A few days ago, a close friend and I had a disagreement; it
was a decidedly political disagreement, and unfortunately for both of us it
turned bitter. As you can probably guess,
if you’ve read many of my posts, I lean towards the liberal side of things,
politically. However, I have made and
continue to make public statements decrying things I don’t like about the
left’s politics, attitudes, and approaches.
I used to be conservative, then aligned with the libertarian party, and
have ended up where I am now: left of center on nearly every issue but with reservations
about (and public criticisms of) the extreme elements on this side.
I’ve arrived at this position through a combination of
maturation, raising two wonderful children, coming out as openly atheist,
bisexual, and transgender, examining things around me in some detail, reading
quite a lot, and investigating stories to see if there’s supporting evidence
instead of just instantly sharing or commenting on social media posts. I also
do indeed read things that I disagree strongly with; I am a firm believer in understanding
all sides of an issue as much as possible. I have never unfriended a single
person based on religious or political differences on social media. I do not
and have never subscribed to or consumed news or information from any single
source, or purely from sources slanted or biased towards one political affiliation or
another.
As I’ve gotten older I have made a conscious decision to not
keep my mouth shut on issues that are important to me and to society. I have also decided that I will not sit idly
by while people make demonstrably false and/or derogatory statements. If
someone were to make such statements about me, I would hope that my friends, or
anyone with a conscience really, would try to correct the error. I’ve written elsewhere (including on this
blog) about why & how I think we humans are all connected; having a
willingness to extend oneself to correct mistakes of this sort is an expression
of that belief. Where I may sometimes
fall short on this is by reacting too quickly or too harshly, by failing to
consider the feelings and motives of others, or by ascribing such to them that assumes
a dark nature or ill intent.
If my friend happens to be reading this: please understand
that I still consider you as a friend and would help you in any way I could;
also, please read this entire post only when you have time to consider what I’m
saying carefully and without distraction – read it when you’re at home in the
evening relaxing with your kitties and our favorite drink. I’m saying what’s in my heart and in
my head. This blog is how I process many things in my life, and I hope this
writing doesn’t make you angry (or angrier!) at me. Out of respect and deep affection
for you I have thought a lot about this, and it’s my hope that the words I set
down here, for all to see, make clear where I was (and continue to be) coming
from. If it seems harsh and clinical, I apologize, but as I’ve told you before
more than once, I have closed my heart off for the most part, so this is what’s
left talking. I want to make sure that I set down my thoughts on this while
they are fresh in my mind.
Back to the general audience: This friend was very close and
very dear to me. We both were aware of our political differences and had engaged
in disagreements before; they sometimes got heated, of course, and they were
nearly always left unresolved. I’m sure
each of us harbored some secret thoughts after these exchanges that the other
had quit because the argument was unwinnable from their perspective. I confess that I had these thoughts.
The reason I had these thoughts is what bubbled up in this
last exchange with my friend. We were
engaged in a game of Trivia at a local bar, and the answer to a particular
question regarding an Obama-era Attorney General was “Eric Holder.” When I said this was the answer, my friend
remarked that Eric Holder was a “piece of shit.” This bothered me, of course, so I asked what
made Holder a piece of shit. His
immediate and sharp response was that everyone in the Obama administration was a piece of
shit.
I didn’t expect this level of vitriol. I knew my friend
despised the Obama administration, but this was kind of surprising. What made
it a bit less surprising, or should have made it less surprising, was that my
friend has recently been going through some difficult changes in his life.
Since it surprised me to hear this, I continued to push the
issue, which brings me to the reason alluded to above whereby these thoughts
bubbled up. I have noticed in many, many exchanges with folks with whom I’m in
disagreement, that they quickly reach a point where their ability to support
their side or opinion falls apart. It happens time and time again; I have been
unfriended by a few conservative friends over disagreements on politics and
also on religion, and in every case the discussion ended when I kept pressing
an issue or asking a question that they could not answer, but which they would
attempt to rebut by effectively changing the subject or making an irrelevant
point, or by making an assertion unsupported by facts easily at-hand. I have even pointed this observation out to a
number of people directly, but it just seems to enhance their frustration. I
don’t understand this at all – when I’m incorrect or missing a fact I want to
be set straight. I really, really don’t
like to be wrong, which is one reason why I look into things maybe more deeply
than a lot of folks.
Perhaps one difference between me and them is not that they also
don’t want to be wrong, but rather that they are afraid to be proven wrong, or that
they cannot admit when they’re wrong due to internal psychological mechanisms. I freely admit when I’m wrong – I work in a very
technical field, which can be quite humbling on this score. People who cannot
admit a mistake, and course-correct afterwards, are decidedly unsuccessful
where technology is involved. I’m wrong on a lot of days, sometimes more than
once in a day.
Since the person I’m talking about here was a very dear
friend, and since I’ve reached the point in my life where I think it’s far more
important to seek truth than to avoid bruising egos, I kept up the discussion. I am simply tired of having lopsided discussions
with people who refuse to address a point directly, or even acknowledge a point
to begin with.
