Getting Along With The Other Side


I’m with my friend S watching her alma-mater whip the living piss out of Minnesota.

S is a conservative-feminist who reads Chomky. Obviously, not the average run-of-the-mill Bush supporter by any means, but make no mistake she does support the President and other conservative agendas. Positions of which every few months, we try to convince the other of the insanity of their prospective. However, unlike my ‘talks’ with most GOPers, our conversations surrounding politics or the rationality of domestic wire-tapping does not become an outright shouting match degrading itself until “Fuck You” has been exchanged. Rather, our conversation are much more congenial and generally end up with us trying to combat the other with logic over vulgarity. This and the fact that those conversations only happen once a quarter make me not have fantasies of reporting her deceased to the St. Louis election board thereby canceling out her vote from here to eternity. Instead, most of our time is spent, drinking, her explaining basketball to me, drinking, me explaining boxing to her and drinking.

Though I value or friendship, I do wonder why it is so strange. Why is it that politics in America has regressed to the point that friendship is now based upon political leaning? Why is it that when I meet a new person who boldly profess their GOPer status the first question they ask me is if I would ever vote for Hillary for President? And if the answer is affirmative they roll their eyes and drift to someone else at the party who will agree with them that Senator Clinton is the most evil bitch hell has spat out upon the earth? Or why is that Democratic friends of mine cannot fathom the idea of my sharing drinks with a Bush supporter or anyone for that matter who has not signed a MoveOn.org petition? It has gotten to the point that every friendship is built not upon being Blues fans, frequent watchers of Family Guy or my favorite-drinking. But that it must be one of those things and also and a shared stance on Roe V Wade?

Somewhere, I can’t remember where, I saw a sign that was posted in stagecoaches in the Wild West. It had three simple rules. No Spitting. No Course Language. No Talking Politics. Though, as a reader will tell you from previous posts, I love politics and probably spent ¼ my day contemplating the 2008 horse race, I still think that this Dem-GOP hatred has gone to far. Instead, we need to implement rules like ‘No Talking Politics’ in places like bars, football games and movie theaters. With the rule, we as a nation will realize how much we actually have in common. How many beliefs and ideas we can agree on and that on the other side are friends not foes. Then maybe, just maybe, government won’t continue to be this winner take all game, but what it was went to be a representation of the people striving to improve and protect our country.