Overheard In Conversation
I managed to sneak in a visit to some of the family recently. One of my brothers and his wife were down in Mexico a couple of weeks ago, and couldn’t wait to tell me about an encounter they had down there.
It seems that they met two couples from the United States during their vacation. One couple were Republican’ts; the other couple were Democrats. The couples were interacting without any problems until sometime mid-week, when it quickly became apparent that they were on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Once the political differences were out in the open, the Republican’ts refused to talk to the Democrats and actively avoided them for the rest of the week. It certainly made an impression with my family - one of which is pretty conservative, and one who is pretty liberal - that one side was more than willing to interact, more open to discussion, and more inclined to dismiss the political differences between them, than the other.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for passing the tale along to Your Humble Narrator, so that I could pass it along to you.
[Editors’ Note: this entry has been cross-posted at the Funny Farm]
September 16th, 2007 at 9:14 am
So essentially, Republicans are the snootiest elitists while Democrats are more likely to hang out with people of disreputable character.(/snark)
Personally, I can’t recall any Republican willing to do squat for me or with me in the past 22 years. Before that, I had several Republican friends whose company I enjoyed despite our political differences. The polarity today has been driven by nearly a quarter century of Republican control of the media and I’m not certain there’s a path back to civility.
If there is, it will take the dynamism of personal leadership to achieve, the likes of which are in short supply. I don’t see any FDR, Kennedy, or Reagan presently, in either party, so it’s likely to continue. And that’s good for the circus, but lousy for society. Which just means, always watch your back, because the government ain’t our friend.
September 16th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Personally, I have a lot of Republican’t relatives who won’t speak civilly with me any more either. But I guess it’s the progressive in me - I still hold out hope that they will see the light.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Can you say polarize? Sure you can. I’ve never seen our country so divided. My friend Joyce is 93, still politically active and claims she has seen it worse, and that politically, things will get better. I’m a Molly Ivins Democrat; actually a yellow dog Democrat. Personally, I’ve never seen it so fractured I can only hope it will get better.