I am puzzled at how one can maintain a friendship with a person who rejects one’s basic values. Minor differences, sure, like brand of beer or best pizza, or more significant ones like choice of entertainment, music or literature. But how can you maintain friendship with people who have profound differences on matters of abortion, homosexuality and other matters of morality?

It can be done.

I was born and raised in New England. My grandmother was born and raised in the Southwest. We disagreed on civil rights and religion- rather strongly. As a result, we seldom discussed those issues. My grandmother designated me to give her funeral oration. Which I did, gladly. I had recorded her in about 5 hours of tapes on the “old days, ” which my brother recently digitized. Warts and all I loved my grandmother. Some of her opinions were merely some of her warts.

My mixed race aunt (1/8 Indian- not uncommon in Oklahoma), who had married one of my grandmother’s sons, told me that my grandmother was the most tolerant person she knew. Whaat? With her view of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill? I figured it out. My uncle had contracted some rare brain infection- UCLA treated him for free, for the knowledge. When my aunt got ready to go to work in the morning, my uncle would lock her in the bathroom, believing she was going out to see other men. My aunt could take just so much of that, and eventually divorced him. My grandmother, like the rest of the family, saw that her daughter-in-law had good reasons for divorcing her son, and maintained cordial relations. THAT is why my aunt considered my grandmother to be the most tolerant person she knew. Many mothers-in-law in that position would cut off all contact with the daughter-in-law: “YOU DIVORCED MY SON, YOU WORTHLESS ….”
Ditto my grandmother in maintaining good relations with family members who had left the one true church. Again, we kept the peace by not bringing up religion, though we did go to her church if we visited her on Sunday.

On the other hand, a Noo Yawk librul cousin who escalated a discussion on the TX Big Freeze of 2021 into a political diatribe, is someone whom I no longer wish to converse with- online or otherwise. (We were never close, so it’s not that big a loss.)

I suspect that he had little experience in person-to-person political debate/discussion, where the participants instinctively learn how to discuss without antagonizing. By contrast, many online commenters know nothing but antagonizing.

AesopFan:

Well, there’s the long, long run.

I don’t mean to be facetious.

I stand with the Jews.

I appreciate, and emulate, that philosophy, because it does influence some people positively; but it is important to note that it has never worked out well for the Jews.

She’s a sweet, soft-spoken woman — but of diaper-deep Leftist vintage: raised in Chicago the daughter of an activist Episcopalian pastor, a beloved brother she boasts was clubbed and arrested by “Daley’s thugs” during the ’68 Dem convention…you get the picture. But you may imagine what a sour note any mockery — however apt — would have sounded in a gathering devoted to harmony. (Not that we were ever any threat to your Bee Gees, or the Beach Boys or The King’s Singers. Au contraire: at times, four cats on a back fence was more like it!

Sorry to hear those pleasant get-togethers have come to an end.

But that comment by the shrink’s wife – wow. It just cried out for mockery, but I suppose the need to be polite overrode that.

We had a couple more sessions, but it wasn’t the same. Five years of satisfying music and camaraderie were over.

I may be the only very traditional conservative person they know. So how could I write them off or be hard hearted against them when they may have invincible ignorance that can be rectified by keeping the lines of communication open?

I try to be as kind and loving as I can so as to provide a reason for them to doubt that people who don’t think like them are evil monsters.

Folks may have noticed that I have an interest in some of the old time pianists, and here we are, Hofmann playing the same piece.

As I think about my friends and guess who they voted for in the past several Presidential elections, I imagine it’s about 50/50 Democrat/Republican. There are a few people in my social circle who can’t seem to have a conversation without making it political. I find that boring, but still have no problem navigating the discussion to steer it away from superficial vitriol and towards deeper, philosophical areas.

There is a massive system; political parties, political consultants, politicians, media, social internet networks… who make a lot of money off anger, envy, spite and confrontation. I try very hard to keep them from succeeding in my life.

Accordingly I have broken off several longstanding friendships in the past year. The thing is, those former friends don’t seem at all upset about this. In every case they were the ones who initiated the political discussions that led to the break.