In the thread below, the subject of the fabulous Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s friendship with the troglodyte Antonin Scalia was briefly discussed. Do you have asshole friends? I do.
Mostly I have asshole relatives, but some of my friends are assholes too, “asshole” being defined in this context as someone who thinks the SCOTUS would be better off with nine Antonin Scalias. I am related to people who fly Confederate flags, maintain arsenals, sport NRA stickers and get all their information from Fox News.
I have at least one friend who thinks climate change is a hoax — probably several. Many of my relatives think that people who haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior (including me) are going to roast for all eternity in a literal lake of fire and believe that being gay is a sin.
I love a good argument as much as the next person — my husband, my siblings and I argue about politics constantly, expressing opinions that range from Hillary to Bernie.
But with loved ones who hold crackpot, racist, homophobic and/or abjectly stupid views, we mostly just don’t talk about it. I don’t think our relationships could survive if we argued about it all the time, and since I otherwise value the relationships, I don’t go there — usually not unless they bring it up — and then, after expressing our diametrically opposed opinions, we typically agree to disagree.
How about you? Do you argue, avoid the topic or just cut assholes out of your life? Where do you draw the line?
My Truth Hurts
I’ve realized since we went into Iraq in the early aughts that they are usually not good faith debate partners. So screw ’em, they’re cut out. I don’t have time for willfully ignorant jerks. Friend or family.
b1narys3rf
http://friendswholiketrump.com/
Ran it while on facebook. Unfriended one person who didn’t shock me with their choice, and who doesn’t mean much to me personally anymore; childhood friend who grew very distant.
I am friends both in real life and in social media with other people who I have varying disagreements with politically, but usually we ignore it, or manage to keep it civil. But I can’t let stuff like this go.
It’s a Pandora’s Box, potentially, so think before you click.
Mudge
Arguing with assholes never changes their minds, it just causes dyspepsia. They operate in the fact free universe where “I believe” replaces “it has been shown”. Proper use, uttered without preamble, of the phrase “batshit crazy” will often shut them up.
randy khan
I have friends – including someone at work who I really respect – whose political opinions are so far from mine that I simply don’t talk about politics with them. (He and I both are conscious of this, and in fact for years we had a running joke that the only thing we agreed about was tobacco subsidies, albeit for entirely different reasons.) Some of those people are generous and kind in their personal lives, and in that case I don’t see why they can’t be your friends. Also, there’s the off chance you’ll convert them; I dated a woman who worked on the Ronald Reagan campaign in the early 1980s, and she’s now a Democrat.
This thread reminds me for some reason (maybe the comment about loving a good argument) of my father and uncle, who used to engage in knock-down, drag-out arguments every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I eventually learned that it was entirely recreational, and that one of them would pick a side and the other would take the opposite position, regardless of what they actually thought. (My mother once told me that the first time she saw it, she thought they hated each other until someone explained.) I think it came from going to a Jesuit high school.
schrodinger's cat
It depends on the person and situation. Many times the asshole is the loudest, others are too polite too intervene and the asshole thinks that everyone agrees with him. It is sometimes necessary to counter them.
Leumas
Yeah, what you said. I live in a very red state, so if I didn’t have friends such
as those you describe, it could get lonely. To obtain Democratic friends, you
sorta have to talk in code. :)
xenos
I used to always be open to at least limited discussion and friendliness. No longer.
I grew up with WWII as the primary historical event in my conciousness, and at a basic level determined that I would never tolerate a fascist. Now that people are proudly declaring a fascism that I always have them the benefit of the doubt that they did not really believe, it is too much.
They are dead to me.
Amir Khalid
@My Truth Hurts:
Lucky you. Most of us don’t have the luxury, do we, of cutting out all the assholes in our lives. There are certain people that propriety or our work/business or family/social decorum demands we maintain ties with.
RaflW
I have a few mildly assholeish friends, usually from long ago that I don’t see often. We avoid politics and such.
I don’t need to write them off, but I don’t feel close to them, and that’s fine.
Jager
My lovely sister is married to a right wing asshole. Not only is he crazy in his politics, he is bug shit about everything. Example: My niece (his stepdaughter) ordered a Moscow Mule one night while they were waiting at the bar for dinner. He jumped her shit about “who do you think you are with your fancy drinks, you think you’re better than everyone else.” You have to call prawns “big shrimp” if they are on the menu, the word prawn is too fancy for him. I was dating a Venezuelan woman for a time, I introduced her to him early on at a family event. The SOB must have asked her 20 times that night what part of Mexico she was from. How do we deal with him? We don’t talk to him anymore and he no longer shows up at any family get together. I haven’t spoken to him for 8 years. His own daughters hate his ass and avoid him at all costs.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
I have no asshole friends, only asshole relatives. It might be different if I lived in a different part of the country and/or worked in a less liberal industry. I run into occasional pockets of weirdness (even blue state liberals have their moments of strange racial or economic beliefs) but nothing all-pervading.
donnah
I have family members on my husband’s side who are such diehard Republicans that they are GOP volunteers in Virginia. We don’t have any contact with them at all. There are other circumstances in their case, but we just don’t see them or talk with them anymore.
