Yes, covid killed friendships, sadly. l lost who I thought was my best friend since college, actually over my support for Trump and the Jan 6 incident, when I said this was a psy-op and a lot of these folks were goaded into it. She actually listened to me about a lot of the covid stuff, and I knew she didn't like Trump but we used to sti…
Yes, covid killed friendships, sadly. l lost who I thought was my best friend since college, actually over my support for Trump and the Jan 6 incident, when I said this was a psy-op and a lot of these folks were goaded into it. She actually listened to me about a lot of the covid stuff, and I knew she didn't like Trump but we used to still be able to get together and have meaningful conversations. But she went over the edge - moved to the Lake of the Ozarks area around that time to be closer to her dad and hit the leftist and covid kool-aid hard. Kept picking fights with me on social media, and started that uncaring, selfish for not getting the shot stuff. Saying if anyone who supported Trump was a bigot and racist. Her nephew died of a fentanyl OD and I went to his funeral to see her, and she, in person, admitted that her niece who she had said died of covid actually died of liver failure due to alcoholism. Never really apologized though, just said, a lot of things are not as they seem. Her hubby invited us down for a long weekend, and said she would get in touch about calendars, but she never did. Came to both of my kids weddings (my hubby said to un-invite her but I am an idiot that couldn't seem to get the message) that summer and fall, but spent more time talking to my sisters than me. I guess I thought she was going to come to her senses, but after a couple of more social media barbs I just unfriended her and let it go. She lives 3 hours away now, so the odds of running into each other are slim. This latest dust-up was really the last in the line of my pre-covid D friends, we'd been friends since HS, although we only got together a few times a year and didn't really have much in common any more. It's so weird that most of my long time friends were all D's when I have not been a D since the mid-80's and I have been involved with R politics all this time. (well I did campaign for Ross Perot) But we always managed to work that out and have plenty to talk about. Now, everything is political, and I just find myself having little tolerance for those who prefer being woke over being awake. During Tucker's TPUSA speech near the end, he made the point that a lot of this culture war stuff is really just a 'distraction to keep us from noticing they are destroying the country'. That really resonated with me. If I get on FB, my feed is every other post people talking about Jason Aldean. Yeah he is being cancelled over BS, but there is a LOT more important news to talk about. FB is nearly as vapid as the MSM any more. Thank God for Substack.
It’s definitely been both eye opening and disheartening to see the friends who choose their political tribe over their longtime friendships. You can really tell who is afraid of not going along with the crowd and of standing up for themselves. Or those who don’t want to think, but to rely on others to think in their stead.
“Now, everything is political, and I just find myself having little tolerance for those who prefer being woke over being awake.”
Yes. This.
I have had a very similar experience, I used to have lots of friends with very different political perspectives and appreciated our exchanges and discussions but now it’s just “bigot, racist, conspiracy theorist” type of responses and not meaningful and thoughtful conversation. Very sad. Even when they don’t say it to me directly, if I see them make a post on Facebook insulting people who like Trump, didn’t get the shots, etc., I know that’s what they think of me and it’s hard to get past that.
Yes, it's hard to figure out just 'what happened to her'. She and I bonded in college over both of us being involved in Student Government. Both grew up lower middle class, both first in our families to graduate college, both worked our way through, neither of us were follow the crowd types. Over the years she drifted into the intellectual class, moved up the ladder in a foundation that started shifting leftward, never got her PhD but started hanging with that crowd, where I landed in the business world and kept going to the right. But we could still debate, disagree and stay friends. Trumps election in 2016 added a new layer of tension, the writing was on the wall, but don't think either of us wanted to see it. We were going through the motions. I am not sure what prompted her to come out of the blue and attack me but it was inevitable that the friendship was going to end. Guess it's kind of like people who stay in an unhappy marriage due to inertia and then the inevitable blow up happens and everyone goes "What happened?!" I care less that the friendship ended and more that she is not the same friend she was back when we were close. But suppose I am not the same either. I just have less tolerance for bullsh*t than I used to. Maybe a microcosm of conservatives as a whole. We were too nice, too non confrontational, too assured that common sense would prevail. Then Trump came along. I couldn't stand him at first, I was a Carson supporter and then I went to Cruz. But he's grown on me over the years, and while I still think his mouth runs faster than his brain at times, he is right that we need to punch back.
