I have neighbors who are a married couple , man and woman and they’re Trump supporter too. We use to talk more often but now we don’t bring the election at all . We’re still friendly to one another but I see them in a whole new light now. I have to say I wasn’t really surprise when I learned they like Trump . Damn Trump I can’t talk to my neighbors like I use so much for
making America great again ! Damn I hate expression !
I’m honestly not sure. I’d like to say I wouldn’t treat or think of them any differently, but I don’t know. I live in a pretty liberal city, and work in a very liberal industry, so I honestly don’t know too many people who would be inclined to vote for him anyway. I do have one close friend who is a pretty conservative Republican. He voted for GWB twice, and it certainly didn’t effect our friendship. He voted for Romney, and it didn’t effect our friendship. If I found out he was voting for Trump… I’d like to say it wouldn’t effect our friendship, but it might. I’m not sure I could view him the same way if he supported that man. Trump is different than GWB or Romney, or any other Republican. It’s not just about not agreeing with someone’s politics.
As it happens, I don’t have to worry about it. My conservative Republican friend has already told me he’s not voting for Trump. He isn’t thrilled about voting for Clinton, but he’s doing it.
My oldest, closest friend is a Trump supporter and I just don’t get it. I realize she hates Clinton because “she’s a liar” but she also says that Democrats want to take more out of her pay in taxes. She makes about 80k a year, something I can’t even imagine having. She constantly complains about people on welfare taking her money. She recently asked how much my daughter’s college grant was because “I want to know how much I’m paying for her to go to college”.
She wasn’t always this way. She used to be more liberal than me. I don’t know if it’s because she makes so much money now or she’s just grown older and more bitter. She seems to fall for viral crap a lot, like she worries about brain cancer from cell phones and refuses to use one. She has suspicions about vaccinations. A lot of what she says doesn’t make sense. She found out my daughter got in to a program to help pay for dental work. She griped and said she wished SHE could get help like that. She has dental insurance, but she claims she doesn’t have time to take off to see a dentist. But she just took two weeks vacation and went to Disney World. Seems she could have seen a dentist then.
I don’t spend a lot of time with her anymore, not just because of all this but that’s part of it. We talk for hours about good ol’ days and our daughters but as soon as she starts in on the woo I try to change the subject.
If one’s friendship is so tenuous that voting for the other person is something one can’t even, then one’s friendship is worth so little that the other person would be better off without one’s friendship.
Your friend needs an attitude adjustment. You can disagree and not be a jackass about it. And being nasty about your daughter is completely uncalled for.
Yes and no. There are a lot of special cases. For some of us, Trump is beyond the pale of acceptable social limits, and the comparison of “would you be friends with a KKK member” is not entirely hyperbole (hyperbolic?)
Also, very good friends sometimes change. They might swing away politically…or they might swing away as friends. Most of us don’t like to lose a friend, but many of us have had to cut off even a very dear friend because of altering patterns of behavior.
I’d stop being friends with someone who started smoking nonstop: I’d have to!
Most of my friends are LGBT, and all of my relatives are either Jewish or Muslim (in-laws). So although there are a few mainstream Republicans among them, and a few Libertarians, not one of them supports Trump.
My sister and I have disagreed politically for close to 50 years, but we love each other dearly, and I am not going to disown her just because she’s making a worse than usual decision this time around. Nor is my wife going to disown her brother.
Dealing with people you disagree with is part of the price you pay for being a grownup.
Obama won by promising unspecified hope and change. If that was okay then, why isn’t it okay for the other side now?
I honestly don’t think I could be friends with a Trump supporter. It would be like being friends with a known child molester or Ku Klux Klanner. Sure, I might have to interact with the lowlife from time to time, and if so, I could keep things civil. But I would certainly do whatever business and then get the hell away.
Friends, hell. Try being related to one.
Obama’s 2008 campaign platform wasn’t exactly unspecified.
