Can Democrats and Republicans be friends, real friends?

Paula: I just had a talk with a dear friend of mine who happens to be a Republican. She told me, in tears, that a number of her friends have dropped her because she supports McCain-Palin. They say this is incomprehensible. I seem to be able to accept that she may have another view, even though I don’t share it and can’t understand it particularly. Her gay friend said he saw it as a personal affront and I suppose others have accused her of being racist or plain stupid. Any thoughts on this? 

 

  Robert: This is indeed the conundrum of modern bourgeois life, it seems to me. We become close to people with whom we have political and religious differences and yet we’re supposed to get along and I guess for the most part we do in fact get along. So was your friend, the McCain-Palin supporter, surprised by the anger of her friends? Her friends didn’t know she was a Republican before this?

Sometimes people seem to avoid these potentially polarizing conversations and other times they put the disagreement out into the open as in, “Oh, Mary, she’s our one Republican …” And they use that mild teasing to dissipate the tension. I don’t have any close Republican friends. My demographic, I guess, is pretty overwhelmingly Democratic. So what do you make of this?

I’m thinking there is a way to express a strong values disagreement without being nasty. But it’s hard, really hard. I just read a biography of the racist southern Senator James Eastland, who was a long-time head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, until 1978, in fact. Eastland was clearly beyond the pale for any African American, but he had close associates who were liberal Democrats apparently because he was cordial and effective as a Senator. And Jimmy Carter and Mondale endorsed him in 1978 (though he decided not to run for re-election). Maybe because these folks are in the arena of politics, it’s easier to work together … But with friends ….. Wow … What do you say?

 

 
Paula: I take issue with your response. It’s one thing to talk about a Republican friend. It’s another to talk about a racist friend. Your slippage in talking about Eastland, calling him racist but implicitly equating him with my Republican friend, seems at the root of the whole problem. You are suggesting that Republican = racist. I don’t think my friend is racist or homophobic — but perhaps her gay friend would say she is. He knew she was a Republican before and was able to overlook this until this election. She had told him that she had been against gay marriage but had decided to support it because he felt so strongly about it and she loved and respected him. Perhaps he was offended that this personal impulse, rather than the principle of the thing, was what was required to change her mind. Or perhaps he saw her differently in light of this election. But the fact is: I’m willing to assume there might be valid reasons — albeit reasons I don’t share or even comprehend — for someone supporting McCain-Palin. You don’t. That divide might even be a divide for us, in some sense, if you follow my drift.

 

 
Robert: I brought up James Eastland because I had recently read about him and because he was an extreme figure who still had “friends” who found his views morally repugnant. By the way, I imagine that civil rights for blacks at the time Eastland prevailed was as contentious (and “unclear”) as civil rights for gays is now. It was quite respectable, in some sense, to be a racist in Eastland’s days. He was just an example that I had handy to help think about this subject.

I don’t have any close Republican friends, but I’m not in any way opposed to such friendships. The social circles I travel in are highly liberal and Democratic. And frankly, when I sense a political disagreement of this sort with a friend, I tend to avoid discussing politics with them. It seems inappropriate or destructive and frightening. The loudest arguments I’ve had recently have been with people far to the left of me, including one West Philly guy who basically wanted to equate Republicans to Bin Laden. I told him John Ashcroft was an absolute liberal compared to Bin Laden. He insisted they were the same. Drove me crazy.

 

Paula: But this is interesting. Even you, one of the most open-minded and curious people I know find talking politics with someone who may disagree to be inappropriate, destructive or frightening. I too avoid talking politics with the friend mentioned above. I have only one Republican friend that I actually talk politics with on a regular basis, though it generally ends with some acrimony. Maybe politics has replaced money as the taboo subject in our culture — unless, of course, we’re talking to people who share the same position. That seems frightening to me.