Political wars leave personal scars
The election’s coming close, and the air is filled with political static. In response to a recent item about political disagreements in which it was asserted that Americans aren’t willing to participate in healthy arguments about them, readers shared their experiences:
“I had one guy say to me, ‘You are a nice person and you mean well, but you don’t know what you are talking about.’ So in my experience one cannot have a political discussion with someone with different views. So now I just turn my back or walk away,” said M.O.
R.B., who hosts Shabbat dinners on Friday nights, says there are rules. “There is no discussion of any politics, about any country: past, present, future, real or imagined . ... If the subject is in any way agitating to you, you may call ‘politics’ and the subject must change.”
“My old friend, with whom I share several key values, has fallen into the Trump hole. We are both lesbian feminists.” In response to the friend’s pro-Trump messages on Facebook, “I have chosen not to unfriend her,” says A.E., “and not engage in any writing that acknowledges these posts. But each far-out post is painful to me.”
Reconnecting with an old friend, C.I. found that although they share history, they don’t share political views. “It’s not like she likes vanilla and I like strawberry. If we were to meet up again, I would have to worry how she was going to treat the wait staff at the restaurant. I would have to worry how she would react to or talk about gays or Muslims. I would be fantasizing about a heroic scene in which I remind her where she came from ... but that would ruin the outing.” She’s thinking they won’t discuss their differences, and will lose touch again. “For the final time.”
When M.M. visited a longtime friend in San Clemente (Orange County) in 2008, the friend’s husband noticed the Obama bumper sticker on her car, and “stormed” at her in protest. “Since that day, I have never been invited to their home.” The last time she received a birthday card from that friend, she had written, “We will love and miss you forever.” Says M.M., “I can’t even imagine a conversation with them about the current political campaign.”
After enjoying a 22-year-old friendship during which they never talked politics, M.R. was shocked three months ago when a friend started talking about deporting Mexicans and sending Muslims back to their home countries. “I was stunned . ... It was a side of him I’d never seen before. The friendship came to a blunt end one night in mid-July, when my friend emailed me and said he never wanted to talk to me ever again. Of course, I was heartbroken.”
In all the mail I received, there was only one letter that described coexistence: “My husband is a registered Republican,” writes J.H. “We have been married for 15 years and all I can say is my vote cancels his vote. I feel good taking out a Republican.” The Nobel Prize medal of mathematician John Nash ,tobe auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York on Oct. 17, will be on display — to invited guests — in San Francisco on Thursday, Sept. 22, along with items from the collection of David Bowie, also to be auctioned soon. The connection between the musician and the scientist: “The proximity of the two sales certainly afforded the opportunity to exhibit these materials together,” said Sotheby’s Jennifer Biederbeck. But it is also true that both were brilliant and unique in their fields.”
Depressing thought: No matter how celebrated you are, even your most treasured possessions may be up for grabs — expensive grabs — one day. Oh, never mind, I’m off to the flea market.
Ted Weinstein forwards an overheard from the J-Church, one middleschool-age kid saying to another, “I want to get a tattoo now, so it’ll be big and stretched out when I’m old.”
After years of wondering whether tattoos get stretched and blurry because of the length of time they’re on skin or whether they “smudge” because of the age of the tattoo-ee’s skin, this overheard remark inspired research. Aleph Omega of Ed Hardy’s Tattoo City says that tattoos are organic, so they age as your body does. This doesn’t have to do with the age of the human canvas. A wellapplied tattoo will keep its shape longer than a badly applied tattoo, and it is possible for an 80-year-old to get a new tattoo that will stay crisp. May I interest you in a tramp stamp, Grandma?
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “I don’t think I want to remove the wart because it’s now part of my Apple log-in ID.” Patient in Palo Alto doctor’s office, overheard by Renata Mullen