thedrifter
12-20-05, 05:20 AM
Ex-Friends
Sometimes realpolitik beats idealism--if only in matters of the heart.
BY ROBERT J. TOTH
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
Over dinner last year, a friend who had visited the Republican convention gave her estimation of the delegates: like the slave-owners in "Roots," she said--nice enough, but with an immense moral blind spot.
Welcome back to the war at home. Just before Thanksgiving 2002, I wrote an essay on this Web site about how to get along with buddies whose politics were the opposite of yours. My advice, which seemed simple at the time, was to remember that friendships aren't wars. You're allowed to cut people some ideological slack if you love and trust them.
I didn't realize my strategy was in for one hell of a test. In Iraq, the bad guys took devastating advantage of the news cycle, and at home the administration found itself hamstrung by trumped-up scandals and its own bad decisions. As world events seemed to turn against the hawks, folks on the other side of the aisle loaded up on talking points.
Even as the arguments get uglier, I'm sticking to my original course. In fact, I think it's more important than ever for friends to see beyond partisan bickering and remember the bonds they share. But I've learned that my approach carries an enormous drawback: You can't do it alone. It's easy to decide that you're going to put ideology to one side for the sake of a relationship. But you're out of luck if the other person doesn't agree to do the same.
To show you what I mean, let me introduce a friend. Or, as things stand now, an acquaintance. I wrote about him in my last essay: a passionate New York lefty who hewed to the Noam Chomsky line on American politics. After 9/11, he took strong issue with my support of the war and the right in general.
Not long after the article appeared, we began butting heads almost daily. When I ordered a Heather Mac Donald book cheering on the police, I accidentally let him know by clicking Amazon's "Share the Love" button. He sent me an op-ed from musician Brian Eno that read like a parody of sniffy overclass America-bashing.
If things hadn't already been so tense, we would've said "Whoops!" and moved on each time. Instead, we blew our respective gaskets, for several e-mailed paragraphs. I don't remember the last straw, but things got to be too much for my friend. He said he was going to stop speaking to me, at least for a while.
But I wouldn't let him walk away. I couldn't give up on a decade of friendship, not over politics--particularly when he seemed so obviously and aggravatingly wrong. I sent him a stream of niggling notes just to keep in touch, asking after his mom or recommending records.
After many months of nudges, he told me enough was enough. And I finally realized he was right. We were through, and no amount of negotiation was going to change that. Even if the Iraqis had carpeted the roads with roses and the sands had been teeming with WMDs--he and I couldn't just pick up where we had left off. Too much had been said.
In the end, I realized, you can't save every relationship that totters because of politics. The best you can do is ditch the friends who can't see beyond left and right, and hang onto the ones who are prepared to stick with you no matter what.
Consider another pal, one who hung in there even though he doesn't see eye to eye with me in the least. A voluble Deaniac, he sent me a string of notes during last year's campaign asking pointed questions about the war effort and the president's moral authority. If anything, he was an even more dangerous sparring partner than my former friend: He started every argument with disarming caveats about his own side, and when he went in for the kill he had much better facts at his command. I couldn't dismiss what he said as a fever dream.
In one sense, it was everything I didn't want in a friendship. For long, exhausting stretches all we talked about was politics, and I hardly ever held my own. But ideology never affected our friendship. He didn't trust the right, but he trusted me--and he was genuinely curious to know how I squared my personal ethics with those of the supposedly compromised hawkish establishment.
We didn't convert each other, by any means, but I like to think we both ended up wiser for the experience--even if I'm still ducking some of his better questions. Which brings me to one last big lesson from the past three years: Pick your fights. Don't jump at every chance to defend your side in a debate. Wait for arguments that you can answer with elegance and good humor, and take the rest in stride.
I'll introduce you to one more friend--the one I mentioned at the start of this article, who took a dim view of the Republican delegates. Usually when somebody says something that gets my blood boiling, it involves an elaborate house-of-cards argument, or some slippery bit of relativism. Not this time. Her comment was wrong on its face, and I could say why in a sentence.
But I kept my mouth shut. Yes, my side deserved defending. Yes, both of us would've ended up better for it in the long run. But, in the real world, speaking up would clearly have been a mistake. She had made an offhand comment at a convivial table. Did I really want to stop the conversation dead and turn the evening into a political shootout? And could I really guarantee that my perfect little dart of a comeback wouldn't be just as vicious as my friend's comment--in fact, come across even worse because it was premeditated and personal?
Besides that, she deserved a break. Over the years, I've made more than my share of thoughtless comments in her earshot, poking smug fun at her politics and spiritual practices because they fell on the lefty fringes. By saying nothing that night, I was trying to match the grace and restraint she has shown me for a long time--a quality of courtesy that makes me feel too ashamed to apologize to her.
Granted, these aren't ideal choices. I would love to be able to win back every hard case, and to meet every argument with disarming, unanswerable wit. But it's just not possible, and the effort can do more harm than good.
Hard as it is to admit, sometimes steely realpolitik works better than neocon idealism--in matters of the heart, at least.
Mr. Toth is an editor for The Journal Report in South Brunswick, N.J.
