Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Enemy?

One odd thing I’ve noticed about our deep political divide these days is the cognitive dissonance: if you continually try to “make snowflakes cry” and “trigger the libs,” then why would you be deeply wounded that your friends and relations of a different political stripe avoid you? You can’t antagonize people constantly and then turn around and say, “But we shouldn’t let our differences separate us!” If you are speaking of reasoned discussion, then yes, people with different perspectives can get along. But if you are openly hostile to all people who disagree with you, then you can’t be surprised that the individuals you know who disagree with you will want to avoid you. I ran into this with a relative who posts a lot of inflammatory stuff on social media but then said he wanted to meet some very liberal relatives, who only knew him through his posts. When I pointed out rather bluntly that it was strange that he would want to meet people he disagreed with so vehemently, he seemed shocked. In his defense, he is young and maybe doesn’t realize how he comes across, and they did end up meeting. But he is far from alone – I see a lot of people on social media who go on and on about how people who don’t agree with them are horrible sub-humans, and then they wonder why I avoid them or unfriend them. What, am I supposed to just listen to you go on about how you think I am the vilest of the vile? Rich pointed out that I sort of did the same thing when I wrote an email to Sirius XM telling them they were a “cog in the patriarchy” for only having stations named after white males instead of sending them a carefully worded email about how they should rethink their practices. He is right, of course, but at least I am not saying to Sirius XM: “Why don’t you want to hang out with me? Why can’t we still be friends?” It would behoove all of us to stop telling those we disagree with how they are terrible people and instead try to explain why our point of view differs from theirs. There – I have a New Year’s resolution! Besides eating more vegetables and letting people end conversations instead of continuing to talk at them.

Famous Hat