[NYT Magazine] Should I Hang Out With Someone Whose Political Views I Hate?

That's exactly where I stand. My liberal friends think I vote Republican and my Republican friends think I'm a libtard. I get more annoyed with my crazy liberal friends( and some posters on this board) because even though I've never voted for a Republican president (voted for Perot), pro gay rights, pro-choice, they think I'm right leaning because I believe in fiscal constraint and tell them facts about gun violence.

 

wrong. Both sides are trash. If you think one has higher morals than the other, you are a fool.

I didn’t vote for Trump. Not everything is so obvious. Someone saying both sides are trash is simply speaking the truth. To automatically label that person as a republican is also foolish.

 

One of my friends approximately the same age as me was a Trump supporter that passed away at 31 some 6 years ago. Developed stage 4 colon cancer that upon diagnosis had showed it already spread to his liver, lymph nodes, small intestine, part of his spine and of course colon. Paid into long term disability with his benefits annually for the 11 years he worked at Seton in Austin. HR went from being locally run to nationally under the Ascension banner and somewhere along that transition a glitch occurred where his long term disabilities and health insurance options were cut. Went a whole summer after one round of chemotherapy without further treatment before finally talking to his family about opting into ACA to resume the good fight. I used to drive him to some of his appointments and visit quite often as he had to move to Lampasas back in with his parents after his cancer diagnosis.

His step dad was an old white dude that served a tour in the Korean War, was a proud war veteran and Fox News was running 24/7 in that household. I've never heard the word n*gger thrown around so casually by his family at dinner gatherings while asking someone to pass the biscuits. It was embarrassing for this friend to have me hear what his family said so casually when they felt they were with a safe audience and I put up with it because I was there to visit this friend and not so much his family. He's passed away since then and I've kept a hefty distance from his family afterwards while remaining neutrally amicable.

It's one of those situations where this family personally treated me with kindness, would let me stay in a guest room overnight if I wanted to hang out longer and avoid the long drive down 183 back to Austin when the sun is setting and the deer start coming out and seemed like good people, minus the unfiltered racism of course. I got some useful gardening advice from the old man for instance. But it's one of those things where you realize a racist person can have their positive traits yet you'd know if someone that was a minority was rounded up for a public lynching in Lampasas, they'd be there to happily celebrate in the mob mentality with their pitchforks. I'm 100% convinced of that. So I've done it before. Real friendship with a MAGA-er that is. They didn't even realize ACA pre-existing condition option was the only reason their son was able to get some form of health insurance and a black president helped them with that. I'd like to think had their son survived it might have dawned on them that fact but instead they're confederate flag on their front porch, proud MAGA-ers that now live in Dublin as cost of living in a small town like Lampasas was too much to handle and some surviving family of the mother still lived there to hang out with.

 

People are too dumb now, they make stupid assumptions without thinking. They are complete slaves to cable news too.
all these entitled dummies are easily brainwashed, this is why I'm investing in Tech Companies cause I know they can control the population.

 

Semantics. I'm not literally hanging out with you right now. Don't be obtuse.

 

I am. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)