I used to be a trainer at a women’s fitness club and 90% of the women were older Catholic Republicans. I used to hear some of the most vile things said about Democrats and more vile things specifically about Obama, and all I could do was walk away, or if other women in the group seemed uncomfortable, I would gently remind the rude ones to keep politics out of our discussions.
One day in particular though, I had to speak up. One of the women made a statement so obviously racist that I said, “Now you know that isn’t true, and I’m surprised you’d repeat it”. She had the good grace to blush and I told her that we as a country need to be, at the least, decent in spite of our differences.
People will say whatever they can get away with. I will be polite, but I’m not going to sit silently and let people make hateful comments.
Iowa Old Lady
It depends on what belief and how they act on it. I have friends (mostly Catholic) who think abortion is murder. They also think attacking women’s health clinics is a crime and would never do it or support people who do. I have one friend who thinks climate change is a hoax. We don’t talk about it. But Mr IOL and I were recently out with a group of people and one guy made racist remarks. I have tolerance for him, will not be in his presence if I can help it, and will ignore him if I can’t avoid it.
lamh36
I have acquaintances at work, social media, etc,
My true friends, all folks I’ve met in person and interacted with and discussed issues with are all along the same side of the political scale as I am, all Dems, but from conserative to liberal to inbetween, but all still consider themselves Dems.
I have NEVER been friends with anyone who was some crazed RWNJ or outright bigoted and radical Republican.
I separate colleagues from friends from acquaintances…particularly at work.
So I can say that none of my friends are assholish.
Kylroy
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Same here, but I have only asshole *relative*, singular. Sky blue city in a purple state, I get more political aggravation from people to my left than my right. My father-in-law is a Trump supporter, though, and keeping things civil with him has caused my wife a fair amount of distress.
jharp
I cut them out of my life.
And I have no regrets.
Mr. Longform
My best buddy from high school spent his twenties driving for his job and listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio – every day. That was his education. The first time I realized that he took all that crap seriously, I was in shock. This is the guy I bonded with more than a brother, who could make me laugh on cue, who had all of those profound meaning-of-life talks with me when we were 15. We’ve had a couple of of heated discussions where we told each other how much we hated each other’s political views. I think I’d be willing to agree not to talk about that stuff and just hang out, but he is as politically engaged as any of us who read these blogs (if you can call what he does “engaged”) and he is always always fighting against the liberal evildoers. His facebook page is a steaming pile of trump. It makes me sad more than angry, frustrated that there is no possible way to move the needle with him.
Gindy51
Nope, not one. Life is too short to waste any time on any one who acts like an asshole.
I follow a very simple rule: If I wouldn’t die with you I sure don’t want to be friends with you.
guachi
My in-laws are wingnuts.
I’ll engage them on Facebook when they continually post obvious BS that a 10 second search that invariably sends me to Snopes can debunk.
And they still keep the post up anyway. It’s like being depantsed in public and then walking around with your pants around your ankles.
lamh36
As for my family, aside from local politics, my family doesn’t discuss politics…I’m usually the one who may bring up the subject. The more bougie one are maybe “conservative” Dem in their leanings, but they are mostly older and that’s not uncommon in older people of color. Still, they consistently vote with Dems
rikyrah
THAT IS PHUCKING ETHER!!!
Keith Boykin
@keithboykin
Or maybe Scalia thinks blacks are slow because the only one he knows is Clarence Thomas.
GoBlue72
Pretty early on in my life I decided that as soon as I graduated high school, I was departing for the big city and would never return. Intentionally organized my education, career and life around bring an urbanite. So have always lived in a large city (Boston, SF, Seattle, Oakland) in blue state.
My familial relatives are on the other side of the country and I see them once a year at holidays. I get the occasionally aggravating far lefty in my circle (the kind obsessed with peak oil and the NSA reading our emails), but that’s about it.
Kylroy
@Iowa Old Lady: Catholics can be hard to peg in the left-right divide. You’ll get people who are adamantly anti-abortion pushing for refugee rights and protesting the death penalty. When the 2008 Santorum run had talking heads going on about a Catholic voting bloc and expecting it to act essentially like Evangelicals, I knew these people had no clue what they were talking about.
rikyrah
JUST STOP!!!!
NBC NewsVerified account
@NBCNews
Jeb Bush: Trump is ‘the other version’ of Barack Obama http://nbcnews.to/1TBvK8u
Waldo
I have several asshole Facebook friends. Racists, xenophobes, gun nuts and Christian zealots — in some cases all of the above. For the sake of my blood pressure I should unfriend them, but I’m afraid I’d miss their funhouse-mirror view of the world.
NotMax
Life’s too short to suffer cretins.
lamh36
Speaking of assholes
Jeb Bush: Trump is ‘the other version’ of Barack Obama
As the kids say, “Bish…whut?”
OzarkHillbilly
Same as you, Betty, same as you.
patrick II
I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today (I am not a fan, but an eavesdropper) and he was promoting a Youtube video Darth Trump.
It is rare that I agree with Rush on anything, but I have to say Trump as Darth Vader with even more ego worked for me. Maybe they don’t see the satire?
Joel
Mostly, I moved away from my friends/acquaintances that have deplorable views, although I do count a handful of libertarians among my social circle. Usually it’s just intellectual wankery — when it counts, they’re Democrats, or even more likely, non-voters.
