The other night we and neighborhood friends were socializing in a distanced way down in the little park next to our condo building. We got to talking about our families, and one friend wondered out loud whether she’d ever be able to talk to certain members of her family again. “It’s like we live in different realities. I don’t know where to even start.”
The view of Printers Row Park from our seventh floor window. It was once a parking lot ticketed to be a high rise. But the locals fought city hall and won: we got a park instead. Thank goodness, because it’s been an oasis these past months.
I grew up during the peaks of various 1960s flashpoint Anti-war protesters, hard-hats who liked to beat them up, civil rights activists, the sexual revolution, feminism, you name it.
It was tumultuous. And often nasty. Bad enough to blow apart my mom’s side of the family. Italians hold grudges. Not me, of course, I’m only half Italian. The other half is Serbian, which isn’t exactly a counterweight. But it wasn’t as bad as today.
In my adulthood, I used to routinely have earnest discussions, some of which can be characterized as heated arguments, with people I disagreed with. But we always drew a line. I thought it was good for me, and hoped it was good for them. The implied basis of our conversations seemed to be, “I completely disagree, but since I know you and I respect you, I need to hear you out.”
That’s mostly gone. Everyone is armed with talking points and a quiver full of derogatory names that they launch early, stopping discourse before it starts. It’s not just within families, either. I have very good friends with whom I used have substantive discussion about anything and everything. We have treated our conversations with kid gloves; politics is the third rail. And that dynamic seems to put a wet blanket on the conversations we do have. I miss it.
I’m trying to keep those days in mind in the hope that we are able one day to talk directly with each other about issues and our viewpoints, unmediated by talking heads on cable news. I need to think we will, because for this country to get back on track, we’ll have to.
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how it’ll get better.
But then again, if Justices Scalia and Ginsburg could be close friends, maybe there’s hope.
Beth I love your optimism! Thank you!
Mike, you should have been a carpenter. As usual, you hit the nail on the head without bending it.
I’m glad you have your lil park and are able to survive having in person conversation. We’re all finding our way (golf courses are packed). Others have little or no outlet. No outlet with no end in sight is no good.
Sadly, a description of our current reality. I do miss civil debates. Now, Get Off My Lawn!
You mean “Get put of my pool!”
So lucky that all of my family are pinko lefties like me. I cannot imagine that sort of rift. However, I did experience a REALLY bad fight with a dear friend during the Kavanaugh hearings. Lucky for us, we resumed our friendship of 22 years and have simply agreed not to talk politics. Still love her and hope she sees the error of her ways. One of those “single issue” types.
It’s not the “other side” that gets me these days because I don’t have that in either my family or my friends (topic for another time). It’s the like-minded smart friends that start the conversation with “he’s an idiot” or worse. We’ve known what he is for 4 years now. Isn’t there anything else we have in common besides hate for him?
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