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Commiserating on Mortality
At 7 pm on Tuesday evenings (if we don’t get afternoon showers), some of the ladies in our neighborhood get together to visit. We are all seniors. 
Usually six to ten of us show up with our lawn chairs and preferred drinks, sit in one neighbor’s driveway six feet apart without masks, to talk about the news of the week. I’ve been avoiding the group for weeks; I’m not much of a social creature anyway and don’t especially like small talk, but they are very nice women. I’d like to believe that it makes sense to maintain a warm relationship with them, however limited.
Unfortunately, on my last visit a few weeks ago, the conversation inevitably turned to the coronavirus. Almost all of them do the mask/glove/sanitation/wipes routine to the extreme (in my opinion), no matter where they go. At the last gathering I attended, our voices became so loud that one of the husbands came out of his home to see if a brawl had broken out. I was the one guilty of causing the volume escalation; I was trying to explain my reasons for refusing to wear a mask everywhere, and suddenly everyone had to (loudly) express their alarm. (I did not say anyone should follow my lead.) I refused to be shouted down, and, well, it got noisy. One woman said her husband had a periodic bout with cancer, and she would never want to go somewhere and pick up the virus, exposing him to it. She was clearly insinuating that I was dooming my husband to certain death* since he has a lung condition (I know she was trying to make me feel guilty since I said that my husband supported my decisions and clearly did not feel I was endangering his life, and she wouldn’t look me in the eye.) When it was time to go home, we all parted with friendly words, but the tension was still in the air.
I’m thinking of attending the group again this evening. A part of me wants to see if I can behave myself and not antagonize them. Another part of me acknowledges my real reluctance about going: being surrounded by frightened people who feel like victims.
All my life I’ve had a very hard time being empathic with people who (I believe) are irrationally feeling victimized or frightened. Certainly, there are reasons to be concerned with the coronavirus, but the fear in this group is palpable. I realize that it probably triggers my own fears, carefully hidden and restrained. Nevertheless, given that I want to maintain a good relationship with all of them (because they are fine women and neighbors), I want simply to be able to be present to their fear, be a supportive and caring force, and accept the inevitable conversation about the virus.
Still, if you hear screaming women across the miles, you’ll know where it’s coming from.
(If it doesn’t rain and I follow through on visiting, I’ll let you know how it goes.)
*Lately I’ve been wearing a mask when I go out since I realize how frightened people are by those who don’t wear them.
Published in Culture
Update: my mom reports that most of the women in her ladies group are retired, Ivy League-educated lawyers (Harvard, Yale, Columbia…) My mom was a schoolteacher and then a housewife. I guess excess degrees pound the common sense out of a person.
Yes, there are hot spot topics. I am in the process of losing a friend. It’s been happening slow motion for a while and I have even written about it on Ricochet. It’s one of the reasons I joined Ricochet. So that I could discuss what to do with this schism in our society, and whether we should feel badly about it. I mean, is it me? My mother is really suffering. I live far and she found her conservativism late. She can’t burn her bridges with all these people. She has to find a way to see past it. 🙏🏻
What’s difficult is to ask that they avoid discussions of politics (we do that in our neighborhood except for the virus). I can’t remember if she’s told them she’s a conservative. Even if she hasn’t, she can still make the request, saying that she likes their gatherings to be fun and friendly, not discordant. If they agree, she’ll still need to monitor the conversation, gently reminding them when they veer into politics that they’d agree not to discuss politics. They probably won’t like it, but I’ve had to do it and both my friends understand. Then it raises the question, are they really friends?
This is very good advice and I copied it into an email for her (I sent her your original post). Worth noting as well that she’s in a RED state… and you mentioned Charleston which I would think would be safe space for conservatives. We are in such a dangerous space in our country.
Feeling strangely optimistic : you make it sound so easy with “gentle reminders”. Have you been able to find some conservative friends where you are?
An annoying thing: why do they get to bring politics up all the time?
Yes! Although lately we haven’t gotten together much. Most of my conservative friends are on Ricochet.
It isn’t easy to make gentle reminders. Her adrenaline will probably be pumping away the first time she tries to say something. But she doesn’t have to make it a long statement and should try not to be defensive. So just, “Um, I think we agreed not to discuss politics,” and say something right away before they get going on the topic. If they disagree (well, that’s not really politics), I’d just give a long stare. If they ignore her, she may need to make some decisions: live with it, or leave it.
Because it gets their juices up, and they get to be righteous at the same time! Us old ladies need that. I just get my juices up in a different way. People in general like to commiserate about others’ misfortunes. Makes us feel superior!
Yes this is an important question. How many “no go” zones can you have and be friends? Part of it involves whether you can both special purpose and all purpose friends? For example, people who are really into hobbies and can plan social events with fellow hobbyists can engage quite deeply on a narrow dimension. Those relationships can be quite satisfying a comforting. And they work as long as you don’t inquire into many other aspects of their lives and ignore information unrelated to the shared hobby interests that don’t otherwise please you.
A general purpose friend should have few “no go” zones because the whole idea of the general purpose friendship is the broad spectrum support implicit in that relationship. When “no go” zones proliferate or simply intensify, its special purpose friendship or nothing.
I certainly do! I know I will continue to attend our neighborhood parties–we have a ball at Christmas–but we will probably not be close friends. One neighbor moved to another part of our subdivision. We have the same sick sense of humor! But my all purpose friends are special to me. Thanks, @rodin,
is “Get your juices up” the same as virtue signaling? Because I have thought about that too: how much I do my own virtue signaling, on what subjects… one can be a conservative virtue signaler. Big confession: not wearing a mask was mine. And now it’s mandatory in closed spaces here (150€ fine!) so I have been foiled.