Dave
@My Truth Hurts: This is what I do as well.
Bobby Thomson
I have been fortunate enough not to have troglodytes in the family since my stepmother died. My fundie sister lives in another state and talks about religion, not politics. As for friends, I have various acquaintances but few friends, and I don’t build relationships with people whom I want to punch in the face.
Old Dan and Little Anne
Do I have asshole friends and relatives? Why yes I do. I never say anything to the miserable fucks regarding politics. They get their jollies trolling me in person and once in awhile online but I always enjoy telling them that they are brain dead rock eaters so stfu.
Brachiator
Everybody believes something stupid, sometimes harmfully stupid. A woman friend became a militant vegetarian, insisting that humans never evolved to eat anything other than vegetables. A good friend and I agreed on most political and scientific issues. But he also was a firm believer in alternative medicine. His brother, who also rebuffed traditional medicine, may have died in part because he insisted on taking weird Chinese medical products and avoided real medical care.
An Egyptian American friend believes that Israel won the 6 Day War because of a secret weapon that demoralized Arab forces: blonde blue eyed white women pilots flying a secret force of American aircraft. There are a number of areas that we have to avoid. He also has some unfortunate views on the role of women in society.
My family and I are generally on the same page with respect to politics and many topics. However, some of them are deeply, conservatively religious, and simply cannot understand how I could be agnostic. I have in-laws who do not accept evolution, including one person who is an engineer.
My best friend is convinced that I am completely wrong about some topics, but we have never talked about it, nor have I ever deeply criticized her about some areas where I think she is full of it. Funny thing about some friendships. The friendship is more important than some beliefs or topics.We try not to make disagreements personal. But we agree more than we disagree about most things, and I don’t think there are any views we hold that the other person would consider to be abhorrent.
Bobby Thomson
@Amir Khalid: it’s a matter of degree, and depends on how a friend is defined.
Laertes
I’ve got some heinous wingnuts in the extended family and among the in-laws. I engage them, gently and respectfully, if they bring that shit when I’m around, but they mostly don’t. I don’t try to win–I just firmly hold my ground and deflect the stupid.
Family is bigger than politics. If one of my heinous wingnut in-laws were running for office, I’d vote for him.
Turgidson
I don’t have a ton of political asshole friends/family. I tend to avoid the topic with those few. My father used to be an amusing sparring partner when he was a fairly staunch Randroid Libertarian who thought FDR was the worst thing that ever happened to this country. I’m not sure what changed him – though I think it started with Reagan’s presidency, who made a bunch of fairly libertarian promises but then stocked up his administration with a bunch of crooks and incompetents. He also became more aware and disgusted by how libertarians always seem to associate with retrograde white supremacists and the like. Then he saw his long-ago hero Alan Greenspan end up looking like a complete charlatan and fraud when the economy went tits up in 2008 even after Mr. Andrea Mitchell said such things couldn’t happen under the grace and wisdom of the invisible hand.
Now he starts arguments with me about Obama, but he does it on “OBAMA IS WORSE THAN BUSH HE SOLD US OUT” favorites like drones and Obama’s employment of Wall Streeters on his economic team. I still find this disorienting and often irritating, but I’ll take it as a massive improvement.
Redshift
I have one friend from a while back who is a major gun bunny (single-issue voter) and generally Republican because of that. I don’t see him much because he moved and has a toddler, and the activity we used to be involved in together has kind of died out. He occasionally posts obnoxious stuff on Facebook, and other friends tangle with him, but I just avoid it. He’s not really an asshole other than that one topic.
I have a friend at work who has a lot of RWNJ views, but he is, weirdly, very much not an asshole (he also knows he’s outnumbered in the group of friends around here.) We just avoid talking politics, but I constantly have the urge to try to convert him. Occasionally someone will bait him, which is how I know he believes that pastors are in danger of having sermons censored by the government (and it’s happening in Canada!), and Tesla is getting massive subsidies from the government, and stuff like that.
He is responsible for the purest statement of conservative selfishness I’ve heard. In reference to local bond issues on the ballot, he said “It didn’t benefit me, or anyone I know, so I voted against it.”
But since neither of those are really assholes, I guess that means I don’t put up with assholes as friends.
The Thin Black Duke
@lamh36: Yeah, exactly. What you’re talking about is the way that I try to conduct my life, especially as I’m getting older and I understand that there’s less time to waste, y’know? And one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my life is knowing the difference between “friends” and “acquaintances”.
bemused
@Jager:
He is extremely insecure, irredeemable, needs a wide berth. Your poor sister though. How in the world does she cope living with him?
Gravie
My definition of asshole is based entirely on attitude, not on political or religious beliefs. In my experience, assholes 1) love to jump into a non-political conversation with an utterly irrelevant, and often offensive, statement designed to rile people up; 2) always have to have the last word; and 3) mock people who disagree with them. As My Truth Hurts said upthread, they are not good faith debaters so I don’t see any point in trying.
SFAW
I don’t have any asshole friends.
But, interestingly enough, ALL of my friends say they have one asshole friend – but they won’t say who it is. Hmmm …
@rikyrah:
Bless you, child, for the laugh of the day.
