Why We Can't Be Friends - A response to those who believe that their Trumpism is merely a political

[GoneOffShore]

... position or a matter of personal opinion.

This was written by a guy in South Jersey - VanDrew territory. He's got a great take on it.

Why We Can't Be Friends

This morning I witnessed a women’s bible study group chat having a “serious discussion” about whether or not Biden was the Antichrist. A few days ago a Facebook “friend” explained that she believed Biden was a corrupt pedophile.

This isn’t a difference of opinion on public policy, or the role of government in America, this is weaponized hate. It’s the way one group attempts to demonize another that so often turns into civil war and genocide. It’s the worst sort of tribal evil that results in violence.

You aren’t just saying my candidate is not your particular cup of tea. You’re saying they’re evil and that by extension, that I am evil. My friends are evil. My family is evil. We’re all involved in a nonsensical plot to traffic children in some bizarre sex cult, or we’re too stupid to understand that the media (a few million individuals with their own thoughts) have duped us.

The gaslighting is pretty intense, especially when you recognize that the right wing media bubble amounts to a single cable news network, a few thousand bloggers with zero accountability and your crazy uncle Ernie and his bowling league on Facebook. But we’re the ones being duped by the media?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

1. Agreed, except it's not just one cable network now.

New ones have sprouted, even worse than Faux News.

OANN is one of them, but I also saw others that made me cringe when free-streaming the "news" channels on Pluto TV (for example).

It reminds me of a cult that slowly draws in a congregation, only later going full-crazy and passing out the poisoned Flavor-Aid. They never lead with the poison, but build up to it.

[GoneOffShore]

4. Exactly so. I asked the author about sharing this and he totally encourages it.

[MLAA]

2. I can't be friends with anyone who supports

a guy who made over 500 poor kids orphans
who called nazis (or at least some nazis) good people
who consistently dog whistled to white supremacists

‘We just a avoid talking politics’ is a real cop out to me.

[dawg day]

3. It sounds scary like the Rwandan radio host

... who fomented the massacre of 800, 000 by calling them monsters and demons.

[Pacifist Patriot]

5. I read that right after a friend sent me this...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-trump-biden-election-votes-empathy-liberals-transition-huppke-20201109-rv3f6tb73ndgjp4bdiac3zwlly-story.html

I'll cross the aisle politically when necessary, but under no circumstances will I do so when it comes to values and morality.

[GoneOffShore]

8. I refuse to back down in the face of hatred and insanity.

I'm a bit isolated from the US now, as we live in France, but still have plenty of US connections.

[Aristus]

6. Yeah, I got spammed by some Blue Lives Matter Facebook friends.

Their spiel was basically “Just because I support the extrajudicial murder of unarmed black teenagers, it doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends!”

I disagreed. I un-friended them.

One was a classmate from PA School. The other was a real-life friend I’ve known for forty years.

How good people turn into heartless monsters is the mystery of the ages...

[GoneOffShore]

9. Read 'They Thought They Were Free' - by Milton Mayer

Here's an excerpt -

"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'... must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing - each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.

You don't want to act, or even talk, alone; you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father could never have imagined."

From Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1933-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

[GoneOffShore]

10. I keep trying to post a link to it but I keep getting a 403 error.

[OldBaldy1701E]

17. Nah, it isn't

start with $$$$$ and toss in a little conformity and voila`! It is about power and money. When you have it (or you think you do anyway) you will sell your own children to keep it. When you lose it, you go insane trying to regain it. When you never believed in it in the first place... well, we wouldn't know what that means around this country, now would we?

[Walleye]

7. It's tough to see people consumed with hatred, that we might have gotten along with otherwise

We really do have so much in common with each other. It’s crazy to let this stuff divide us. It’s just what our enemies in the world have always wanted

[SWBTATTReg]

11. Your title says it all, why we can't be friends...they were never really friends to begin with, eh?

Friends (at least the ones I know) will listen attentively to your viewpoints (and you, their viewpoints), as well as debate thoughtfully and respectfully w/ each other, and then afterwards, go on. Too many stories on DU about these supposed 'friends' and such, when they really never were your friends. I guess when the chips are down, one truly sees how people are, and their dirty laundry is out in the open for all to see.

And what's sad about it, is that these people are the ones w/ all of the guns, with them loudly proclaiming their freedom etc., when in fact, nothing of the sort is happening (guns being taken away, 'freedoms' being taken away, etc.).

As a matter of fact, it seems to me (imho) that it is they who are advocating the taking away of rights (stop the count!), refuse to acknowledge Mr. Biden's win (when of course we acknowledged HRC's loss in 2016 to trump), that voting by absentee or via the US Mail is illegal etc.

Heads should roll, and I'm not being vengeful here. The De Joy guy, in charge of the US Mail in some manner directed that ballots be either destroyed or hidden, or with no postmarks to show that these pieces of mail actually made it in time to be legally counted. Other nefarious efforts too, seemed to happen around in areas where approval levels were down in the dumps (McConnell, Florida, etc.).

[GoneOffShore]

12. Thank you. But I'm only the guy who posted the article. David said it better than I could.

[PutGramaOnThePhone]

13. Please...

don’t forget all the AM Talk Radio stations.

From the OP:

“ the right wing media bubble amounts to a single cable news network, a few thousand bloggers with zero accountability and your crazy uncle Ernie and his bowling league on Facebook”

[GoneOffShore]

15. Exactly. AM talk radio has always been a factor with the crazy uncles.

[Grins]

14. "Because if I won, you would lose."

“Because if I won, you would lose.“

Not sure if he knew he was giving a definition of conservatism. Said another way, “If you get more that means I get less.” And “more” might be the right to vote.

I used to live in Mass. Neighbor was a hard Republican. Told me one day he was thinking of moving out if state to another to one, “...where my vote counted.”

[GoneOffShore]

16. Oh, he knows. He's a very perceptive guy.

[OldBaldy1701E]

18. Translation...

"...where my side would win."