "Wow, my LGBT friend is normal and pretty nice, it's not right that she can't marry, I was wrong." If the LGBT friend had simply refused to speak with the fundamentalist then no minds would've been changed. Obviously I'm not saying minorities have a duty or obligation to befriend people who dislike or might be uncomfortable around them, but genuine friendships can change more minds then countless logical arguments. Jacob Holdt, the Danish ant-racist and socialist photographer has some interesting writings on how simple interactions helped change the minds of even Klan leaders.
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Sep 13, 2016 19:38
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Ddraig posted:It's almost impossible to separate someone's politics from them because their politics is fundamentally how they actually feel about other people. This sums it up for me. I can't have someone in my life who will only ever, at best, see me as "one of the good ones". It doesn't matter whether or not they like me -- if their political views betray a hatred/distrust/disgust with people who are LIKE me, then we're not actually friends.
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Sep 13, 2016 19:59
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William F Cuckley posted:much like the wise and prudent stalin i purged all the trots and other insufficiently revolutionary quislings from my life ages ago Agreed. Ideological Purity is a cornerstone of Democracy.
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Sep 13, 2016 20:12
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