Betty Cracker
@donnah:
Yeah, that’s true. I’ve brushed back people who said hateful shit in much the manner you described. I am especially vigilant on that front when there are kids around. But at this point, most of my wingnut relatives and friends know better than to say stuff like that around me.
Amir Khalid
@Bobby Thomson:
It is indeed. Maybe we should be speaking of people we’re obliged to endure.
Cacti
@srv:
Maybe they could do a mock “good guy with a gun” scenario, where they give hypothetical “good guys” fake guns, and tell them that at some unspecified time and day, a mass shooting will happen, and it’s up to them to stop it, without harming any innocents, as real world good guys with guns have been known to do in Texas.
hitchhiker
Funny you should ask. Last week I got to spend some time in Phoenix with my favorite brother and my high school best friend, who are married to each other. They live in a conservative town in northern lower Michigan. I live in deep blue Seattle. I sort of knew they were on the R side of things, but because we almost never see each other, it was just a vague suspicion.
Then I walked into their hotel room and Fox was on. Uh oh. Over dinner, I learned that my old friend has never used the internet. Ever. My brother gets online once a week or so, usually to play poker. He does have a f/b page, but he never opens it. He also doesn’t like to use his email because it’s too full of f/b spam. (facepalm)
Neither of them owns a cell phone.
I got kind of excited when I realized that I had unique access to the very kinds of voters who are most opaque to me! What on earth were they thinking? The answer was easy. They were thinking that Fox was a legit & interesting news source and that Obama was an underqualified hater of white people who has done a lot of damage to the USA. They were thinking that Romney was right about the “takers.” Where they live, there are maybe two black families. All the Hispanic people are migrants who show up to work the cherry harvest. They don’t know anybody who’s Asian or from the Middle East. They’ve never met a Jewish person. They don’t even know anybody who knows anybody like that.
From their perspective, people like me are just puzzling. Can’t I see what’s right in front of my face?
The only really bad moment came when my dear friend made a joke as we left the (fantastic Mexican) restaurant. The Hispanic maitre d was asking in a friendly way if this was our first time there, etc. We told him where we were from (Seattle, Michigan). He smiled and said he’d love to get up to Seattle sometime.
My friend gave him a mock frown and asked if he didn’t want to visit Michigan, too . . . silence, and then he said, “Not really!” and I laughed. She said something under her breath like, “You should, there’s lots of cherries to pick.” And as we were getting in the car she was chuckling about how that wouldn’t have been PC to say out loud.
That moment was just sort of crystallizing for me. She morphed before my eyes from being the kind and hilarious person I’ve known for 50 years to being an aging bigot from a small town who thinks it’s amusing to make a joke about how a random Hispanic man would naturally be interested in migrant work.
All the struggle for equality, all the unfair labor practices, all the pain of being stereotyped, all the wretched history of relations between the USA and Latin America — ha ha ha. There’s lots of cherries to pick.
Said the white woman as she walked away.
AliceBlue
@Leumas:
Pretty much the same situation I’m in. I don’t talk politics with most of my relatives and most of the people I know.
Betty–next time someone tells you you’re going to roast in an eternal lake of fire, just use a line of my grandmother’s: “If people like you are going to be in heaven, then I don’t want to go.” Shuts ’em up every time.
nwerner
My father was a Goldwater Republican and my mother never seemed to care much about politics. He passed away in 2005 and I’d like to think that he’d have traversed the same political path as I did in the wake of Schiavo and the Iraq aftermath; he was opposed to the war in Iraq from the outset.
Since he died, my mother has gone full mental wingnut. I can’t have a conversation with her without her awaiting the first opportunity to unload about “that sonuvabitch in the White House”. No amount of empirical evidence or good-faith reasoning will dissuade her from her viewpoints. She’ll occasionally act as though she is receptive to reason but, like a vampire needing fresh blood, she goes back to Fox News to be re-energized. I’ve tried to explain to her the hypocrisy of her being a retired State worker with a full pension and lifetime medical insurance in addition to receiving Medicare and Social Security holding her viewpoints but it’s of no use.
We live on opposite ends of the country so I don’t have to see her very often but she is getting up in years at this point and it would be nice for my children to be able to spend some time with their grandmother because she is the only remaining grandparent they have and the only one they’ve ever known. I talk to her maybe four to six times a year and I have to brace myself for those calls and the inevitable denouement where I hastily explain that I don’t pay much attention to politics anymore and then abruptly end the phone call.
I often wonder how many other people there must be out there in the same situation as I am. Fox News talks about traditional values a lot but from where I stand, it seems likely that it’s destroyed a fair share of families in its own right.
JPL
@rikyrah: Earlier I was telling a friend about the comments of Scalia. She did some googling and I guess Sharpton said he felt he was at a Trump rally, rather than the Supreme Court.
Cacti
I don’t evangelize my opinions on family members I know disagree with me, but I won’t stay silent when someone starts to spout hateful wingnuttery either.
My brother in law and I barely speak, since I called him a bigot a few years back for saying you can’t be a Muslim and a good American.
Betty Cracker
@Laertes: I believe that family is bigger than politics in the sense that I won’t disown family members who have troglodyte views, but I would definitely NOT vote for a wingnut relative.
@Gravie: I probably should have substituted “conservative” or “wingnut” for “asshole” in the above because, as you note, the definitions are not always interchangeable. If the wingnuts in my life were not generous, loving people, I wouldn’t bother with them.