I am going to use some of these tactics myself at work. I am not someone who easily makes rejoinders. I get flustered and it’s only hours later that I think, “what the h*ll was THAT about?”
I will tell you this: it was easier to be a liberal, circa 2010 (for me) I always had my “style”, my tribe, my contempt, my snobbery, my righteousness to keep me warm.
One thing my mom tells me these days, since George Floyd’s death is “things are very tense here.” Meaning in the US. Before the rioting I think she sort of held it together in her book club and Bible study (intermittently woke 😱). But things are now at such a fever pitch in America, I can even feel it in France. (Mostly because as an American I am sensitive to the vibrations: Floyd doesn’t come up in conversation.)
By the way, my mom wears the mask cheerfully, though she is a skeptic, because she thinks the mask crowd is trying to take down Trump. It’s a sort of kill them with kindness approach.
I meant it to mean to get excited, passionate, about something. Sorry that wasn’t clear. I’d like to think I don’t do much in the way of virtue signaling at all.
Because you let them. Just say, “There are four subjects polite people do not discuss: sex, religion, and politics.”
Then wait for it.
Just reason #8573 I prefer my own company to groups, especially groups of women.
I hope for her sake she can find her way to see past it. If she succeeds, and if she is comfortable with you relating her strategies, I’d love to hear more.
I lost a total of 5 friends in the first few weeks after Trump was being elected. I know I couldn’t have held out and “made nice” about things. I just did not have the energy to console a middle aged woman who had recently been certified as a therapist yet who felt the need to cry inconsolably for days because Hillary lost. Hillary was not Mahatma Ghandi – she was a serial rapist enabler. Together she and Bill had arranged for a tremendously horrid situation to come down on the Haitian people when Aristide was made to leave. To view Hillary as another Catherine of Sienna and Trump as Satan did not seem realistic to me. And I am fond of reality.
Which drought in 2003? Where?
I am on a bicycle touring e-mail list that is still going but not so active anymore. Many years ago, decades even, rules were established: No discussion of helmets, carrying heat, or politics. Religion was probably in there, too, but it was never an issue.
The topics of helmets and guns were the most volatile, but every once in a while some leftwinger just had to make gratuitous political comments. Other lefties would then chime in, and there was only one way to stop it: One of us righties (there weren’t too many of us) would make a political comment on the same topic and then the moderator would step in to enforce the “no politics” rule.
They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Wait. They’re French. Therefore they are incapable of shame.
They don’t know what apparently everyone else (including the CDC) doesn’t know; what are the tests testing? Active infections or the presence of antibodies? Are the results of the two being mixed? When there was a shortage of tests the only people being tested were the ones with two or more symptoms. They are now testing most everybody, and it is entirely possible that people who were asymptomatically infected once are testing positive now. This would cause the infection rate to go up. It would also not be accompanied by corresponding increases in hospitalizations or deaths.
There are five levels of deceitfulness: lies, damn lies, statistics, government statistics, and government statistics reported by journalists.
What makes it hard, in my experience, is that everyone is now convinced that the personal is political, and politics are sacred. There is no real reason why the pandemic needs to be about Republicans and Democrats, or Trump v. Biden, or sheep v. goats.
Back in the olden days, my mother scoffed at her friend’s insistence (rare, then) that all passengers in her car wear seatbelts. Decades later, I chided my own friend for anxiously stockpiling canned goods in anticipation of Y2K. In neither case did the friendships end in a crescendo of insults (racist! sexist! homophobe!). Normal people could have different opinions, make different calculations of risk and reward, hold different perspectives on what matters in life; we were allowed to be eccentric and we were allowed to make mistakes.
It was nice. I miss it.
So do I.
That was puzzling ! 🤣🤣 I was kind trying to figure how one can virtue signal with opinions that aren’t the (admitted) mainstream anymore !
Yes. So it wasn’t my imagination.
I think it’s true in the US as well as France that people can be totally unaware! And totally trusting of MSM. Especially, as we said, the educated. People literally know nothing about what’s going on. I told a friend, a Covid skeptic with a background in chemistry that China runs these NGOs, like the WHO. And he seemed surprised. HELLO?! (One time I told his wife that the UK had a low birth rate and that knocked her socks off). My husband’s masked colleague knows NOTHING about China, hasn’t looked at the numbers, nothing about the testing, the variance in recording reason for death, the faulty modeling…
In Europe in 2003, many elderly people died during this drought heat wave: numbers very comparable to Covid. I can’t seem to copy the Wiki. They learned how to better manage it in 2006. Mike Shellenberger talks about it in his latest NY Post article.
Especially @Carol, the phenomenon of middle aged women crying about Hillary Clinton losing the election is unfathomable to me. My mom and I discussed (her book club had a meltdown probably) how this really happened and how all these 50 yr old professional educated women were nuts about her.
I was an Obama voter (I know …I know…) and it was clear in 2008 what a snake she was and to see the Democratic establishment turn around high-handedly in 2016 and say “no she’s marvelous! Vote for her!” was too much for even me. She was/is so transparently calculating and power hungry, riding comfortably on her husband’s coat tails to this sycophantic chanting from middle aged women of “woman woman woman.” While pocketing cash right and left. And her nauseating, entitled brat campaign slogan “it’s her turn.” Or was it “I’m with her”?
funny thing: I read a recent article by the graphic designer who made her arrow sign. He’s a partner at huge NY design firm and she must have paid heavy money for that. He extolled his design and still doesn’t understand how she lost! When trump just printed up MAGA hats with boring type face. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Maybe people don’t care about your Million Dollar Design?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave
Seeing only masked people is scary!