But yeah, most of my ex-friends were more just bandwagon people, don't pay enough attention to realize they are living in a fantasy world. Mark Twain "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
It is like a grieving process when you lose a friendship like that 😞
I have very similar feelings about Trump, I definitely can identify with what you wrote.
You know, your description of your friend reminded me of a post Naomi Wolf wrote a while back, about fitting in with the leftist intellectual class. If you haven’t read it yet, you might find it an interesting read.
Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, 39 years, we had been through all kinds of ups and downs together. I am not sure it applies as much to her as she never really assimilated the lifestyle. Just the politics, and the religious fervor/'virtue'. This idea that the 'little people' need government cheese and guidance. And Wolf may have something there with the idea that it's about power. Wokism is her new religion. We were both Catholic although neither of us went to church much in our early 20's but I went back to it, and she wandered in and out until she pretty much quit going a decade or so ago. Got laid off from her job in 2020 and she and her hubby moved 3 hours away to be closer to her aging dad in early 2021 and it's a deep red area. Started complaining about how the people there were uncaring and 'ignoring covid' and being selfish for not getting jabbed. That her Hispanic husband 'faced discrimination and micro aggressions'. Never mind she ignored covid when she lived close, at least around me!? Too many Trump flags put her over the edge? Anyway, she used to have flashes of her old sanity so thought perhaps she would come around, but guess not. Her latest rant yelling at me that I had no compassion and was a bigot like Trump was the end of it. We'd argued before, but she never got personal.
I think a lot of it stems from an inferiority/superiority complex. People, especially those originally from modest backgrounds, feel out of place and like imposters and feel the need to prove they belong, so they mock and reject the populations they came from. They want to feel superior to others and belonging to this political tribe helps them do that. They all sneer at the ignorant bigot Trump voters and pay themselves on the back for being smarter 🙄
BOOM! Think you nailed it there. My parents scrimped and saved and pinched the pennies until they screamed to put all 4 of us girls through Catholic schools, where the vast majority of our classmates saw us as the charity case family. I struggled with 'imposter syndrome' early in my career but once I had kids I made them my priority and didn't give 2 f's what people thought any more. Our 'women warriors' group that started during covid ranges from a woman who lives in public housing to a woman who lives in a multi-million dollar home (that has a great space for holding fundraisers and political events). We are all GOD'S children and are united by a common cause. My friend was never able to have kids, although her white trash brother had kids by 5 different women and she is a great aunt to all these nieces and nephews. But she definitely comes at all this with a superiority complex, that you are right, is probably driven by an inferiority complex. Never thought about it that way but think you are 100% right.
After having observed a lot of these kinds of people over the years, I have thought a lot about why they are the way they are. I also think that they feel some guilt about their success in life (here I’m talking about the “educated” middle and upper middle class leftists) and so that helps drive the whole “we must save the poor and the minorities with our policies and legislation” mentality. This idea is coupled with their sense of being superior, so they think those poor and minority groups are too stupid to make their own decisions and must be told how to live by their “betters.” And they don’t actually care if those populations really *are* helped, just that there are as many government programs in place as possible that pretend to help. They’re tools and useful idiots whose vanities and insecurities are used by those in power to continue to make money and gain influence on the backs of those people they claim to be helping.
Yes, human psychology is so interesting! I took a couple of classes in college but found out you had to have a masters or PhD to actually DO anything with it, so went the business degree route. I too try to figure people out, without much success though. Better off in business as I am better at the left-brained linear kinds of problems vs right-brained out of the box thinking.