Gin & Tonic
This is easy. I don’t belong to Facebook, I have a small, rational family and very few friends. The only asshole I can think of whom I’d encounter once in a while is my son-in-law’s father, who is your stereotypical wingnut. But he lives far away and doesn’t get around much anymore, so I seldom have to deal with him. And my daughter, to her credit, also thinks he’s an asshole, so contact is fairly limited anyway.
rikyrah
Alycee
@jazziz2
Answer on @Quora by Jay Bazzinotti to What has Barack Obama done that gets so many people angry? https://www.quora.com/What-has-Barack-Obama-done-that-gets-so-many-people-angry/answer/Jay-Bazzinotti …
Calouste
@Kylroy: There’s a reason “Cafetaria Catholic” is a well-known phrase and “Cafetaria Evangelical” isn’t.
Jager
@bemused:
It came up over Thanksgiving, no answers. My niece thinks her Mom is just too nice to get into with him, although after her third mimosa the morning after T-Giving she told us she thinks she could talk her into leaving him.
PurpleGirl
I learned early not to discuss politics or religion with my relatives. I grew up being the pinko-commie-liberal in my family. I have a number of neighbors with whom I can’t talk politics because they are RWNJs and they can really get me agitated. I guess there are a couple of friends who see themselves as libertarians and I don’t discuss politics with them either — I’m a government statist after all. (Now to read the thread as it is so far.)
unsympathetic
Even better.. Are any of these wingnut friends currently unemployed because their so-called skills are a luxury good?
And there’s no cognitive dissonance between reality and their voting as though they’re independently wealthy..
Botsplainer
I’ve excised a few:
-One asshole friend from high school days, as he’d gotten so rabid with his Stormfront and National Vanguard based commentary that he was starting to put that shit directly on my Facebook wall. Its a shame – I’d done a lot of work for members of his extended family over the years.
-One asshole former law partner (who happened to also be a childhood friend of an uncle). He’s hyperconservative, an abjectly racist, misogynist and homophobic divorced Mormon closet case with one gay brother and another in prison for Medicaid/Medicare fraud billed through his medical practice. This one had taken to scouring my old timeline posts in order to argue points.
-One asshole acquaintance who’s been running an Examiner page full of conservative nonsense. He’d been scouring old posts and tag teaming with the asshole former law partner.
Hildebrand
All four of my sisters are dyed in the wool Republicans. Two are fanatical about Ben Carson, and the other two are still hoping Jeb! finds a way (they went to Jeb when Walker got out – both are in Wisconsin). I don’t talk to any of them about politics, as their likes and dislikes are all visceral, and often larded with evangelical nonsense-speak that I cannot even begin to handle. I don’t know how they turned out this way – my Dad was apolitical, and my Mom firmly believed (she died in 1992) that we hadn’t had a decent President since Kennedy (she was the type that made me sit and watch the Watergate hearings).
coin operated
My brother went from semi-liberal hippie type to full-on bible-banging, Fox-watching, gay-bashing gun nut after a stint in prison. My dad can still talk to him, albeit briefly…I can’t.
A Ghost to Most
@AliceBlue:
I say “I prefer to go to hell. The company is better”
bemused
I do have a few relatives and friends that are Republicans but not assholes. They are intelligent, caring and a lot of fun to be with…as long as we stay away from politics. One woman is much more rightwing, is a fan of Trump and was a fan of Palin, maybe still is and listens to Michael Savage, thinks he is funny. I really don’t want to know any more than I do of the extent of her rightwingism. At the time Zimmerman murdered Michael Brown, she said something that shocked me so much I can’t remember what it was now (blocked it out) but I had to go outside for awhile before I exploded. It’s like a Jekyll and Hyde thing and I can’t wrap my mind around it. It’s as if she is two different people.
Marc
I have very few I consider friends, just to keep the asshole ratio to a minimum. I’ve dropped folks from Facebook, and in one instance was asked by a long term acquaintance when I changed – and I pointed out I hadn’t changed, everyone else (including him) had moved to the hard right over the years. He thought I was being ‘dogmatic’ by not changing my views over that time – and I replied that I was on the correct side the issues all during that timeframe. I have a Fox-watching relative who has spouted off, and I’ve replied with facts and followed up with emailed links to the sources. Needless to say, he hasn’t done much political posturing in a while when I’m around. Facts having a liberal bias and all, don’t exactly help his worldview.
I’m amazed at how some are lead by the nose by those personalities they watch on TV or hear on the radio. Anthrax, Ebola, Jade Helm, ISIS, Obamacare, Border Walls, Planned Parenthood, IRS, etc. So easy to keep the base enraged/distracted. But that is what the ‘news’ is – propaganda and opinion shaping, not investigative reporting. An informed citizenry is not in their business model, and I’ve come to distance myself from those I feel are willfully ignorant by parroting talking points.
Peale
@Cacti:
Maybe the scenario is that the good guy slowly builds up rage against pencil necks and other pointy heads at the college who’ve been making fun of him and just unloads on them. He was a good lawful gun owner until mockery set him over the limit. He can lecture everybody about how he was really a good, lawful gun owner for all but 20 seconds of his life, so don’t judge him. He’ll lecture the dead people about how he wouldn’t have shot them if they had drawn first.
