I Don't Wanna Be Friends With You

Stephen Robinson at Wonkette was tapped to cover the sad (heh) story of Republicans being considered personae non gratae in the dating pool, according to a poll by Axios.  This made at least one Republican lady sad:

This doesn’t bode well. “By the numbers: 5% of Republicans said they wouldn't be friends with someone from the opposite party, compared to 37% of Democrats.” https://t.co/cOy2qFSzYj

— Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons) December 8, 2021

For the record,this woman defended Trump's family separation policy at the border... would you want her as a friend?

The strange thing here is that, for decades, Republicans have painted liberals as baby killing Satan worshipers, yet they are upset that these heinous criminals won't go out with them... what gives here?  We've all heard the Limbaughs and the Hannitys and the myriad lesser luminaries of the Right call us evil, why would we be so alluring to rank-and-file Young Republicans?

Personally, I really don't want to be friends with Trumpers.  The last Trumper in my social circle became increasingly argumentative, always bringing up Nancy Pelosi or some other left-of-center bête noire in conversations as a complete non-sequitur, then getting petulant when the rest of us razzed him.  Of course, he became increasingly more misogynistic and ethnocentric (while dating a Central American woman who had overstayed her visa).  Finally, in an incident which I missed (I was working that night), he told a bunch of my friends that he wanted to shoot a woman talking loudly at the bar, and another friend's girlfriend flat-out said, "I don't feel comfortable around him, if he's invited, I'm out."  It took a while for the right-wing meme poisoning to get to that stage, but the end was pretty much inevitable- these people always end up defaulting to violent ideation.

For my part, the simple matter is that I don't want to be friends with people who would force me to choose loyalties- my immigrant, PoC, and LGBTQ friends (contrary to right-wing paranoia) don't badmouth my straight white male friends.  Over the Trump years, I've had a lesbian friend tell me that she was afraid to marry her partner for fear of ending up on a list.  I've had immigrant friends tell me that they were afraid to open the door... it even got so bad that blonde, freckled faced soccer moms in my neighborhood were concerned that they'd be pulled over near the Thruway entrance to have their immigration papers scrutinized.  The fear was palpable.  Why would I want to be friends with people who were ecstatic about good people being afraid?

Hell, I'm a cishet white guy, how much worse would is it for women, LGBTQ folk, and People of Color?  Why would they want to be friends, or even date, people who wish them harm, who at best want them to be second class citizens?  The pushback on Trump administration lady was strong.  Why go out with people who are proud to be deplorable?  Why would normal people go out with people who yearn for a civil war, or at the very least the execution of their political rivals, who won't even date them?

Even conservative women, like this Glenn Beck employee, don't want to go out with neo-Nazis:

How do you get leveled by a question as simple as this and not wonder where your life went terribly off track. https://t.co/cJTMDYnpen

— Jared Holt (@jaredlholt) December 5, 2021

I'm old enough to remember when Conservatives all seemed to be talking about leaving liberal society, culminating in Rod Dreher's silly Benedict Option- we liberals just beat them to the punch.

Post title taken from a boyhood favorite of mine:

In the course of writing this post, I learned that the lead singer died in 2005, but this information was not made public until last year.  Tomorrow's post will be a tribute to her, because she deserves broader recognition.