If you and I have lunch together, I would be DELIGHTED to discuss history, science, art, music, architecture, economics, aviation, archaeology, travel, pets, cinema, television, numismatics, literature, sports, ethics, food, genetics, fashion, gardening, weather, family, transportation, agriculture, dreams, computing, language, exercise, dance, or philosophy. The likelihood is vanishingly small, however, that I want to spoil a good plate of sushi, falafel, or vindaloo by hearing your thoughts on Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, Nancy Pelosi, J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Bernie Sanders, etc., etc. etc. …

When I discuss politics, it is usually done in writing (email or blog comments) …

In contrast, verbal, real-time conversations on politics in 2025 largely consist of angry, puerile TikTok-worthy hot takes, statements of the obvious, well-trodden complaints, mindless partisanship, and ad hominem attacks on all who disagree with the spittle-laced observer. The same is true of micro-form writing, such as text messages or social media posts. It is a story of friendships shattered over hasty, hyper-emotional, pointless political haranguing.

I haven’t had too much of that. But I’m not on social media, and I almost never talk politics in person – much like Graboyes. The people who would shun me have mostly done that already, and as for the rest they’re not inclined to push it.

More:

My least favorite lunchtime political statements, by the way, are the brief, hazy, passive-aggressive, in-and-out, plausibly deniable political eructations. “My kids are doing great, though I worry about their futures, given … what … is … going … on … in … the …country.” Such constructions halt the flow of meaningful conversation, forcing me to stop thinking about your kids and start thinking about your political obsession. But if I say that, you can deny that you said anything political—even though we both know you did. I’d prefer that you just say, “Trump is a fascist,” or “Mamdani is a Jihadist Communist.” Then I can say, “I really don’t want to talk about politics. Have you seen the landscape exhibit from the National Gallery’s Corcoran Collection?”

On that point, I differ.

I suppose for some people that would indeed be a passive-aggressive way to start a political discussion while remaining able to deny that they started one. But I think it often is actually something quite different. It can be a way for a person to say something unifying rather than politically partisan, especially if the person knows that the listener is on the other side politically. The idea behind the statement could be, and sometimes is, that each side feels the country is facing a crisis or several crises, and maybe the sides just differ on how to solve it and whether the current administration is tackling it correctly or not. On occasion I’ve said to friends of mine on the left something like: “One thing we probably agree on is that these are difficult times and a lot of people are worried and upset” – or something of that nature – in order to convey both a reluctance to discuss politics itself and a way to say “we share the fact of being worried.”

Is it effective when I say this? Sometimes – especially when I say it to friends who already know my politics and they know I don’t like to discuss politics in person. I sometimes say it to people I barely know but am talking with in a social situation, when I want to deflect a political conversation by issuing a statement I think is non-controversial and general rather than specific.

Your mileage may differ.

The post On talking politics appeared first on The New Neo.

I almost wrote “I came across the obituary of a girl I knew as a college freshman.” But because the obituary was dated only a few years ago, of course by that time she was no girl. She was someone most people would describe as old.

But that’s not the way she exists in my mind’s eye, despite the article’s description of a long – and what sounds like a productive and happy – life. To me, she remains that seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl, the one I met in the first days of my stay at the far-off university I attended freshman year.

I didn’t fit in. Perhaps I wouldn’t have fit in anywhere; at the time, I was shy with strangers although not when you got to know me. I looked different from most of the students there, though. They dressed differently, they wore their hair differently, they understand the ropes of the place and I didn’t, and I was constantly being asked a question I had never heard before: “What are you?” Meaning “what’s your ethnic background?”

The person whose obituary I just found – I’ll call her Nancy, although that’s not her name – lived right across the hall from me and my roommate. She was the essence of cool at the time – the right clothes, the right hair, and tremendously attractive. But it wasn’t just her looks. She had a lively personality, was a bit quirky but not too much, and seemed especially sure of herself and comfortable in her skin without being obnoxious or even off-putting.

I lost touch with her after freshman year, and we hadn’t been close even then. But I wasn’t surprised to read about her accomplishments, both public and private, or the heartfelt tributes from friends. Such things fit with what I remembered.

I felt a sorrowful loss. She died not young, but younger than average. She apparently had some physical suffering in her final years; some of the friends alluded to her courage in the face of it. I wish I had known her better; she sounds like she would have been a good person to know. But it was not to be.

And she represents so many people I’ve lost, many of them people I lost touch with over the years but some of them those to whom I was close. There’s nothing to be done about it.