Aaron E. Baker
My father drank the Fox News Kool-Aid some time ago, which is distressing in part because he often isn’t an asshole. Also he’s very smart (a philosophy MA at the University of Chicago). I keep hoping to convince him that much of what he now believes is (morally as well as intellectually) beneath him–but I haven’t made much progress.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@nwerner:
Fox News is a notorious destroyer of families. It definitely blew a giant hole in mine and made it almost impossible to have a rational conversation with my (now late) father.
raven
I want to hear from McMclaren
johnnybuck
Hell, I live in Georgia. One simply cannot avoid the stupid here, it is everywhere. All my relatives are wingers because all of their friends are wingers. They are decent people though, (who aren’t particularly political in any sophisticated sense) that choose not to mouth their bullshit when I’m around. I respond in kind. Mostly I unfollow (but not unfriend) folks on FB, either co-workers, clients, high school friends that spout the stupid, because most of them are good people, just willfully ignorant. But I don’t tolerate assholes, ever. I’m am perfectly happy to give as good as I get.
WereBear
Essentially similar. Like a needle pointed towards North, I was willing to leave almost everything behind and make a new life. With new people. We might have some friend disagreements since I am now in a more rural area than the NYC metro I spent a lot of years in, but I don’t wrangle. We discuss, amicably.
Relatives… well. Whatcha gonna do.
raven
@johnnybuck: You could come over and hide in Athens, they are still here but they blend in.
skerry
@srv: Exactly what students need the weekend before finals week.
Karen
@b1narys3rf:
It didn’t work, it said “no results”
Hoodie
I have some friends who have asshole political views, but otherwise can be fine. We stick to sports, we’re ok. Conversely, I have acquaintances I agree with politically, but are really kind of assholes otherwise. My sister was a big Romney supporter, but she’s a sweetheart. She was trying on libertarianism the last time I saw her. I think the fundies and the anti-woman stuff in the GOP was finally grating on her, especially since her loser of a son was all into fundie “man is the king of the family” stuff even though he can’t find his ass with both hands and has already made a mess of his life. I didn’t have the heart to point out how juvenile libertarianism can be.
goblue72
@WereBear: Pretty much. Relatives are relatives – you don’t really get to choose them.
With people I get to choose (friends), life is too short.
As someone noted above, there is a difference between friends and acquaintances. Small talk with business associates and folks in one’s business network is one thing – that’s just part of everyday life, and usually winds up just being a random assortment of people. Work is work – which is why God invented small talk about sports and the latest binge watching TV show on Netflix/HBO.
Schlemazel
Steve King: Even Muslims In Congress Won’t Renounce Sharia Law
My Congressman is Keith Ellison, a more decent, honorable & hardworking person would be hard to find in the US Congress. That he has to be insulted by this asshole from Iowa is really amazing.
johnnybuck
@raven: Well, I live near a college town (Carrollton- UWG) and that helps mitigate it somewhat, but you gotta go out into greater Georgia sometimes.
O/T What are your thoughts on the Kirby Smart hire?
bmcchgo
I have mostly gay friends, but there are a few gay acquaintances that identified as Republicans. Most Gay Republicans I know are not of the RWNJ-types. They do consume right wing media (Fox, Brietbart) They tend to be moderates who will mention Kasich as their preferred choice, for example. They are never up for heated political arguments in mixed company and tend to back down once their Hannity talking points are ripped to shreds. Need it be pointed out that they are all white males.
That’s the closest I come to ‘asshole’ in my little Liberal hamlet suburb of Chicago.
raven
@johnnybuck: I’m happy as a hog rootin in manure! Go Dawgs!
shinobi42
I was just reading this article the other day about how Political Identity is now such a huge vehicle for discrimination.
I struggle with it a bit because I do feel that someone who is willing to claim a party currently represented on the national stage by Donald Trump, kinda deserves to be discriminated against. But I also think people have a lot of misguided party loyalty, and that their own ideas about the party can keep them from being free to switch.
Essentially, we’re screwed.
bemused
@Jager:
Well, your sister’s home life can’t be very relaxing or peaceful living with him.
goblue72
@bmcchgo:
Not really. Everyone’s favorite Tory to pick on around here is Andrew Sullivan, a white gay male conservative.
JPL
Since I don’t listen to 24/7 or read opinion pieces, friends have trouble discussing their politics with me.
If someone asks if I read, Krauthammer latest column, I say I don’t read opinion pieces. The problem I have is drawing a line about someone’s color of their skin. That’s a total walk away for me.
Calouste
OT: A petition to ban Adolf Trump from the UK has reached the 100,000 signatures needed for it to be discussed in Parliament. It only took about one day to gather all the signatures.
Brachiator
@A Ghost to Most:
Or maybe I’m in hell. That’s okay. I’m not scared of hell. It’s just heaven for bad people.
–Doctor Who
johnnybuck
@raven: Same here!
chromeagnomen
no, i do not have asshole friends, or rather, that is a group rapidly diminishing. i will not associate myself with people who are republican. it does not matter to me that we do not discuss political topics; it is enough that they hold them. i have two brothers who live close by, and i will not engage them in any sort of conversation except when absolutely unavoidable. i fully accept that this attitude puts me clearly in the ‘asshole’ camp, but these are special times, and my life is growing too short to bother making any pretense of civility with those with whom i so completely disagree. i regard them as flawed moral creatures who will never be other than suspect in all things moral and ethical.
