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The Litmus Test for Friendship
In the past few years, I have recognized that I cannot talk openly about politics or religion with people who I want to become friends with. I think this has become the most pervasively evil aspect of identity politics and woke ideology.
Politics and religion used to be taboo topics for polite conversation but now your opinions on these two areas of thought determine if you are even worthy of being in the conversation. I am 72 years old, and a large majority of the people I socialize with are people I want to become new friends with. We play linguistic games to try to guess the political persuasions we might share but this is fraught with misconception. I have plenty of old friends but they are scattered much too far apart. The topics of conversation available for developing new friendships with the people I meet has become vanishingly small.
This has made growing old sadder and much more difficult.
Published in General
Look at IWalton’s posts. That is what you are dealing with. Centralization and corruption. Good luck explaining that to somebody that thinks that Scoop Jackson, Lloyd Bentsen, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan aren’t dead.
Are you a loner in your church?
We are doomed and heading for a civil war. It won’t matter. Democrats are brain washed by decades of Colbert and Stewart and company. The FBI has made it clear through their irredeemable behavior that they intend to never be out of power again. We are too far gone for polite corrections.
Not by choice.
It’s a long story, actually. . . .
I might modify that to say “This isn’t just a fight about a political system. It’s a cultural fight.”
Politics is downstream from culture. Religion is intertwined with culture and both shape each other. When we allowed religion (actual religion as opposed to the Marxist religion of the State), to be marginalized it denigrated our culture. When we allowed the mythos of the USA as a force for good at home and at the world to be undermined it created exactly what the left wanted, the very concept of the US in question, the concept of individual liberty in question. Now we have generations of kids raised knowing that the USA is a terrible country with an exploitive past and why would we even want to fight for such a system. After all, things are so terrible here, why would we allow a free-market to continue to operate?
Well, if you ever want to do a video chat, I am willing to listen.
It’s not a free market system. This chart couldn’t happen if it were. Then people whine about socialism and populism.
It’s a bad system and it’s getting worse. It’s only redeeming value is that it’s better than all of the other options. Thousands of mistakes were made in the 90s.
Same here.
Not too big a deal, but since I work at church, I don’t have much of an outlet to . . . er, . . . whine about work-related issues or share frustrations with work or co-workers. And my wife just doesn’t really connect with anyone at church, so that has keep us from any small groups, because she is just not interested. Her closest friend is not at our church.
Also, unless I protect myself, I end up getting ambushed on a Sunday morning to deal with work-related issues. I can’t just . . . attend church. It’s kind of like going to work an extra day. It’s a tough balance that I think everyone who’s ever worked at a church can relate to.
I know it’s kind of tasteless to flaunt my good fortune, but I can’t contain myself.
Slowly, discerning it from certain clues and “linguistic games”, I finally realized that the man and his lovely wife living a stone’s throw from my house are closet “deplorables”. I knew this, but, until today, we hadn’t talked much.
We just had our first, longish and very open conversation about politics. The wife of this couple initiated the interaction. She, and her mother who is there visiting them, opened the subject and did at least half of the talking. If anything, these people are more to the right than I am.
These two (the man and his wife) are also young, well educated, strong, beautiful, and newly parents of a baby girl.
There’s hope for the future.
Life is good.
Heh. He says wearing a MAGA hat is confrontational. Figures.
This thread is about a guy looking for better luck in finding friends, the difficulty being the *already existing* unpleasantness.
We’re not saving the country here. We’re giving opinions on how to do better making friends, when budding friendships seem to founder on political differences. That’s just where we are today, and telling SP to get out there and be political with everybody isn’t going to help. My suggestion, wearing the hat (or similar, could be a coffee mug), simply sorts candidates early, before investment. No argument necessary. The Trump-haters (if they have any manners whatsoever) will avoid him, and the Trump-adjacent will gravitate to him.
“Even the Lord took Sunday off. Please call me tomorrow.”
I realize this is a little off the beaten path, but I always picture everyone here as being 35. So there. I gave you an extra few decades to pursue friendships among people who really value your opinion, sense of humor, intelligence, insight, and wisdom over politics. And if that’s a deal-breaker for them, it wasn’t worth your precious time anyway. Life is always too short.
The problem is that the woke sjw thinks he actually knows what justice is, as the moralist thinks he knows what virtue is. Since both topics are endlessly debated, actually, we need the freedom to discuss such matters civilly unless we wish to let loose the dogs of war. So by all means let’s defend virtue–and free speech.
Besides, a brilliant (and effective) contrarian such as yourself would soon find himself in Jeremiah’s pit were it not for free speech law and traditions–and maybe even then, alas.
I don’t see how the two virtues are in conflict. I can chew bubble gum and walk at the same time. I defend all speech, and I prefer that the evil also speak their minds; the better to identify them.
If free speech wasn’t under assault, I’d spend more time defending virtue.
I’m 82. Spent my professional life mostly abroad in a variety of countries and continents. My kids were always in American schools and were influenced by their peers, both Americans and foreigners, but my youngest commented along the way that kids views vary from country to country, so he set out to figure out, on his own, what mattered. My other kids never spoke to me about it as he did, but they all ended up with similar views on key matters. They’e all very different and have different lives in very different places, but basics views are very similar. We didn’t preach and two of them spent high school in US private schools and only spent summers with us. All we ever stressed was honesty. As I slow down intellectually as fast as physically I count on them to sort a lot out for me and they do, all rock solid conservatives.
If speech is gone, virtue has no defense. So yes.
It just makes the assumption that the only people one can be friends with are those that think the same way. It also assumes that political agreement has to be a basis for friendship. I put forth that friendships are built on more than politics, common interests in a hobby, etc. being a prime example. You are right that wearing a MAGA Hat or something like that will self-select, but it also might limit who is willing to even talk to you and miss out on a great friendship based on something that politics doesn’t intrude upon (yes, a vanishing set of things, but we should fight for them).
Those people in whom the MAGA hat doesn’t trigger an allergic response may be okay. They won’t be filtered out. QED. It repels the repellent, attracts the attractive, and is neutral on the neutral.
What you will find is that there are a lot more repellent people out there than you thought. Which is *the problem*.