I know that from a policy standpoint, the 'save the poor' programs have been a disaster, as they are a hand OUT not a hand UP. My parents were lifelong D's and there were years in the 70's where my union electrician dad was laid off, construction was not a great field in the Carter years. But he refused any offer of help, even from the church, he was a proud man and refused charity. Planted a huge garden, and traded electrical work for sides of beef with his farmer uncle. We never went hungry. But never considered that the policies he voted for was the reason he was out of work. He started to see through the BS after he retired, died during the Obama years, never liked him, although he voted for him in 2008. Mom was staunchly pro-life, and volunteered for years at a pregnancy crisis center and was proud of all the gov programs she helped girls who kept their babies qualify for, and she distributed truck loads of donated diapers and clothes. She suspected some of them never actually planned to have an abortion, but knew there was a lot of free stuff there. Saving babies is God's work, but these programs also contribute to the destruction of the family, encourage learned helplessness, and dependence on the government. She quit around the time my dad's health started failing but also said she quit as she was tired of having to volunteer around all these Republicans, as by the 2000's abortion was clearly a partisan issue. Still votes D and anything I say that tries to question her narratives throws her into a blind rage. So I try to avoid it as much as I can, old dog, new tricks at this point.
Yeah I am not the kind of person who could study psychology much because imo a lot of it is mumbo jumbo theories that turn out to be wrong and a lot of times are used to justify poor policies and approaches. The human brain is so complex. We still don’t really understand a lot about how it really works. But I do like to observe people’s behaviors and try to figure out what their motivations are and what they have in common. Mostly as a curiosity and a way to help me understand the world and society, than anything else. I’ve come to the conclusion that the desire to feel superior to others (which is I think a common human trait) and a related issue of a lack of humility are at the root of many of our problems as a society and also as individuals. People can find this imagined superiority through their income, education, religion, status, political views/tribe, race, and many other things. Then they feel justified oppressing and othering the people they feel think they are superior to. When they refuse to question their own views or consider others’ experiences they are showing pridefulness and a lack of humility. I believe this is at least a good part of all of the strife we see in the world.
I’m sorry about your mom. It’s sad that you no longer feel like you can openly talk with her. It sounds like her desire to help wasn’t as strong as her aversion to Republicans 😕 I always wonder if people who refuse to be around people they view as inferior, the “bad guys”, just are afraid that it might result in their monolithic and stereotypical views of those groups being challenged and they can’t handle that idea.
Yes, covid killed friendships, sadly. l lost who I thought was my best friend since college, actually over my support for Trump and the Jan 6 incident, when I said this was a psy-op and a lot of these folks were goaded into it. She actually listened to me about a lot of the covid stuff, and I knew she didn't like Trump but we used to still be able to get together and have meaningful conversations. But she went over the edge - moved to the Lake of the Ozarks area around that time to be closer to her dad and hit the leftist and covid kool-aid hard. Kept picking fights with me on social media, and started that uncaring, selfish for not getting the shot stuff. Saying if anyone who supported Trump was a bigot and racist. Her nephew died of a fentanyl OD and I went to his funeral to see her, and she, in person, admitted that her niece who she had said died of covid actually died of liver failure due to alcoholism. Never really apologized though, just said, a lot of things are not as they seem. Her hubby invited us down for a long weekend, and said she would get in touch about calendars, but she never did. Came to both of my kids weddings (my hubby said to un-invite her but I am an idiot that couldn't seem to get the message) that summer and fall, but spent more time talking to my sisters than me. I guess I thought she was going to come to her senses, but after a couple of more social media barbs I just unfriended her and let it go. She lives 3 hours away now, so the odds of running into each other are slim. This latest dust-up was really the last in the line of my pre-covid D friends, we'd been friends since HS, although we only got together a few times a year and didn't really have much in common any more. It's so weird that most of my long time friends were all D's when I have not been a D since the mid-80's and I have been involved with R politics all this time. (well I did campaign for Ross Perot) But we always managed to work that out and have plenty to talk about. Now, everything is political, and I just find myself having little tolerance for those who prefer being woke over being awake. During Tucker's TPUSA speech near the end, he made the point that a lot of this culture war stuff is really just a 'distraction to keep us from noticing they are destroying the country'. That really resonated with me. If I get on FB, my feed is every other post people talking about Jason Aldean. Yeah he is being cancelled over BS, but there is a LOT more important news to talk about. FB is nearly as vapid as the MSM any more. Thank God for Substack.
