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Is It Really Politics?
Maybe your friends don’t share your views on Donald Trump. They call him the grossest person in the world. Maybe your friends don’t share your views on BLM. They think whites are due a comeuppance for systemic racism. Maybe your friends don’t share your views on LGBTQ-ism. They think we must tolerate, even celebrate, the whole rainbow of gender and sexuality.
So then, do you tell them you voted for Trump? That you think racism is not in the DNA of the American character? That traditional family structure is the most moral aspiration?
I hear it said that people should simply set aside politics and enjoy their friends — don’t allow political disagreements to foster alienation. Increasingly, however, that seems impossible to me, because “politics” is an inapt word to describe the collision of fundamental beliefs in the very nature of our world. To offer justification for the post-George Floyd violence and destruction, to insist that Donald Trump is a Hitlerian figure, to denounce family itself as the source of social ills — these are not matters of politics. It all strikes at the core of life as we know it.
As bumper-sticker discourse once memorably phrased it, “Western Civ has got to go!” Well, it’s on its way. We stand, amid unprecedented prosperity and leisure, at the edge of the abyss. Let’s not call cultural disaster a mere matter of politics.
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Where I work, all those are taken for granted.
It is more and more difficult now that the crazier parts what’s going on to our Left are looked at by them as practically religious doctrine. Not agreeing with a particular political opinion when you talk to them is like being a heathen around old school Holy rollers. Add to that a non-zero chance you could become the focus of your very own two minutes of hate having your life/livelihood cancelled for something ridiculous in the process and avoiding people who think like that becomes almost prudent.
Even if they are (ostensibly) “related.”
I agree. Much more than mere politics. Or maybe politics has never been mere.
That’s why I’m only careful about not bringing these things up, since pretty much everyone I know is on the left. Once they bring it up (as they’re wont to do) I say my bit. I wouldn’t disassociate with someone because they’re a little kooky, but I won’t be around people who expect me to keep quiet for the sake of our supposed relationship.
The bigger problem isn’t people who expect you to keep quiet for the sake of your supposed relationship. The bigger problem is people who expect – maybe even demand – that you AGREE WITH THEM f0r the sake of your supposed relationship.
I can live with disappointing them.
We don’t demand that people agree with us, we just mock them when they don’t.
We don’t demand that people agree with us, we expect them to agree with reality. Which is what we already agree with.
The personal is the political no justice no peace – no escape.
The left are sore winners.
The good news is most of my family and friends are conservative – that leaves a few that are way over on the other scale. A very long time friend and I have parted ways. I have a cousin that is uber-liberal and in la-la land. We have yet to have a discussion about my political and personal views. She “wept” when Biden took office – she cited she shed cathartic tears after Trump – really? I have yet to get that worked up over any candidate or political person, or election. I just took Advil and went to bed……Some have sent me over the edge, but I grabbed a shrub as I fell of the cliff, and hoisted myself up onto level ground.
Wow! We who are alive during these times to witness many seismic events, “for a time such as this”, need to keep our heads “while all others are losing theirs”!
Kipling foresaw it in “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.”
This a part of the intergenerational conflict. Many woke young people threaten to “divorce” their parents if the older folks don’t fall in line. The mothers are particularly susceptible to this blackmail.
Only if I am asked, Yes. And if they ask why, I tell them something along the lines of “I like the cut of his jib, especially when he was praising the substantial reduction in unemployment amongst African Americans. And I liked the lower gas prices.” There’s more, too!
It seems we still believe that we’ll win an election and fix matters. We had the last election stolen in spite of a Republican President and cabinet and popular support. Now they have the White House, Washington and most state bureaucracies, all of the mainstream media, are getting the military, shutting out voices wherever they can and moving to criminalize opposition, and refuse to reform elections so that non citizens can’t vote and citizens only get to vote once. What am I missing that is going to bring this totalitarian thrust to an end?
I avoid political subjects at all costs with people I need to know only for a few minutes.
Last week, I went out and checked on a rescued dog, to see if the “new owner” was needing help. If I had mentioned anything political, it would have shut down my being able to offer advice and assistance. After all, when a small beat up car is covered with bumper stickers like “Biden/Harris” “I support BLM” and “Bernie Sanders Forever” it would be quite hard to do anything but get the car owner angry if I veered off on a political subject.
If she had veered off, I would have politely refrained, by saying “Gosh I really have such a full life right now, I don’t know a thing about politics.”
As far as other people, friends and family – too many of them have shut themselves off from their relating to me due to their political views.
For example, I hadn’t heard from my sister-in-law since last summer. Not even a Christmas card. I called her mid June 2021 and she launched into a tirade of how we “anti-vaxxers” are going to cause the death of all other Americans. This makes no sense – any decently designed vax keeps whomever is injected with it safe from that disease. What also doesn’t make any sense is the last 50 times we talked, she was opposed to vaccines – so what happened? But she didn’t give even the slightest pause in which I could ask her any questions.
Her tirade lasted ten minutes. She accused me of supporting the “evil Mormon Church cabal,” apparently forgetting that I was raised Catholic. She went on a rampage against Trump – who I had not voted for in 2016, which was the last time I had talked politics with her.
When I hung up and related the entire encounter, my spouse asked “But what did you say to her?”
“That’s the thing. I got as far as ‘How are you guys doing? We have missed hearing from you two. Are you doing okay?’
All we could conclude is that she has paid some attention to M’s FB page entries. Which are 90% philosophical, or else dogs that get rescued, or else jokes, and only 10% of his entries are political.
It used to be that people who disagreed on politics could discuss such things amicably. But the Left has attached urgency to all matters. Once urgency is attached, the matter is political. So right now all matters are political. “Wear a mask or granma will die.” “Support the open borders or a mamacita with a crying baby will die.” “Espouse environmental slogans at all times, or the planet will no longer be here in 15 years.”
It is really one of the saddest aspects of life right now.
As I wrote elsewhere today, I wish the lemmings would just go off the cliff already, and leave the rest of us in peace!
They won’t be happy unless they take us with them.
i just got back from an eye appointment. The doctor pinched my mask’s nose wires together to direct my breath away from his lens. I noticed that his mask was down on his neck and I asked if I could take mine off. And he said, Sure, the best way to take away a person’s identity and control him is to make him wear a mask. Take off the mask and you can see your face and be happy the way we’re supposed to be.
Something like that. I gave him the name of Ricochet.com and said he’d like it here.
My doctor’s probably a little far right even for us.
Oh, well, good. This guy spoke of everything. The CIA and the Russia Set-up. The Great Reset. Chinese world domination. The chance for total control that the covid leak caused. He would probably have spoken about CRT if his MA hadn’t pulled me out of the room.