Scapegoat
@b1narys3rf:
Phew…. only got four FB (very tangential) “friends” on The Dumpster List.
Got a similar search for LinkedIn? Now, THAT is a list worth pruning down with this criteria!
PurpleGirl
Now on TCM: Seven Days in May
charluckles
I love to argue and coming from a red state and born of red state stock my life is full of people whose opinions I think are misguided, at best. Most of the time I end of pissing other people off so bad they end up quitting our argument, so maybe I am the asshole. Although I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that no one likes to have the easy and obvious flaws of their argument pointed out. And with the current right wing in this country entire arguments consist of easy and obvious flaws.
Steeplejack
@lamh36:
Special for you: Taraji P. Henson and James Corden read for the part of Cookie on Empire.
J R in WV
My late father was a Nelson Rockefeller Republican as I was growing up, quite liberal socially, pro integration, not religious – helped to found a Unitarian fellowship, etc.
Then after my Mom died, he started spending winters in Houston, where my brother lived at the time. He also started watching Fox, and became, well, different. We had to agree not to talk politics. I never told him his presidential votes were being canceled by Mom’s votes, she decided the Republican use of religion and anti-women nonsense was just too far for her.
My brother is a life member of NRA and had Bush ’04 bumper stickers on his vehicles. I don’t talk politics with him. Mrs J went up to visit him and his wife while they were in Westchester NY and she was on temp assignment in NYC. He asked her not to tell the folks that he was going to a Methodist church with new wife… he was an executive with Fortune 50 firms, so going to church may have been good career-wise.
Mrs J’s family has been cut off but for a couple of cousins. Her sisters turned against her, and cut her off for a while, and when they kind of reached out after a couple of years, she gave them what for. One of them might be salvageable, but the other is a monster and seemed to have influenced the other…
My friends are like most of us on B-J. I have neighbors I don’t talk politics with, they know we are union workers and liberal Democrats, and I know they’re rwnj – mostly highly christian. Sweet people, but for the mental disease requiring them to believe in a fantasy from 2500 years ago.
No God worth believing in would send good kind people to Hell on a technicality.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
FYWP!
@lamh36:
Special for you: Taraji P. Henson and James Corden read for the part of Cookie on Empire.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
I always liked this Doctor Who exchange:
“The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules.”
“Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.”
RSA
I know the political leanings of only a handful of my friends and family, so for this specific definition, I don’t know if I have any asshole friends. Under a more general understanding, all of my friends are pretty nice people.
Bill Arnold
@nwerner:
This article “I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria ” made the rounds last year. (Comment count is current 2819)
agorabum
I used to be in the military and had plenty of friends with a wide range of opinions; including one that was a proud ‘dittohead.’ Despite that, he wasn’t personally an a-hole; we’d argue about politics, agree to disagree, and go on to have good times together. If people can do that – agree to disagree and then change the subject – they can be friends. If they are loud mouth aholes about it, you can’t.
Steeplejack
@Laertes:
WTF?!
So, hypothetically, if Donald Trump or Ted Cruz were your in-law, you would vote for him?
Bill Arnold
I have one FNN-watching wingnut friend. Funny thing is, the way he talks about how badly evil corporations treat their employees (his dentistry patients), he might as well be a progressive activist. Just have to get him to stop blaming corporate bad behavior on Obama.
Andrey
If they’re set in their ways, I cut them out. Friendship, to me, is about whether I respect someone as a person. The measure of respectability is how a person treats total strangers, not how a person treats their own friends and family. That’s the difference between being good and being nice. I have no interest in maintaining friendships with people who are nice but not good.
Of course, people are not binary, so that decision isn’t made lightly, or without an attempt at convincing first.
NotoriousJRT
I’m afraid that I am the asshole in my posse. I have no patience for my “independent” friends and conservative family members.
JaneE
Most of my relatives qualify as assholes. The ones I don’t know about is because I have studiously avoided mentioning any controversial subjects with them. The first time I realized that a relative was also a nut job, I was surprised that someone I had thought intelligent and reasonable could be adamantly neither on certain topics. Most of my relatives I don’t talk to, period. They don’t have enough sense to avoid topics we disagree on, and I won’t waste my time arguing with them, so we just don’t speak. I don’t need the aggravation.
Richard Mayhew
@Scapegoat: Good link — just ran that on my real life Facebook account and I was surprised that I only had three friends (2 ref friends including one who turned down Obamacare which made him reffing D-1 basketball as a full time job instead of a hobby possible, and my prom date). I would have expected a couple more referee buddies to be Trump’s core demographic
Smiling Mortician
@b1narys3rf: I’m way, way late to this party, but I was thrilled to see No Results among my small (~200) group of friends. Thanks!
The Other Chuck
Some of my friends are gun nuts, but other than sharing something assholish on facebook now and then causing me to unfollow them, that’s about as far as it goes. They never bring it up in meatspace. I have no friends who preach a God that likes to roast gays and atheists, because I don’t make friends with bad people. Last friend who turned into a raving wingnut, I decided he was no friend, and I never talk to him anyore. Friendship is about quality for me, not quantity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Smiling Mortician:
I was relieved but not surprised.