It’s definitely been both eye opening and disheartening to see the friends who choose their political tribe over their longtime friendships. You can really tell who is afraid of not going along with the crowd and of standing up for themselves. Or those who don’t want to think, but to rely on others to think in their stead.
“Now, everything is political, and I just find myself having little tolerance for those who prefer being woke over being awake.”
Yes. This.
I have had a very similar experience, I used to have lots of friends with very different political perspectives and appreciated our exchanges and discussions but now it’s just “bigot, racist, conspiracy theorist” type of responses and not meaningful and thoughtful conversation. Very sad. Even when they don’t say it to me directly, if I see them make a post on Facebook insulting people who like Trump, didn’t get the shots, etc., I know that’s what they think of me and it’s hard to get past that.
Yes, it's hard to figure out just 'what happened to her'. She and I bonded in college over both of us being involved in Student Government. Both grew up lower middle class, both first in our families to graduate college, both worked our way through, neither of us were follow the crowd types. Over the years she drifted into the intellectual class, moved up the ladder in a foundation that started shifting leftward, never got her PhD but started hanging with that crowd, where I landed in the business world and kept going to the right. But we could still debate, disagree and stay friends. Trumps election in 2016 added a new layer of tension, the writing was on the wall, but don't think either of us wanted to see it. We were going through the motions. I am not sure what prompted her to come out of the blue and attack me but it was inevitable that the friendship was going to end. Guess it's kind of like people who stay in an unhappy marriage due to inertia and then the inevitable blow up happens and everyone goes "What happened?!" I care less that the friendship ended and more that she is not the same friend she was back when we were close. But suppose I am not the same either. I just have less tolerance for bullsh*t than I used to. Maybe a microcosm of conservatives as a whole. We were too nice, too non confrontational, too assured that common sense would prevail. Then Trump came along. I couldn't stand him at first, I was a Carson supporter and then I went to Cruz. But he's grown on me over the years, and while I still think his mouth runs faster than his brain at times, he is right that we need to punch back.
But yeah, most of my ex-friends were more just bandwagon people, don't pay enough attention to realize they are living in a fantasy world. Mark Twain "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
It is like a grieving process when you lose a friendship like that 😞
I have very similar feelings about Trump, I definitely can identify with what you wrote.
You know, your description of your friend reminded me of a post Naomi Wolf wrote a while back, about fitting in with the leftist intellectual class. If you haven’t read it yet, you might find it an interesting read.
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/how-not-to-become-a-sociopath-the
In case you’re interested 🙂
Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, 39 years, we had been through all kinds of ups and downs together. I am not sure it applies as much to her as she never really assimilated the lifestyle. Just the politics, and the religious fervor/'virtue'. This idea that the 'little people' need government cheese and guidance. And Wolf may have something there with the idea that it's about power. Wokism is her new religion. We were both Catholic although neither of us went to church much in our early 20's but I went back to it, and she wandered in and out until she pretty much quit going a decade or so ago. Got laid off from her job in 2020 and she and her hubby moved 3 hours away to be closer to her aging dad in early 2021 and it's a deep red area. Started complaining about how the people there were uncaring and 'ignoring covid' and being selfish for not getting jabbed. That her Hispanic husband 'faced discrimination and micro aggressions'. Never mind she ignored covid when she lived close, at least around me!? Too many Trump flags put her over the edge? Anyway, she used to have flashes of her old sanity so thought perhaps she would come around, but guess not. Her latest rant yelling at me that I had no compassion and was a bigot like Trump was the end of it. We'd argued before, but she never got personal.