I guess your definition of ‘great guys’ is different than mine. Someone who actively supports persecuting minorities like blacks, hispanics, LGBT people and Muslims is an asshole in my book, and that’s what supporting Trump actually means. “He’s a great guy but he wants to make it so that nice gay couple you know have their marriage annuled and aren’t allowed to get a job” just doesn’t go together for me. They’re ‘great guys’, but any of my trans friends would risk their life by coming near them and admitting their medical history? No, just doesn’t work for me.
The very idea of someone declaring agreement with Trump’s views immediately disqualifies that person as someone I could call a friend. And it’s not because I lack the capacity to understand why someone might support that world view. It’s that I am physically and mentally repulsed by anyone capable of such a deliberate act of malicious ignorance.
He probably means that they don’t cheat at golf.
Often.
I’m starting to feel like one’s definition of “friend” is going to determine whether politics is a dividing line.
IMHO, a friend is someone I’d feel comfortable talking just about anything with. Including my opinions about current events. We may not always agree, but I would not feel like I’d have to censor myself when I’m around them. If I don’t have that level of comfort with someone, we are just acquaintances, not friends.
But I guess some people form relationships around activities (like drinking beer and watching sports), and as long as they have those activities to share together, it’s all good.
I don’t know. I can’t imagine calling a person a friend if I can’t ever rant about things going on around me without them arguing that I’m wrong or that I’ve been suckered by the lame stream media. Or if I can’t bring them around my friends and family because they are inclined to say something that will cause offense. I don’t think that’s me being close-minded. It’s just me choosing to devote my social energies towards people I can be myself around.
It’s more like basic moral values have become the dividing line in this political climate.
We can agree to disagree about economic theory or the importance of social programs or foreign policy. But if my “friend” starts spouting bigoted ignorant shit… that really leaves absolutely no room to respectfully disagree.
That sounds a tad bit dismissive to me. In the scheme of things, I don’t find politics all that important. Hell, I used to be a Rush Limbaugh listening Republican and now I identify as a liberal. My friendships have not changed much in that time. Hell, I don’t even really feel my basic moral code has changed that much, but my perspective has. My current best friend is my cousin, who is a Trump supporter (I assume for the whole “fuck the system” aspect of it). Whatever. He’s a bit crazy, but that doesn’t affect our life-long bond as cousins and friends. Outside of my wife (who is politically more conservative than I am, but not a Trump supporter), he’s the one person who I know will always be there for me when I really need him, and vice versa. I guess I don’t find it that important to need to rant about current events. I mean, I have to deal with conservatives and liberals alike in my day-to-day life; I don’t like talking politics, and I don’t like talking religion, and my friendships need not talk about either.
Mehhh…
A point not yet made (or I missed it so forgive any repeat here).
There is Trump. There is what some people think Trump will/wants to do that is “bad”. There is what some other people think Trump will/wants to do that isn’t “bad”. And there are bunches of issues on which Trump might or might not actually stand and might or might not be actually true based on who is claiming some insight into what Trump actually wants to do or will actually try to do.
Yeah, you might think Trump wants to bring back the KKK. That is on you perhaps. Your “friend” might like Trump because he likes Trumps stand on “shitty” trade deals and thinks your view on Trump and the KKK is load of horse crap.
Just don’t use your fuzzy logic and hatred of Trump to make the illogical leap that YES your “friend” is ACTUALLY for bringing back the KKK (unless the dude actually says as much).
PS. This goes for pretty much any politician and or any “controversial” position.
I don’t like talking the minutiae of politics, like if so-and-so is in the lead in the polls and what so-and-so plans to do to improve the economy and how many electoral votes does so-and-so need to win. That stuff bores me.
But if there are tanks thundering down my street, mowing down my innocent neighbors, I’d like my friend and me to be on the same page with regard to all of this. You better believe if my friend shrugged this off because “hey, ain’t my street, ain’t my neighbors, they probably did something to deserve it, duh”, I would cut them off. Not enough sports and beer in the world could make me ignore something like that.
I don’t care if someone doesn’t care enough about politics to follow the news. But if some shit is going down (e.g., Mexicans being deported without due process, Muslims being warehoused in concentration camps, anti-discrimination laws being overturned), I really don’t want to be around people who are are okay with that–even if it’s just in a “whatever, bro” kind of way.