Phoebes in Chicago-land
I actually have a different problem. I’m friends with a fair number of Democrats who are “disappointed” with Obama because he “hasn’t done enough” liberal things. And they don’t like Hillary because she’s a “corperatist”, so they’re not going to vote. I’ve tried the “Supreme Court” arguments as well as abortion rights and just plain common sense arguments.
They’re much more frustrating than the dim bulbs on the Right because these people tend to be smart in every other way. SIGH
Disappointed Democrat
I actually have a different problem. I’m friends with a fair number of Democrats who are “disappointed” with Obama because he “hasn’t done enough” liberal things. And they don’t like Hillary because she’s a “corperatist”, so they’re not going to vote. I’ve tried the “Supreme Court” arguments as well as abortion rights and just plain common sense arguments.
They’re much more frustrating than the dim bulbs on the Right because these people tend to be smart in every other way. SIGH
gelfling545
Over the years I’ve known a lot of people in ways in which we just had contact in some small area of our lives and so their politics, religious views, etc just didn’t come into play. That’s getting harder to do now with everybody advertising their opinions on the internet.
I just had to de-friend a nephew on Facebook because his idiocy was just getting to me. I would respect his right to his political views if he actually had any but he will not take the trouble. Instead he just finds the most absurd & easily debunked internet memes and posts them with some pithy comment like “Yeah, dude.” If he were smarter I’d think he was trolling us but it’s not likely. Lately he’s all hot on gun rights although he’s never owned a gun or shown any inclination to should he actually be able to afford one. He’s just intellectually lazy & a bigot & no amount of shared family history can allow me to keep rolling my eyes & moving on.
BruceFromOhio
All three.
If we’re drinking, when they pull a gun: I’m out. If we’re sober, I’ll politely ask that it be safed and secured elsewhere. If they object, I’m out.
Really, it’s not that hard. After a while, people get it.There’s not much else to say when someone you trust and respect says, you are being foolish, please stop it.
Ruckus
It depends on the context. At work we don’t discuss politics much at all. Friends? I’m sorry but I’d rather have no friends that RWNJ friends. Relatives? I’ve already cut out the assholes but none of this was caused by politics. One was for religious assholyness, one for just being a flaming asshole. That doesn’t leave a lot of people, only one relative older than me is still alive and that’s the religious one. The others live in different parts of the country and we just don’t get together anymore.
b1narys3rf
@Scapegoat:
You’re a daring one. If one existed for LI, I wouldn’t use it – the number of smiling wingnuts in white-collar and blue-collar land (what’s left of it) is probably way too high to jeopardize your professional life.
I have worked with no less than I’d estimate 3 or 4 Republican managers in my life. One saw the light during the awful Bush years. I give him a lot of credit. Most won’t.
I remember at my last job that some basic white girls who worked in middle management actually had RMoney stickers on their car. I already thought they had extremely annoying, superficial (even for that setting) personas and was neither surprised nor disappointed. Would have loved to ask them if they wanted their own and/or their future basic white girl daughters to have their sexual behavior and reproductive health endangered, and their pay never be equitable.
Scapegoat
@b1narys3rf:
Only 3 or 4? Apparently, you’ve never worked at a large university. The current crop of RWNJs in administration is metastasizing at a mind-numbing pace.
Liberal universities? Yeah, right. Just like liberal media.
mclaren
On Balloon Juice, “asshole” turns out to be a flexible term that also gets defined as “someone who persists in citing uncomfortable facts about Democrats, because IOKIYAD (It’s OK If You’re A Democrat).”
So pointing out (for example) that even the drone pilots are now speaking out against Obama’s drone murder of innocent-bystander women and children as “morally outrageous” is just Not Something Serious People Do…and someone who points this out and provides a link on Balloon Juice is told “STFU, asshole” and gets described as “clueless” and “a dog-fucking piece of shit of the lowest possible denomination.”
mclaren
@Disappointed Democrat:
Okay. That’s reasonable.
Right, that’s sensible.
Aaaaaaagggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
via GIPHY
Tehanu
The older of my 2 younger brothers is the only Republican in the family, thanks to a career in the Navy. He cared for our parents in their final years so we are all grateful for that, and we just don’t discuss politics at all. The relationship is more important. I think he un-friended me on Facebook because I’m always posting lefty stuff, but when we communicate, mostly by e-mail, he’s careful not to start an argument.
OTOH, I had a very close friend for about 15 or 20 years. One day in the 90’s, I guess it was, she asked me what I’d been doing and I said, “Oh, St. Thomas’ is collecting canned goods and blankets for the hurricane victims in Central America, so I packed up a few things and took them over.” She sniffed and said, “Well, you know, in 6 months they’ll all be up here getting welfare.” I was so taken aback I didn’t know what to say. Later I realized that I could have said, “You mean like our grandparents when they fled the pogroms in Russia and came here?”, or words to that effect — but I was so astounded that a Jewish person could have that attitude, I just couldn’t deal with it. The friendship kind of died after that.
Barbara
Yes I have asshole friends. But I would consider you one of them. That is to say if we were friends.