As one ages one has to be strong, that’s for sure.

The post On coming across the obituary of a college acquaintance appeared first on The New Neo.

We hadn’t spoken of politics in a long time, and it’s a topic I generally avoid. But during our friendly discussion it came up, and I asked her what is one of the things she dislikes most about Trump. She cited his white supremacism. I asked her on what she based the belief that he’s a white supremacist, and she cited the Charlottesville “good people on both sides” incident.

That’s both fascinating and depressing. This person isn’t ill-informed and she’s quite intelligent, but somehow that original lie, repeated over and over again, has become unassailable truth in her mind. That lie not only got halfway around the world before the truth had a chance to get its boots on, but it burrowed deep into many many minds and then was driven deeper by all the repetition. Correcting it requires a rather lengthy explanatory conversation, supporting documents and videos, and the will on the part of the listener to entertain the idea that such a deeply-entrenched, long-held, and multiply-sourced belief is incorrect. Not only that, but the belief fits in with so many other beliefs about Trump that have been repeated over the years, plus beliefs about Republicans and especially MAGA voters, that the task of getting the revised story across is nearly insurmountable.

This is just another musing of mine on the theme that got me started on blogging: how do minds change? It’s like the lightbulb joke: they have to want to change. Or, they have to have an experience or come across some knowledge that just happens to strike a deep chord that is the start of a mental (and sometimes emotional) journey from which there is usually no turning back.

The post The enormous value of lies as propaganda appeared first on The New Neo.

From the comments there, for example:

It’s so true. And it’s painful to deal with.

Yup! Thnx for your input about what we are all going through. It’s so friggin tragic ?

Yeah. I found that out in 2020.

I deleted every friend/ acquaintance I had. In this red state, they were all MAGAT. It was totally liberating!
I do feel a bit sad about only 1 of them of which I knew for 40 years. I do miss the person she used to be.
However I am better off without those toxic people.

Hi Cheri, it may seem harsh but it’s true and necessary.

I’ve lost 7 people who were once very dear to me because of MAGA. One, Mark S. became my BEST friend in 1965. I guess I never REALLY knew him at all.

Seems like the “loss” of those people was that commenter’s own choice – but he or she sees it as an inevitable outcome of their Nazi-esque political positions.

The post It’s hard to say goodbye to your MAGA friends but unfortunately they’re Nazis appeared first on The New Neo.

I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people.

It’s still more or less that 50/50 split, although TV cable news in general has become less influential and there are more varied alternatives, particularly online. There are also lone voices on the right at other networks, such as CNN’s Scott Jennings, who apparently is getting a well-deserved raise.

The leftward skew of most of the news on TV and elsewhere is driven by a number of things. I am pretty sure that the main one is that many or most of the people writing it and broadcasting it are true believers in their cause. They think they are helping to make sure that that stupid and unwashed 50% on the right doesn’t swell to become a far greater majority, and they are hoping that by reducing the American public’s exposure to any truth that might help the right, they are ultimately helping to shrink that 50% (and yes, I know; it might already be more than 50%).

I don’t ordinarily talk about politics to my friends. That’s not new for me; it’s something I can’t ever remember doing. It’s not that I didn’t have any interest in the topic for all those years. It’s just that I had no need to talk to friends about it. Friends were for other things – and besides, did we even differ? I didn’t know and apparently I didn’t care.

I recall, for example, that when I went back to graduate school in the 1990s, I’d been in school for two years in a very small program where I knew all of my fellow students very very well indeed but until the election of 1992 I didn’t know their politics. And the only reason I learned their politics was that the day after the election of Bill Clinton people came into class and mentioned that they were happy about the results. I remember being a bit surprised that everyone seemed to be a Democrat, but it had no special emotional importance to me and I saw it mostly as a curiosity.

It’s not that way anymore for so many people. Recently I lost another friend, not to death but to politics. This was someone I’d been close to for nearly forty years but who stopped talking to me with the election of Trump to a second term. She’d been aware of my differing politics for twenty years, but her TDS apparently finally reached a point where she is consumed by some combination of dread, fear, and hatred so powerful that she simply cannot talk to anyone on the right. And this is the case even though I virtually never talked about politics to her and she cites no specific offense on my part. It was enough merely to know that I am on the side of something she has come to feel is incredibly evil and dangerous.

And please don’t respond by saying something like “she was never really a friend” and “you’re better off.” She was a very good friend for almost four decades, and I don’t feel the least bit better off. As I get older, the loss of friends for any reason is extremely painful, and I find old friends to be irreplaceable.

