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[NYTimes Social Q’s] My Husband and I Have No Idea About the Politics of Two New Friends
gift link (with three other questions answered)
My husband and I moved into an apartment complex recently. We befriended some of our new neighbors while sitting around the swimming pool. We have discussed politics with some of them, having been given hints that we are all on the same page. But one couple — whom we like a lot — has provided no information about their politics. We have no idea where they stand! The state of the country is very important to us, and we are willing to socialize only with people who support our beliefs. Should we continue to see this couple whose politics are a mystery, or should we tell them where we stand and see how they react?
NEW NEIGHBOR
You are free, of course, to socialize with whomever you like. But I am not a fan of administering rigid political purity tests to everyone I meet. One of the advantages of maintaining a diverse group of friends — including gender, race, sexuality, socioeconomic status and, yes, even politics — is that it helps us understand how different people come to their differing beliefs. For me, this is enriching.
Now, I am not suggesting that you befriend anyone whose positions are hateful to you. Nor do I believe that securing agreement on a checklist of hot-button issues is a requirement for sitting next to someone on a chaise longue. The stakes are low here: These people will be occasional dinner companions — not, say, the proposed guardians for your minor children.
You are entitled to be free from aggravation during your leisure time. But this couple hasn’t said or done anything to annoy you. And I admire their ability to be circumspect with new acquaintances. (Personally, I know a bit too much about the political opinions of people who are relatively unimportant to me.) If you find this couple congenial, continue seeing them until you feel differently. That seems more generous to me than quizzing them for the sole purpose of rejecting them if they fail.
My husband and I moved into an apartment complex recently. We befriended some of our new neighbors while sitting around the swimming pool. We have discussed politics with some of them, having been given hints that we are all on the same page. But one couple — whom we like a lot — has provided no information about their politics. We have no idea where they stand! The state of the country is very important to us, and we are willing to socialize only with people who support our beliefs. Should we continue to see this couple whose politics are a mystery, or should we tell them where we stand and see how they react?
NEW NEIGHBOR
You are free, of course, to socialize with whomever you like. But I am not a fan of administering rigid political purity tests to everyone I meet. One of the advantages of maintaining a diverse group of friends — including gender, race, sexuality, socioeconomic status and, yes, even politics — is that it helps us understand how different people come to their differing beliefs. For me, this is enriching.
Now, I am not suggesting that you befriend anyone whose positions are hateful to you. Nor do I believe that securing agreement on a checklist of hot-button issues is a requirement for sitting next to someone on a chaise longue. The stakes are low here: These people will be occasional dinner companions — not, say, the proposed guardians for your minor children.
You are entitled to be free from aggravation during your leisure time. But this couple hasn’t said or done anything to annoy you. And I admire their ability to be circumspect with new acquaintances. (Personally, I know a bit too much about the political opinions of people who are relatively unimportant to me.) If you find this couple congenial, continue seeing them until you feel differently. That seems more generous to me than quizzing them for the sole purpose of rejecting them if they fail.
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The brief version is: for some of us these questions are not theoretical. Across my life as someone of low albedo in a high albedo country I'm learning ways to suss out people's political and social opinions while talking to them. Sometimes they still surprise and even horrify me, but that is a risk of interacting with people -- sometimes we get hurt. Also, friendship is an informal commitment, not a formal one. LW. ypi're allowed to walk away anytime you need to.
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LGBT people should be protected from discrimination. No one should ever be able to be fired or evicted for being LGBT;
there should be State Government/Federal government financial and practical support so that Disabled/chronically ill people who are not able to support their needs with paid work can still get their basic/essential needs met;
Climate change is real, and we should do what we can to reduce the damage that it is causing now and in the future.
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Maybe it’s just that I’ve spent much of my life as a low-income queer and been to a lot of house parties where things like under-the-table employment opportunities are openly discussed, and antifascist organizing comes up casually as a topic, but my immediate instinct is that if there’s any chance ever that you might be exposing other people to these new friends, you need to know where they stand.
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This is true, but only to a point. Politics concerns the most fundamental values of human society, that span across the entire human condition including gender, race, sexuality and socioeconomic status among others (disability, age, sex, etc). I honestly believe that almost everyone fundamentally wants a society where they and their families will be free, prosperous, safe, and valued. However, politics places conditions on who deserves that outcome--and who does not. If one's politics requires that society must exclude, devalue, subjugate, and/or eliminate entire groups of people, so that only some groups get to enjoy that outcome, that kind of politics is imho ethically and morally unacceptable. If that couple's political beliefs dictate that LW and spouse shouldn't be allowed to share the same freedoms, that is important information to know.