I think a lot of it stems from an inferiority/superiority complex. People, especially those originally from modest backgrounds, feel out of place and like imposters and feel the need to prove they belong, so they mock and reject the populations they came from. They want to feel superior to others and belonging to this political tribe helps them do that. They all sneer at the ignorant bigot Trump voters and pay themselves on the back for being smarter 🙄
BOOM! Think you nailed it there. My parents scrimped and saved and pinched the pennies until they screamed to put all 4 of us girls through Catholic schools, where the vast majority of our classmates saw us as the charity case family. I struggled with 'imposter syndrome' early in my career but once I had kids I made them my priority and didn't give 2 f's what people thought any more. Our 'women warriors' group that started during covid ranges from a woman who lives in public housing to a woman who lives in a multi-million dollar home (that has a great space for holding fundraisers and political events). We are all GOD'S children and are united by a common cause. My friend was never able to have kids, although her white trash brother had kids by 5 different women and she is a great aunt to all these nieces and nephews. But she definitely comes at all this with a superiority complex, that you are right, is probably driven by an inferiority complex. Never thought about it that way but think you are 100% right.
After having observed a lot of these kinds of people over the years, I have thought a lot about why they are the way they are. I also think that they feel some guilt about their success in life (here I’m talking about the “educated” middle and upper middle class leftists) and so that helps drive the whole “we must save the poor and the minorities with our policies and legislation” mentality. This idea is coupled with their sense of being superior, so they think those poor and minority groups are too stupid to make their own decisions and must be told how to live by their “betters.” And they don’t actually care if those populations really *are* helped, just that there are as many government programs in place as possible that pretend to help. They’re tools and useful idiots whose vanities and insecurities are used by those in power to continue to make money and gain influence on the backs of those people they claim to be helping.
Yes, human psychology is so interesting! I took a couple of classes in college but found out you had to have a masters or PhD to actually DO anything with it, so went the business degree route. I too try to figure people out, without much success though. Better off in business as I am better at the left-brained linear kinds of problems vs right-brained out of the box thinking.
I know that from a policy standpoint, the 'save the poor' programs have been a disaster, as they are a hand OUT not a hand UP. My parents were lifelong D's and there were years in the 70's where my union electrician dad was laid off, construction was not a great field in the Carter years. But he refused any offer of help, even from the church, he was a proud man and refused charity. Planted a huge garden, and traded electrical work for sides of beef with his farmer uncle. We never went hungry. But never considered that the policies he voted for was the reason he was out of work. He started to see through the BS after he retired, died during the Obama years, never liked him, although he voted for him in 2008. Mom was staunchly pro-life, and volunteered for years at a pregnancy crisis center and was proud of all the gov programs she helped girls who kept their babies qualify for, and she distributed truck loads of donated diapers and clothes. She suspected some of them never actually planned to have an abortion, but knew there was a lot of free stuff there. Saving babies is God's work, but these programs also contribute to the destruction of the family, encourage learned helplessness, and dependence on the government. She quit around the time my dad's health started failing but also said she quit as she was tired of having to volunteer around all these Republicans, as by the 2000's abortion was clearly a partisan issue. Still votes D and anything I say that tries to question her narratives throws her into a blind rage. So I try to avoid it as much as I can, old dog, new tricks at this point.
Yeah I am not the kind of person who could study psychology much because imo a lot of it is mumbo jumbo theories that turn out to be wrong and a lot of times are used to justify poor policies and approaches. The human brain is so complex. We still don’t really understand a lot about how it really works. But I do like to observe people’s behaviors and try to figure out what their motivations are and what they have in common. Mostly as a curiosity and a way to help me understand the world and society, than anything else. I’ve come to the conclusion that the desire to feel superior to others (which is I think a common human trait) and a related issue of a lack of humility are at the root of many of our problems as a society and also as individuals. People can find this imagined superiority through their income, education, religion, status, political views/tribe, race, and many other things. Then they feel justified oppressing and othering the people they feel think they are superior to. When they refuse to question their own views or consider others’ experiences they are showing pridefulness and a lack of humility. I believe this is at least a good part of all of the strife we see in the world.
I’m sorry about your mom. It’s sad that you no longer feel like you can openly talk with her. It sounds like her desire to help wasn’t as strong as her aversion to Republicans 😕 I always wonder if people who refuse to be around people they view as inferior, the “bad guys”, just are afraid that it might result in their monolithic and stereotypical views of those groups being challenged and they can’t handle that idea.