I’ll close with this:

The post The American political divide appeared first on The New Neo.

I think there’s a huge difference between cutting off an acquaintance with whom you’ve already grown apart, and cutting off long-term friends or close family with whom you’ve previously had a good relationship. Cutoff, and even ghosting, might not be a big deal with the first and might even be mutually acceptable – although I wouldn’t recommend that anyone automatically assume it is. Relationships are not always symmetrical.

So if you ghost someone (and for anyone unfamiliar with the expression, it means to cut off communication without any sort of explanation or notice) – even if you think that person welcomes it or doesn’t care, and even if you never hear from the person again, which reinforces your assumption – it just might be that the person is hurt or even deeply hurt, confused, and shocked, and doesn’t know how to convey it to you.

When you ghost someone you simply don’t care – at least, not enough. Or maybe you care, but your main emotion is anger and you want to hurt the person’s feelings. He or she may not even know why you stopped communicating. And it’s far worse to do that to someone with whom you were close, and even worse if you previously had a good relationship except for politics.

I think it’s obvious by now that I’m not a fan of ghosting. Never have been, even before I ever heard the term.

Ghosting is at least somewhat cowardly, IMHO, especially if the person has never harangued you about politics but has merely politely disagreed, or if you don’t talk about politics with the person at all although you know you disagree. And of course politics isn’t the only reason for cutoff, not by a longshot.

I think it’s much better to have the courage to explain, which at least honors the depth of your past friendship or family tie by giving the person that much courtesy and that much respect. No need to act angry, either, and definitely no need to bring any third people into the mix.

I once experienced cutoff from a good friend but at least I knew why because she told me – and the reason wasn’t politics. But it was a misunderstanding I couldn’t seem to clear up although I tried. For five years we didn’t speak, but then slowly, with a series of steps, we became friends again and now (knock wood!) are very close friends again.

In contrast, I once was ghosted by an old and dear friend, and although I wrote her asking to please explain, she didn’t communicate at all for about seven years, until I saw her at a school reunion. I figured this was my chance – I went over and we chatted, and then I asked her point blank what had happened. She gave me a couple of reasons that didn’t make sense to me, but I didn’t argue with her. I knew it wouldn’t work, and I knew our friendship was over. But it was a tremendous relief just to see her and hear what she had to say.

Maybe that’s just me. But I don’t think I’m alone in wanting to know.

The post Ghosting and cutoff – political or otherwise appeared first on The New Neo.

I’m not talking about people who just don’t like Trump or his policies and choose not to vote for him. I know plenty of people like that. But there’s a subset who consider Trump nothing less than demonic.

I mean that quite literally – even though they’re not necessarily religious. The idea is that he’s uniquely evil, up there with the worst of history.

During the last few months of the 2024 campaign, as we know, the opposition compared him to Hitler and called him a fascist over and over. But now that he’s poised to become the next president, most Democrats don’t seem to really think Hitler is coming to power, and certainly the Bidens have given no indication that they believe such a thing, either.

But some people do believe it. They really really do. And I know a couple such people. One – a longtime good friend – is at the moment not talking to me because I support Trump. And this isn’t because I ever talk politics to her, because I don’t bring it up. It’s just because of wrongthink on my part.

The right may joke about Thanksgiving conversations and TDS but it’s truly a terrible thing when it causes that big a rift between family members and/or friends who were formerly able to get along well despite their political differences. It’s tragic, actually. And as far as I know it’s always or nearly always Democrats cutting themselves off from Trump voters. Maybe something similar has happened now and then when Biden was elected and coming from the right, but I never read about it and I certainly never did it nor would I ever think to do it. My perception is that Trump’s first term didn’t have nearly the divisive effect this second term seems to arouse – and it hasn’t even begun yet.

The fears I see expressed are way over-the-top and out of step with anything Trump has actually done or said he will do. It seems to be stirred up by MSM articles, pundits, social media, and the like, stating things about Trump that he never said he’d do and I don’t see any reason he ever would do. Or it’s about generalized fears that have no basis in reality and aren’t even specifically related to Trump, but often are blamed on him. Take this example of the latter:

“I’m afraid I’m going to be murdered” isn’t something you hear a 10-year-old say every day. However, that’s the message a child named Violet delivered during a shocking CNN segment featuring multiple transgender children and their parents.

“[I’m worried that] one day I’m going to be walking down the street, and someone is going to come up and like shoot me or something,” Violet said somberly in the opening exchange.

