Politics, friends, lovers & significant others.

Cheezits, I am this old and am agreeing with lots of posters who disagree with each other on all this. How can I not know what I think on this..

- my long long long time friends, girlfriends mostly, are diverse in political outlook, world view, religious affiliation if any. My smartassgroup of girlfriends breakdown as two far lefto relative to US americans; two somewhere between us and the democratic national committee; three republicans with varying but at least somewhat socially liberal points of view, and one right wing nutcase, who is my equivalent, I guess, to msolga's friend D - she has a heart of gold not far from the surface. She is the only very religious one. As with msolga, she helped me once when I was down, and I'll always care about her.

On people of either sex I've met since my teens, huh. A couple of my favorite people who also happened to be lovers are Republicans. But we haven't talked in years - I'd be pretty surprised if they were high neocon at this point.

Ah, but first lover was a child of communist parents, though not all the way there himself.

Sooo, I guess politics is not a red flag... or a stopper.
I did open up my mind to listen to and absorb his points of view, and modified my own. With the repubs mentioned, I didn't change my views at all, but then that wasn't relevant.

But I married a man who I never had any political or religious (or whatever you call it) difference with. Our observations used to coalesce instead of collide.

Friends who hung with both of us or us individually tended to fit a certain comfort zone of agreement, but how could you tell, as a lot of arguments went on...
but that kind of seeming selection was in part from activities and what kind of people got into art or playwriting or screenwriting in those years.

Only one friend (etc) I've mentioned was a real social/religious conservative, and she gets a pass.

I am a bit like Thomas in that I consider my views modifiable. I am fractionally less left/green and fractionally more libertarian than I once was.

I dunno.
I mostly take people for their immediate selves.

So I still don't know quite where I fit.

I continue to find all your posts here quite fascinating. Really! I'm still thinking about what some of you have said. Thanks for your candor & honesty.

I'm certainly learning a lot about Setanta through this.

Turns out we're not exactly on the same page on this topic.

Uh-oh. Lol.

I can imagine having a lover/partner of a different political party affiliation ok - but different CORE political values? That's deep in the heart and bone stuff.

Like - a neo-con? Nope. That is an entirely different ethical world. It would be similar to a fundamentalist religious person - just couldn't do it.

repeat post

Please do expound!

Yeah, please do . . .

Thomas, you mind your own business. You need to leave the thread now--i'll PM you when you are allowed to come back.

I could live with a neo-con. Religious fundamentalist wouldnt ever look at me in the first place. I like to think that I could live with anyone except a fascist or a stalinist. But how that would all work out in practice, I dunno.

Believe it or not, one of my closest and dearest friends (male) is a born-again, fundamentalist Christian who accepts the Bible literally and refuses to place any stock in evolutionary theory. Believe it or not, he also has two Master's degrees, one from of them from Harvard. And -- believe it or not -- this guy, before he found religion was one of the most raucous good-time drunks I've ever tipped a glass with.

Here's the interesting part -- despite his religiosity and sincere spiritual feelings, his politics are hardly right-wing. He hates Bush almost as much as I do, demonstarted against the Iraq war when it was first launched, and opposes the death penalty. He is, of course, strictly against abortion and gay marriage.

My point: I've known this dude since we were at University together and we get along just fine. I don't try to convince him of the error of his ways and he does not proslytize. Neither of us drinks alcohol any more and that's fine. We can sit over cups of coffee and talk about the bad old days, endlessly regaling each other with tales of our wild youth. He served in the US Army in Korea and the Philippines in the 1960s and has some hair-raising stories to tell. My second point: a person's personal beliefs really have very little to do with that person's inner personality sometimes. I judge not that I be not judged.

It is interesting how people rush to assume it is "judgement" in the sense of condemnation.

I do not think it is that - except in the obvious sense that we all think we are more or less right - it is more that, while I think differences are exciting and interesting, some, in an intimate relationship, are too much.

Well, perhaps you are right - I DO judge people who think it is America's job to make the world over in its own image - I DO judge people who think women, or gays, or other races are inferior - and I do not want to spend lots of "down" time with them - but I wish them well as humans.

If they're of an idealistic bent, tho (cause thats the thing about neocons, they include some genuine idealists, be it of the boisterous O'Bill/Lash kind), they're not doing much different than the socialists of old, who wanted to make the world over in their ideal image - they're even less different from the old-fashioned communists, who wanted to make over the world in the Soviet Union's image..

Ah yes, what a wonderful program that was . . .



I don't.

So? I was equally contemptuous of lefties who wanted to kill people to make them happy.

Acting politically to further your beliefs, fine.

Invading Hungary and Czechoslovakia - bad.

Likewise invading Iraq, assassinating Allende etc., promoting terrorism in South and Central America like the anti-Nicaragua terrorists - bad.

Idealism - untempered with compassion, good sense, and reason is as scary as religious fundamentalism.

In fact, apart from the damn invisible friend, it is functionally indistinguishable.

If a good looking girl comes up to me and we start talking I bring up Bush casually. If she likes him I throw up on her. If she doesn't I smile and buy her a drink.

You wouldnt (have) want(ed) to be friends with a communist either?

I have always been an anarchist, Ms Deb as always been my friend. She has no discernment.

I was - with lots - but not those who fiercely espoused Stalinism (lots of the Oz ones broke with Stalin pretty early) and killing people.


I was friends with the gentle ones.

The odd young one spoke ridiculously - but, face them with the kind of power the damn neocons have, they would have died rather than kill.

I tolerated some Maoists - but never had one as a lover - and told them how dumb they were constantly.


Thing is - if you look at what I have said, I differentiate friends from relationships.


Lol - I had a very serious relationship with a com - have I ever told you about "The Bread-crock War"?

Gentle communists. The ones who didnt like Stalin but stuck with Lenin? Sure killed a lot of people too.

Perhaps I had bad luck; I dont know of a communist who didnt prefer "killing people", as you put it - as in, the Vietcong killing Americans, or Cuban soldiers helping their Angolan comrades to kill Savimbi's thugs. Compared to the idealist-type neocon its the same principle, just opposing sympathies.

Thing is, I was all in favour of striking out at Savimbi too. But with neocons supporting American soldiers killing Sadr's thugs at the behest of the Iraqi government and communists supporting Cuban soldiers killing Savimbi's thugs at that of the Angolan government, ethically/morally speaking I'm kinda lost on where the clear distinction/border there would be. Even if you leave wholly aside the whole Stalinist extreme. (And Maoist would be worse still than Stalinist, right?)

In the sixties, there were a wide-range of opinions rampant in "the movement." The Movement was as vague a term as "the revolution," as when people spoke wistfully of what would be done, "comes the revolution." I was recruited (despite distaste made obvious by very unsubtle and dull-witted extremists) for the SDS--Students for a Democratic Society--when it became known that i was intimately familiar with the streets in Washington and northern Virginia. From that experience, i moved on to the United States Army, an experience which not surprisingly, genuinely "radicalized me." Thereafter, i easily made friends with people who held far more extreme views than i, because i shared their outrage over the methods of government and the subservience of society to individual greed. I simply did not agree with their solutions.

At no time was i ever attracted to any woman because of the beliefs she expressed, although i was repelled by quite a few for exactly that reason.