Ellie
Sometimes realpolitik beats idealism--if only in matters of the heart.
BY ROBERT J. TOTH
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
Over dinner last year, a friend who had visited the Republican convention gave her estimation of the delegates: like the slave-owners in "Roots," she said--nice enough, but with an immense moral blind spot.
Welcome back to the war at home. Just before Thanksgiving 2002, I wrote an essay on this Web site about how to get along with buddies whose politics were the opposite of yours. My advice, which seemed simple at the time, was to remember that friendships aren't wars. You're allowed to cut people some ideological slack if you love and trust them.
I didn't realize my strategy was in for one hell of a test. In Iraq, the bad guys took devastating advantage of the news cycle, and at home the administration found itself hamstrung by trumped-up scandals and its own bad decisions. As world events seemed to turn against the hawks, folks on the other side of the aisle loaded up on talking points.
Even as the arguments get uglier, I'm sticking to my original course. In fact, I think it's more important than ever for friends to see beyond partisan bickering and remember the bonds they share. But I've learned that my approach carries an enormous drawback: You can't do it alone. It's easy to decide that you're going to put ideology to one side for the sake of a relationship. But you're out of luck if the other person doesn't agree to do the same.
To show you what I mean, let me introduce a friend. Or, as things stand now, an acquaintance. I wrote about him in my last essay: a passionate New York lefty who hewed to the Noam Chomsky line on American politics. After 9/11, he took strong issue with my support of the war and the right in general.
Not long after the article appeared, we began butting heads almost daily. When I ordered a Heather Mac Donald book cheering on the police, I accidentally let him know by clicking Amazon's "Share the Love" button. He sent me an op-ed from musician Brian Eno that read like a parody of sniffy overclass America-bashing.
If things hadn't already been so tense, we would've said "Whoops!" and moved on each time. Instead, we blew our respective gaskets, for several e-mailed paragraphs. I don't remember the last straw, but things got to be too much for my friend. He said he was going to stop speaking to me, at least for a while.
But I wouldn't let him walk away. I couldn't give up on a decade of friendship, not over politics--particularly when he seemed so obviously and aggravatingly wrong. I sent him a stream of niggling notes just to keep in touch, asking after his mom or recommending records.
After many months of nudges, he told me enough was enough. And I finally realized he was right. We were through, and no amount of negotiation was going to change that. Even if the Iraqis had carpeted the roads with roses and the sands had been teeming with WMDs--he and I couldn't just pick up where we had left off. Too much had been said.
In the end, I realized, you can't save every relationship that totters because of politics. The best you can do is ditch the friends who can't see beyond left and right, and hang onto the ones who are prepared to stick with you no matter what.
Consider another pal, one who hung in there even though he doesn't see eye to eye with me in the least. A voluble Deaniac, he sent me a string of notes during last year's campaign asking pointed questions about the war effort and the president's moral authority. If anything, he was an even more dangerous sparring partner than my former friend: He started every argument with disarming caveats about his own side, and when he went in for the kill he had much better facts at his command. I couldn't dismiss what he said as a fever dream.
In one sense, it was everything I didn't want in a friendship. For long, exhausting stretches all we talked about was politics, and I hardly ever held my own. But ideology never affected our friendship. He didn't trust the right, but he trusted me--and he was genuinely curious to know how I squared my personal ethics with those of the supposedly compromised hawkish establishment.
We didn't convert each other, by any means, but I like to think we both ended up wiser for the experience--even if I'm still ducking some of his better questions. Which brings me to one last big lesson from the past three years: Pick your fights. Don't jump at every chance to defend your side in a debate. Wait for arguments that you can answer with elegance and good humor, and take the rest in stride.
I'll introduce you to one more friend--the one I mentioned at the start of this article, who took a dim view of the Republican delegates. Usually when somebody says something that gets my blood boiling, it involves an elaborate house-of-cards argument, or some slippery bit of relativism. Not this time. Her comment was wrong on its face, and I could say why in a sentence.
But I kept my mouth shut. Yes, my side deserved defending. Yes, both of us would've ended up better for it in the long run. But, in the real world, speaking up would clearly have been a mistake. She had made an offhand comment at a convivial table. Did I really want to stop the conversation dead and turn the evening into a political shootout? And could I really guarantee that my perfect little dart of a comeback wouldn't be just as vicious as my friend's comment--in fact, come across even worse because it was premeditated and personal?
Besides that, she deserved a break. Over the years, I've made more than my share of thoughtless comments in her earshot, poking smug fun at her politics and spiritual practices because they fell on the lefty fringes. By saying nothing that night, I was trying to match the grace and restraint she has shown me for a long time--a quality of courtesy that makes me feel too ashamed to apologize to her.
Granted, these aren't ideal choices. I would love to be able to win back every hard case, and to meet every argument with disarming, unanswerable wit. But it's just not possible, and the effort can do more harm than good.
Hard as it is to admit, sometimes steely realpolitik works better than neocon idealism--in matters of the heart, at least.
Mr. Toth is an editor for The Journal Report in South Brunswick, N.J.
Ellie