I told this person during our conversation that I loathed
hyper-conservative media (including of course fox news, rush limbaugh, sean hannity,
glenn beck, and the like) for a number of reasons, but the biggest reason is
that they bombard people with a constant wave of ultra-right-wing talking
points which warps their thinking, or inhibits their ability to see any side
other than the one they’re hearing; in fact, it prevents them from having even
the most mildly open curiosity about what the other side thinks. This is, I feel, the case with my good friend,
who is otherwise a very compassionate, generous, unselfish, and kind individual
(qualities which drew me to him very powerfully). As far as I can tell, for the
entirety of the previous administration he immersed himself in conservative “news”
media and talk shows – such a diet can produce only one mindset. And that mindset
is so very closed in upon itself it is incapable of even allowing that the
other side may have a valid point. It is rigidly ideological and breeds a
loathing of anything tarred with the label “liberal.” Those outlets are so
toxic, they cause long-time consumers of their product to have completely
visceral reactions to anything coming from, or purported to be coming from, the
left. Thus, his comment about literally
everyone in the Obama administration being a “piece of shit.” These outlets serve to further inoculate their
consumers against opposing ideas by demeaning deep thought – they promulgate anti-intellectualism
by sewing suspicion of those who use sophisticated language or “big words,” and denigrate institutions of higher learning as "liberal-elitist." The parallels between what used to be called
brain-washing and the tactics of modern conservative media are unsettling to me.
In a subsequent text message, in response to him telling me
I had been belligerent and offensive, I told him that he had made an offensive
and stupid statement that he couldn’t back up and to which I responded. I’m not
sure if it meant anything substantive to him, or if it just served to isolate
him further from me, but I was being sincere, frank, and completely honest when
I said that.
In several blog posts here, I have written about disagreement
and resolution, what it means to disagree and how to resolve differences. My
friend claims to have read my blog in its entirety but I guess that my words
around those subjects, into which I put a lot of consideration, meant little.
What I have always tried to do is boil down our differences to tangible,
concrete positions that we can discuss and maybe come to agreement on at some basic
level. I have always tried to do this.
When I feel someone is telling me their stance, which I see as being comprised
of a number of presuppositions, I will ask probative questions to try and establish
what dependencies lie behind that stance. This is how to get at the root of
differences of any kind, political or otherwise. The parties must keep peeling back layers of
disagreement until they arrive at some basic level of agreement – at some point
I feel that we all as humans share basic elements, parts of our psyche and ways
of approaching problems that are common due to the biology of our brains and
the cultural similarities that drive and sustain all societies. At some level
we have to be able to agree on something, in other words, no matter where we
start or how far apart our differences begin.
What opened up this particular conversation was his
belligerent and rude comment about someone I thought highly of – this set the
tone for the rest of the conversation, so I responded in kind. Granted, I had
enjoyed a couple of drinks before all of this happened, so I was likely a bit
loose, but my recollection is clear. I countered, probed, and inquired, and
became frustrated myself when my friend had a loss for words, which I understood
to mean that he couldn’t back his position. I kept asking questions and making
points, in an effort to drive home the major point that one shouldn’t make
statements that one cannot support, especially when those statements are
belligerent, crude, and offensive to one’s good friend. I admit here I was
spirited and also a bit angry myself, out of the frustration borne from a
hundred similar conversations with conservatives who simply make an outrageous
statement and then refuse to even attempt a defense of it. It’s almost as if
some feel they have the right to any opinion without the corresponding responsibility
to ensure it’s at least minimally defensible, especially when that opinion impacts one’s
interactions with society at large (e.g. voting habits or the reputation of an
individual or group). I would argue that the more outrageous the statement, the
more accusatory or defamatory it is, the greater the need for supporting
evidence or reason. This is just basic decency and logic.
Now, he may feel that he doesn’t have to justify his
position, at least not to me. He in fact said so, stating that he could, of
course, come up with a list that I could then pick apart and grade like a
school paper. He may be right, but he should at least be able to justify it to
himself, and I’m pretty sure his lack of ability to make even a single cogent
or indisputable point in defense of his statement is more a reflection of the
lack of evidence than it is a reflection of his reticence to present such
evidence to me. My response to this should have been: “Why not produce such a
list?” If it will stand on its own, what’s to lose? If I’m really important to
you as a friend, and if you respect me even a little, and if this is important
enough to you to make callous blanket statements, why not give me the details
behind your opinion? I say with all honesty that I would listen to these and
consider them. I would also examine and probe them, not out of some sense of
conceit or condescension as was implied, but out of a genuine need and desire
for truth. If the evidence were there, and were also supported by other
evidence and reason, then I would change my position. That’s exactly how I
arrived at my current political and religious outlooks, and is why I take these matters so seriously. I am willing to follow
the evidence, but only if I am allowed to see it.
My follow up, sent the next day, bemoaned the inability of
two supposedly close friends to even discuss their differences, no matter how
far apart those differences may be and no matter how spirited the discussion might
become, without resulting in a hard-stop to our relationship. My friend has
since said publicly that he feels as if he were pushed until he broke inside,
clearly by me. I regret that it came to this as we had a wonderful, fulfilling, and
substantial friendship; I’m deeply sorry that I hurt his feelings this badly, I
hate to have added to his difficulties or made him sad in any way. But I cannot
honestly say that I regret engaging in this conversation, and I disagree that I
pushed him until he was broken. I think that there was something inside him
broken already which merely came to the forefront, and that is his ability to
step outside the ultra-conservative mindset and consider even the mere possibility
that there may have been some good things to come out of the previous
administration, or at the very least that every single person in that
administration was not a “piece of shit.”
I don’t think in the end I was really asking for that much, especially when
we were such close friends.
My friend, if you’ve made it to here, this last part is
again for you: I’m genuinely sorry that
I upset you and that you felt cornered by me, especially when you’re going through
so much right now. I never intended to be unkind. All I can say is, please try to see my side
of it as well and don’t judge me too harshly. I respect your intellect and compassion too
much to pull punches or walk on eggshells. What we share should be stronger
than this disagreement, but it also means that I will always be completely
honest and open with you whether it is what you want to hear or not – I would
not be much of a friend if I did anything less. If we never speak again, please
take care of yourself; you should know that I only wish you the best of
everything.
