Sorry, My Country Trumps Your Friendship
My two cents about this meme message circulating out here in social media land. I’ve seen it before but yesterday, I scrolled by it and noticed a former friend of mine added in the comments that she lost a friendship because of political differences. Her comment inspired this post.
In 2016, just as the political shit was beginning to fan the flames of hate out here, I befriended a writer who had published two nonfiction books. Not sure how we connected but I liked her and the books she had written, stories about forgotten women of famous men. That’s how we connected, our mutual appreciation for women who made major contributions to their husbands’ success but never got credit. There are many of them over the course of history.
She was rather quiet and since I’m not, I was able to make introductions etc. into my writing tribe. Gladly, I did that for her. Then, in the fall of that year, I invited her to be my guest at a writing event. The last morning we were there, that maniac candidate had captured the news cycle with some craziness he espoused, something sensational which national news gobbled up and ran with it. I’m not sure how our conversation turned to that outlandish event but it did and that’s when she told me she liked him and likely would vote for him.
I was stunned, beyond.
She is an #immigrant whose day job was teaching high school, mostly hispanic students. She was #white and sole breadwinner in her family. As I recall, her husband suffered from some form of mental illness as did her grown daughter. Their family had some subsidies from the government to supplement her income. Her family depended on that money our federal govt programs delivered monthly.
And she was going to vote for that maniac.
Our budding friendship ended that day. She tried to tell me she didn’t know much about American politics but she knew enough to appreciate how our government helped her and her family live decently.
Thematically, her literary interest in forgotten women made more sense once she expressed her support for that racist, cruel man. Victims often support perpetrators. there’s no explaining it but many do.
If you dig the White Sox but I’m a diehard Cubs fan, sure, we can be friends. But when your value system allows you to support hate? When your value system allows you to support a #misogynist, a cheat, a con man who had no problem sicing his #magas on our Capitol? We can’t be friends.
Basic value systems are at the heart of enduring friendships. At least for me. I write this without tagging her though I hope she reads it. I write because on that thread attached to this meme I’ve posted above, she said she lost a friend due to political differences.
She was right.
She did.