My Way or the Highway

This week, I had a couple strange experiences on the intransience of certain human behavior.

First, my friend sent me an email conversation with her father in which her father was telling her that should she not take his side against her cousins, they could no longer have a relationship. The cousin’s sin was including her father in an email supportive of Donald Trump. While I’m not sure my friend agrees with her cousin’s politics, she certainly doesn’t want to take sides or choose which of her beloved family members should be ostracized. But her father was clear, make a choice.

Second, another friend that I was able to track down after much worry of having lost contact with her, it is the age of Covid after all, wrote me and stated outright that we could not discuss politics because she had left the country after Donald Trump was elected President and the subject was too touchy for her.

There was that “Trump” angle in both these communications. And we both got those messages on nearly the same day.

So my friend with the Dad problem and I with the thirty plus year ex-pat friend problem spent a lot of time on the phone trying to sort out the similar messages we received, very close in time to one another.

And I can’t even be sure where the friend with the “Dad” problem stands one way or another on Donald Trump…we don’t really talk about it. We just discussed the ultimatums and the censorship and how hurtful it all was.

It’s not the first time in my life I’ve been issued an ultimatum, but it was weird in that for me, I haven’t discussed politics with my anti-Trump friend since graduate school, in the late 1980’s. And the political things I have done, she was very pleased with, pro-choice work, church-state separation, free speech. But post one thing on Facebook about how you favor Donald Trump or send out an email about how you favor Donald Trump and your friend tries to censor you or your father tells you that you can no longer have a relationship.

The two communications were weird in their proximity of timing, if nothing else.

I’ve been engaged in politics one way or another since 1989. I created issue based organizations, been a field director for an issue based organization, an Executive Director of an issue based organization and a lobbyist for an issue based organization. I am a political animal. Politics and issues have been my life work. And I don’t just watch the politicians, I watch the courts. A District Court judge rules a certain way on an issue I care about, I take notice. It moves up to the Circuit Court, I take notice. Two Circuit Courts issue opposite rulings, I really take notice on that because that’s usually what makes a perfect Supreme Court case.

I told my husband “You got football? I got politics. Both are entertaining and frustrating at the same time.”

But I have no desire to force people to adhere to my political opinions or tell them I will never speak to them again! Far from it, let’s talk, maybe you’ll teach me something I hadn’t thought of. Nor do I have any desire to use my love as a cudgel to beat you over the head until you think exactly as I do. The father literally said he could no longer be her father unless she agreed to go after her cousins on his behalf.

Whew! Narcissism and weakness at the very least. A man who is not truly confident in his convictions because if he were, he’d invite debate or other opinions, not threaten with the loss of his love.

And as for my friend who left the country and for whom I was only happy to find out she was still alive, laid out a “condition” of our friendship based on what she imagined was my purpose. It insulted my very sincere care and love for her and pissed me off that she didn’t think I could navigate a relationship based on grace and care.

Why? Because I have been very public I voted for Trump and I didn’t think “Orange Man Was Bad?” It also speaks to her psychosis of moving to another country because she just couldn’t live with Trump being President. Never mind she left her children and family and grandchild in the United States while she moved around Great Britain.

While my other friend is shocked at her father’s behavior, I have become used to old friends and acquaintances “icing me” because I don’t think exactly as they do. Which frankly tells me how weak they are that they can’t stand anyone who thinks anything any different than they do.

Having spent a life in politics, I have debated many people in many venues to include attorneys on the facts of the law. I, sitting here with no law degree, just a brain, had the temerity to do that. I’ve sat down with people on the polar opposite of me and invited them to lunch after and we have had great, even fun and friendly conversations. I am always interested in knowing what and how people think, I may not agree with them, but I find their views fascinating no matter how much I disagree.

And I have never said “If you don’t think as I do we can no longer be friends or loved ones.”

Not once, not ever. Because I love people for who they are, as people. Not for their political leanings.

Luckily, my friend with the “dad” problem and I could share our stories of rejection and pain. The coincidental timing of these two things was weird, but we’ve had a chance to think about them deeply because of that shared experience.

And our conclusion for each really is “Okay, whatever.” But the pain of these interactions is real no matter how much we agree we’re glad we are not them. They must have bitter and unrealized lives and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.