I had a group of friends that I spent most my sophomore year with at a very liberal east-coast college. Most of the friends in the group studied international relations and we frequently discussed politics. As I got to know them, I realized that we differed on a lot of things. Two of them told me that they wanted to join the CIA as analysts. Now I’m not a poli-sci major, but I know enough about history to know that the CIA has done and continues to do some evil shit. Now I do have a bunch of moderate leaning friends, but it felt different talking with this group of friends they had good understand of history and political philosophy. One of these guys, let’s call him Matt, was a huge Aaron Sorkin fan and Blairite (weirdly obsessed with British politics for some reason). Matt also wanted to work in political finance. I thought we were bonding over are mutual interest in the space related stuff until he showed me a Aaron Sorkin mini-series on the Apollo Space Program. And then proceed to tell me that he like the Apollo Missions because of all the political wonkery involved. The tipping point in our friendship was when he told me, at a BLM protest, that he was happy to finally get his “liberal street cred”. Liberal wonks are some of the worst people to be friends with if you genuine care about making life better for people.
My girlfriend at the time was a huge Joe Biden supporter, her mom worked at the World Bank. She would often jokingly say that I was a communist and would side with the group of friends on domestic and foreign policy issues. She started fighting with me when I explained to her that the public health think-tank that she was applying to was just a health care lobbying group. This hurt me because I was really in love with her at the time, but I could see that she wasn’t open to critically challenge the world around her. She also got upset that I owned a gun, as many people from the south do. And when I decided to switch my studies from finance to computers science, she wasn’t supportive. Anyway, I broke up with her later and stopped talking with group of friends.
Anyway, I really wish I could meet some cool people with socialist outlook that are down to crack a cold one and do some grilling.
I argue a lot with some friends about stuff like China, Russiagate and the USSR. With China, it’s the usual yogurt genocide stuff, HK freeze peach stuff. Russiagate I have a unique take on, in that I absolutely believe it happened, and that the US 100% deserved it as payback for destroying the USSR and the Yeltsin coup(s) in the 90s. We still get on for the most part. I like to think that as long as I hold steady and explain my stance respectfully they can at least challenge their own assumptions.
Yes the US singlehandedly destroyed the USSR. Couldn’t have possibly been internal contradictions, or dare i say it, material conditions.
Comrade it would be an honor to crack a cold one, eat some food shoot some and discuss theory! A perk of finding a local lefty org
If you know how to navigate buzz words I’ve had better conversations with working class Republicans than pmc bound liberals
I’ll gladly smoke bud and drink malt liquor sitting on the curb behind the 7/11 with you if you ever make it up to the windy city
I’m in my 50’s and the best thing I did in my 40’s was to concentrate 99% of my energy and time to friends and family that I got along with politically, ethically, etc.
Half of my adult life I sought to walk on eggshells around assholes with nutty/hateful opinions and one day I realized I didn’t ever have to do that again.
Cut idiots out of your life from time to time. Ain’t nobody got time to be pretending they agree with assholes.