“That’s a really scary thing to be worrying about at 10 years old,” the CNN reporter replied, affirming this bizarre paranoia as if it were justified.

It is not.

While the debate over the medical transitioning of gender-confused minors, currently before the Supreme Court, is intense, often heated, and sometimes toxic, no one is randomly murdering 10-year-olds who identify as transgender. The other children on the CNN panel similarly indicated that they falsely fear their “lives” and “existence” are at stake throughout the shocking six-minute segment. This is just an extension of the false narrative, routinely propagated by so-called LGBT activists, that transgender people are frequently murdered for their identity when, in fact, their murder rates are below average.

Such fears are hardly limited to children, and sometimes they take the form of believing that Trump will do the killing (or incarcerating) himself or send troops to do it.

Do a search for “my loved ones stopped talking to me because of my politics” and you will probably see, as I did, plenty of discussions. All the ones I saw featured conservatives who said they had been shunned by friends or family or both. But it was the responses to them that were especially depressing. Many of the commenters said the equivalent of, “Of course they don’t want to talk to you; you’re a bigot (or some other extreme misstatement of what conservatives believe).”

Just to take a few typical examples:

You can have whatever belief system you want, but you have to understand that most people in today’s world don’t align with conservative politics, as the entire platform is based on stripping rights and discriminating against disenfranchised people. Most people don’t want to associate with that, and for good reason.

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of your own actions.

If you’re a republican and feel that half the population should lose autonomy over their bodies, that’s going to lose you a lot of female friends.

And others said things like “if you vote for Trump you vote for someone who thinks black or brown people have no right to be in this country.” Or worse.

But every now and then you see something like this:

To so grossly caricature half of our country (160 million human beings) with such antagonistic generalizations and flippantly condemn them as malicious or degenerates is irresponsible at best and catastrophic at worst.

Once upon a time, we all knew it was possible for one person to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, with political considerations falling all across a broad spectrum. We used to believe that listening to and celebrating differing opinions made us better, as a country and as people. But now it seems that tolerance has been infected by these dangerously divisive assumptions and absolutizations.

Echo chambers and free-thought are analogous to incestuous gene pools and evolution. Without the constant injection of variation, stagnation leads to the end of your kind. These people, who believe themselves to be highly intelligent, seem completely ignorant to the fact that ideological diversity is key to our survival and success as a nation. We need as many perspectives as we can get because who knows what problems tomorrow might bring.

I have yet to see a single comment on these threads from those who advocate cutoff citing actual policies of the actual Republican Party or of Trump himself. It’s all based on things like “he’s going to end abortion” or “he’s a racist who wants to kill black and brown people” or “he wants to take away our human rights,” or “he’ll take away Social Security.” That’s the sort of thing many people sincerely believe – as I said, I know some – and it’s tearing people apart.

This is the consequence of the opposition’s attempt to get Trump and to portray him as an awful person out to do serious harm. There are people who are very vulnerable to it, and with them it has had its intended effect.

The post Trump-hatred, fear, and cutoff appeared first on The New Neo.

Or, we question everything reflexively, sometimes from a paranoid stance that sees malignant conspiracies everywhere. But to actually look at each situation objectively and try to come to the best conclusion, minus confirmation bias? That’s hard and it’s rare. And though I believe it’s more rare on the left, I actually think it’s relatively rare on both sides of the political divide, because I think it’s rare in human beings.

I like to think I fall into that category of exceptions. Changers have some evidence about that, because at least once we shook off confirmation bias in the face of what we considered overwhelming evidence and changed our minds. But that doesn’t mean we always do it or even mostly do it.

What made me think about the question was this comment by “physicsguy” a while ago:

Just broke contact with a friend of over 50 years. Generally a good person, but since last week it’s been non-stop Trump is a felon. And all his circle of friends were piling on. I couldn’t take it anymore.

A familiar story. I responded this way:

You might try this with your erstwhile friend.

Gandhi was a felon.

Mandela was a felon.

Etc.

I think it would be a good effort, but I doubt it would work. The friend would have lots of available comebacks. One would be that they were arrested by the opposition for doing noble things, not making business entries about hush money payments to porn stars. Another would be to be outraged at comparing these admired people to someone as obviously awful (to their way of thinking) as Donald Trump. Another would be to change the subject. Another would be to refuse to answer. And so forth.

If a person wants to evade actually thinking about what’s been said, there are many avenues for that. And those avenues are usually taken.

The post Thinking about it appeared first on The New Neo.