This couple either understands the above, and/or they've learned to keep their mouths shut. LW might be able to infer this couple's politics by paying attention to how they react while listening to conversations held by others.
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Don't be like that. Find out what the fucking politics are before you invest your time. I have plenty of friends who aren't in lockstep with me on politics, but I do demand that they rise to the level of seeing me--and people like me--as human people worthy of respect. I think that's a fair "political litmus test", don't you?
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Insofar as there may be advantages to having friends with different beliefs, how can those differences be "enriching" if both sides keep them secret?
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A more practical answer, in my opinion, would have been to suggest that the LW start by stating some of their own positions, and see how the new neighbors react. If you only want to associate with people who think X, consider that other people who think X might be waiting for you to say what you think about the subject.
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I remember when Hurricane Katrina hit and people who had listened sympathetically to me talk about how obnoxious being discriminated for being Black is proceeded to say that the Black people of New Orleans deserved to suffer and die because they were "too stupid" to leave and how "breaking up these poverty stricken neighborhoods will improve their lives." I was ... shocked.
Meanwhile more recently I have pen pals who are Jewish who have had friends (I remember one particular friend PMing me about losing a friend whom she'd brought to her family's seders) who have turned on them for being Jewish. Not least because of my own experience I feel for these penpals of mine.
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*horrified, appalled face*
What the actual fuck?
All the news coverage I saw about Katrina (from over here in Australia) was "this was a colossal failure of both the Louisiana State Government and the US Federal governments to provide help evacuating to people who didn't have one more of
a) a car
b) a drivers licence
c) the physical ability to evacuate due to illness/disability
d) no friends/family they could stay with and no money for a motel room"
The idea that people were blaming *individuals*
for such a massive failure of government...
argh. Flames. Flames on the side of my face.
I mean for fuck's sake, elderly people got abandoned in NURSING HOMES during Katrina. Some of the elderly people abandoned in nursing homes used wheelchairs. Some were bedbound. Some were on oxygen!
THIS WAS NOT A FAILURE OF INDIVIDUALS, THIS WAS A FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT AND OTHER ORGANISATIONS WITH A DUTY OF CARE.
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I had adults in my life (my mom, some of my teachers) pushing back against this framing but it was something they had to actively work against, you know?
The U.S. loves nothing more than blaming (especially Black) people for failures of the state and infrastructure.
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"Ah, the people of Old Mississippi
should all hand their heads in shame,
Now I can't understand how their minds work,
What's the matter? They don't watch Les Crane?
But if you ask me to bus my children,
I hope the cops take down your name,
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal."
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Must be nice. For me, this often ends with the person I'm talking to calling me or my loved ones a slur.
This isn't a purity test, this is a safety measure.
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I can't be friends with someone who doesn't think I'm a person, or who doesn't think other people are people because of their sex/gender/race/ethnicity/sexuality/theology/national origin/brain wiring/bodily capabitily.
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If your new friends are anti-vaxxers and they give you or your loved ones permanent damage from COVID or some previously-controlled major illness that's having a resurgence, is that "enriching"? "Occasional dinner companions" can destroy your whole life, if they're conducting theirs in a way that endangers everyone around them. (Not that any of us is safe! But there are different levels of risk, and "actively socializing with anti-vaxxers" is a very high one, and one that raises the danger for everyone else in your social circle too.)
And of course comments above have mentioned a number of other reasons a person's political opinions could make them very unsafe, and how those might not be obvious on sight but could blow up in your face later.
It sucks so much that we have to be wary of serious threats from everyone around us. Unbelievably depressing, to live in a society so goddamned hostile to human life. But burying your head in the sand and pretending that your friendly neighbors can't *possibly* be actual fascists who support the extermination of everyone they've decided is subhuman, because you had a nice conversation with them... does not seem like a good idea to me. Maybe you, at first glance, fit their definition of a Human Like Them. Doesn't mean everyone else does (or even that you will, once they know you better).
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So much fucking yes to this *flail*
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but also, to the advice giver, "differing political beliefs" is not "we both believe humans have certain fundamental rights, we just have different ideas on how to get there". Sometimes it's "the other side wants me dead or considers me subhuman".
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