This has been a concern of mine for awhile now, and it’s finally happening. My only close friends are people I have grown up my whole life with. We’re all suburbanite cishet crackermen who were well-off enough to never have to struggle with potentially starving or becoming homeless; predictably, this has fostered some garbage politics, mainly trumpanzees and blue MAGA. With Cheeto Hitler removing whatever shreds of a mask of humanity the Great Satan had left, I now have my blue MAGA friends calling out my trumpanzee friends for their support of Drumpf. The trumpanzees have been silent since the inauguration, and today the group chat has been split.
It was already a terrible form of liberalism for me to have let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship with people who, if I wasn’t already close to, would throw in the cuck pit. There is still a major issue in that the most vocal of the friends I’m still in touch with are blue MAGA to the point that, if I’m to grow a spine and actually stop letting things slide, I’m worried that I’ll be smeared as fascist myself and lose the close friends I have because pushing back against great man theory takes that make Orange Satan out to be a uniquely evil force instead of recognizing the evil of the system that produced him will invariably come across as defending Trump. I’m bad at making myself go outside, let alone making friends, that I’ll have very few IRL people in my actual life.
Edit: The issue seems to have been deeper than politics, and the sides reconciled. However, the baseline seems to be “no outright evil political beliefs”, and Marxism Leninism is considered evil by most burgers.
I don’t want to get into details as to not dox myself. But I’m having this happen right now.
Ultimately, the conservatives in the chat were either wreckers (deliberately disrupted the chat if any left issue was on topic) or were pedantic debate lords about everything, especially trans issues. Also, every one of them is a rabid anticommunist. I have tried over the years to explain my perspective, to offer information, to be patient, and now I’m more educated but I’ve run out of patients.
The libs in the room (one of them being queer) Came to their defence after I lampooned them recently after almost a year of no contact. I stopped being a wimp about it, and I called a spade a spade this time around. I guess the two transphobes in the chat room didn’t appreciate it because they both left at some point. Not the first time. I was told to be civil, which is fucked in the context. At the height of the anti-trans stuff several years ago in Texas, we had a huge debate back and forth and one of the conservatives told me in no uncertain terms that DCF should be used against parents with trans kids. Apparently, I’m the one who’s supposed to be civil, though.
Everyone’s situation is different I guess. I have a good relationship with work friends who are more progressive. I have some promising parent friends who live in town. But that’s only recent.
I was told to “not be a stranger” by someone who never reaches out to me directly, after the smoke cleared. Its a two way street.