When we were friends, I knew that she was a liberal Democrat (I wouldn’t ever have called her a leftist) and she knew I was on the right. It was never an issue between us, and although we sometimes discussed politics we didn’t do so often, and we never argued. It was one of those “agree to disagree” things, for the most part. Our friendship was based on other commonalities.

To the best of my recollection, we still were in touch during the Trump years, although not often. But it was just the natural attrition caused by time and distance. Every now and then I’d check her Facebook page and see what she was doing: her kids and grandkids and travels and garden and that sort of innocuous, pleasant stuff. Did she ever post anything political? I don’t recall seeing anything at all, but if I did it was of a mild sort.

But a little while ago I saw that she’d recently posted the following text, which apparently first started circulating back in 2022. I reproduce the whole thing here for you; the original had a different last sentence (which you can find at the link):

Dear Republican Party: You sold your soul. You used to stand for patriotism but sold your soul to a traitor who conspired with an enemy to destroy our democracy.

You used to stand for our armed forces but sold your soul to a draft dodger who mocked their courage and sacrifice.

You used to stand for hardworking Americans but sold your soul to a con man who made his fortune by cheating them.

You used to stand for the American dream but sold your soul to a racist who traded the Statue of Liberty for walls and cages while praising the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

You used to stand for family values but sold your soul to a predator who betrayed all three of his wives.

You used to stand for Jesus but sold your soul to a wolf in sheep’s clothing who has made a mockery of Christianity.

Currently under investigation for tax fraud, voter fraud, insurrection and violation of the Espionage Act, you continue to defend his lies. Whatever he paid you for your soul, I hope it was worth it. But knowing him, you’re probably still waiting for your check.

I’m not even going to bother fisking the supposed facts in the message; the falsehood of so many of them isn’t why I’m spotlighting this. I am more amazed at the fact that this previously mild-mannered and non-vitriolic person saw fit to post it with approval, as though excoriating half her fellow Americans for losing their souls to what amounts to a devil seemed an appropriate thing for her to do. I assume that she has no current friends on the right (I wouldn’t count, since we haven’t been in touch at all for four years or so).

It’s chilling because she used to be tolerant of other points of view, and it wasn’t all that long ago, and to the best of my recollection even included some of the Trump years. Her posting this makes me very sad, because it means either that she knows no one anymore who is a Republican and/or that she has no problem publicly insulting her Republican friends and acquaintances and relatives.

This behavior is very different from that of the person I used to know. But this post is not really about Marjorie. It’s that I think she’s emblematic of a great many other people. Something – and I believe it’s been the unremitting propaganda from the left, mostly based on lies but apparently very persuasive – has accomplished the transformative task.

The post More evidence of the depressing increase in political polarization and hatred appeared first on The New Neo.

When I accept an invite to eat out, I’m not cuffing myself to my dinner or lunch or brunch companion(s). I’m simply saying sure, I’ll go to the restaurant, eat with you and enjoy each other’s company. Yet, once seated, I’m routinely asked to share.

Quelle horreur!

To friends, family, and colleagues — past, present, and future — I don’t want to be rude. In fact, assuming that we’ll each order what we’d personally like for ourselves and that we’ll pay for those things on our own is the polite thing to do. On the other hand, putting me in the uncomfortable position of potentially having to say, “No, I don’t want to split the raw ground beef you’ve just referred to as ‘steak tartare’”— well, that may require some self-reflecting on your part.

I am puzzled by this person and his seeming inability to Just Say No.

There is apparently some widely held belief that agreeing to dine out with others comes with the expectation that splitting different things is part of the fun — the experience. Someone tell me where exactly that is written.

For some people, it is fun. But actually there is apparently some widely held belief that a question is a question, and an answer in the negative is perfectly all right.

If someone asks me to share food, it’s a negotiation. Sometimes it’s great, especially when I’m having trouble deciding between two dishes, and each of us orders one of them and we share. But if we don’t agree on whatever it is we might be sharing, I don’t have a moment’s hesitation to say no to the whole idea. I have no problem if the other person says no, and I’ve never known anyone else who gets upset by that, either.

I once knew a man who did not like to share food, even in a Chinese restaurant when dining out with a group at one of those round tables. He announced at the outset that he was ordering a certain dish and would not share it, nor would he take some of anyone else’s dish. It was a bit odd – he sat there and guarded his food, looking around suspiciously as though we were a pack of dogs about to grab it. But it’s not as though anyone stopped being his friend because of it.

I cannot imagine getting bent out of shape about this, and yet apparently some people do.

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