My Facebook wall is pretty much a liberal echo chamber. Since I’m pretty selective about who I friend, and because my family has always been socially liberal, I’m satisfied with this state of affairs.
However, it put into mind the times I’ve seen someone talk about a friend (in general, not in the Facebook sense) who had political viewpoints they disagreed with, sometimes violently. I’d like to know how often that happens, and how that comes about, especially if the friend always believed that way. How many of your friends are out of sync with you politically, and by how much?
Not many and not much. I don’t want to have every minute I spend with my friends to have the potential to blow up into a huge disagreement where both sides will consider the other “part of the problem”, “the enemy”, “the people who want to kill everything I hold dear”, etc.
It’s hard enough having family members with opposing views; why would I choose close friends who don’t look at the world the same way I do?
I have a number of them, some more extreme than others. Some I’ve grown to respect very much, because there are times I’ve been wrong or missed something and I’ve broadened my perspective or changed a position, thanks to their input.
I think more importantly, is that we formed a measure of respect for each other through other interests, before we worked our way into political views. Maintaining that level of respect (and knowing when to stop) goes a long way towards healthier discussion (and never personal). Given we have a relationship beyond the politics, I understand they aren’t malicious or anything, but they’re instead (usually) expressing an alternative perspective of the world, for what it is or should be. Overall, I know they’re good people trying to make sense of a very complex landscape, because I can see what they do in life, beyond what they argue (in theory or otherwise).
It also helps that outside of what I consider a few key principles, I tend to stay away from extremes. That and I think there can be more than one or two solutions to a problem, so absolutes aren’t as necessary, sometimes.
All of my close friends share similar political views.
There are a number of people that I am friendly with at the gym who have very different political and social views, and we just avoid those subjects whenever possible.
When both parties publish their platforms in a couple weeks I will be in disagreement with the majority of most of what’s written …by both. Disagreeing with both sides on some non-trivial aspect is my norm.
I like people that can deal with respectful and passionate debate.
Out of my close friends, those I’m closer to than most family members, at least half hold one or more political views diametrically opposed to my own. With most we can discuss the topic/topics we don’t agree on but with one we totally avoid the subjects. We still like each other and doing things together; we just leave politics out of the mix.
My best friend and practically the only I regularly keep in touch with is a Trump supporter. She’s got enough other good qualities that i choose to overlook it, even if a Trump victory would have immediate consequences for me and my family.
My Facebook feed is a political echo chamber too. We’re all happy-sappy liberals.
Except my best friend, who never, ever thought about politics his whole life and barely paid attention to anything past the nose on his face…suddenly he is a very angry Conservative. He grew up poor and he’s not religious one bit, he doesn’t own a gun and he’s not rich (although now with his education, job and wife’s little trust fund he is “rich” compared to his upbringing). I have no idea where this is all coming from. He is a balding white guy tho so maybe that is his problem?
It’s causing me quite a lot of stress to see some of the shit he posts. We used to be very close (well, BFFs!) now I feel very angry towards him. We cannot discuss anything political at all. He is a “la la la I can’t hear you” type and I am a nice person.
There’s one other person from school who I have not blocked who posts ridiculous religiously-charged political stuff sometimes. She is such an idiot tho, and very easy to shut down, so I don’t block her.
I have two best friends, one is voting for Trump, the other is voting for Clinton - and not only do I get along with both of them, they get along with each other.
Same thing on FB, my friends/family run the gamut.
Until a few years ago not many. But I now work in an industry that is very conservative with a strong libertarian lean. Talking to colleagues I tend to get the Fox news take on current events before Fox news can even penetrate my awareness.
Many of them are very sane and rational in other respects but talk about dirty liberals the way my liberal friends talk about evil conservatives. It’s been interesting to see the other side. Of course they make fun of me for being a “socialist” but also “one of the good ones”. It’s somewhat surreal.
I forgot to mention:
There’s a guy at the gym I’m friendly with (I wouldn’t say we are “friends,” because we only interact in that environment - we would never go have a drink, for example). He’s pretty right-wing, with libertarian leanings. He’s also a “gold bug,” which I find amusing. Awhile back, we were talking about how fucked up health insurance is in the US, and he enumerated the typical right-wing solutions:
Tort reform.
Insurance reform (allow insurers to compete across state lines.
Prevent illegal immigrants from accessing health care.
So, I went home and did some research, and came up with studies on each of these topics, and how much they would save (an insignificant amount, unsurprisingly). I printed them out and brought them with me the next day, and gave them to him. He was very gracious about it - he didn’t do the usual backpedaling and goalpost-shifting. He said he would read the articles.
I suspect that I haven’t moved his opposition to Single Payer at all, but at least he was willing to accept that his solution isn’t the answer.
So, that’s at least one guy I’m friendly with who holds a very different political view than me.
Political opinion is not enough to drop someone with whom I share other interests. Being an ass about your politics is more than sufficient, even if I agree with you.
I’d say up to 30% of my Facebook friends and LiveJournal friends either think Republican thoughts or are so entranced with Bernie Sanders that they view Hillary Clinton as the antichrist.
Of the remaining 70%, probably 40% aren’t political at all, which still means I have opposing political views to them since I am.
Of the remaining 30%, 29.999% are not anarchists. Anarchists are really fucking rare.
Maybe 5 of the 30% disapprove of gay rights, trans rights, gender issues in general.
Out of the original 100%, maybe 35% are openly in favor of forced psychiatric treatment whether they word it that way or not. Some of those who don’t are Republican-minded conservatives who come at it from a different angle.
Hmm… when you get right down to it, all my friends have opposed political views to mine.
I’m a middle aged white woman, born, raised, and living in the southern US. About 90% of my friends and family members are more politically conservative than I am. (And that number is apt to grow. I am getting more liberal, the older I get, while my friends verge in the opposite direction.)
Mostly, we can remain friends, I hope. But some people test my boundaries - either by assuming that I share their social/religious views (I don’t,) or that I find their “genteel” upper middle class racism acceptable (no.) Oddly, the friend/family member with whom I can enjoy a political discussion most? My cousin’s husband - Baptist minister, retired state legislator, political science professor. He has actually managed to read his Bible and the Constitution, and we disagree on many details, but we both enjoy respectful and well-informed discussions. (And we agree on a lot more issues than one might expect.)
But I don’t discuss politics with many people anymore.
I have moderate conservative friends, although quite a few of them bemoan that “The Republican Party has left me.”
I had one extreme Libertarian friend, but lost him when he refused to drop the subject when we were together. I’d say, “I’m not enjoying this debate; can we talk about something else?” And he’d holler, “Ha! I got you! You concede how wrong you are by that request!” After eating that shit for a while, I just stopped bothering talking to him at all.
In real life? Almost all of them as I, a neo-hippie bleeding heart, live in east Texas. You can’t blink without being regaled over folks’ love of guns and God or their hatred of Obama and Clinton. Online (like Facebook), although I’m still friends with lots of the same people, I keep my feed free of political yammering of any stripe; no conservatism or liberalism. None of them know that, but I disappear that shit the second it pops up, usually by going to the source and clicking that happy little X that tells the algorithm never to show them or their crap again. Works wonderfully to prevent your friends from posting Limbaugh (or whoever) in with your peaceful consumption.
