I just had two interactions with Republicans. One, a complete stranger to me, who was installing my "triple-play" bundle of phone, tv, and internet. The other, someone I have known since 1999, when we both worked at the World Trade Center (Two World Trade Center, to be exact - now called "the South Tower).
Funny thing is, the complete stranger Republican actually started to listen to me (I think, although he could have be just humoring me - the customer is always right, you know.
What happened yesterday was the last straw for a tenuous friendship with a kind of unstable guy.
More below the orange whatchemacallit.
Like Tina Turner used to say in concert, when she was with Ike, in the intro to "Proud Mary, "I'm going to start out nice and easy, and finish nice and rough."
The nice and easy part was talking to the cable guy.
He was in his late forties - maybe early fifties. I knew that Verizon had union workers, and so I talked about how I used to be a Newspaper Guild Member a long time ago. I'm not sure what I said, but he asked me, "were you a Clinton guy?"
I said yes - I thought he was a pretty good president - left us with a surplus. etc.
So he replies, "well I'm a conservative, but when I listen to that Reilly (sic) guy, I start to feel real depressed."
I said that was because they want you to feel this way, so they can promise that Willard will be so much better than Obama. I quickly followed up with, plus, as a union guy, you have to know that the Republican party is dead-set against unions.
He kind of stopped drilling holes in my wall and said, "yeah, that is true."
That was about the extent of my persuasion to help him maybe think a little bit about why that party would be a bad choice for him. I hope I got through, though like I mentioned, he may have just been being polite to the "customer."
Now comes the nice and rough encounter.
Bob R. and I met while working for a large insurance firm - Aon. It was located at the time in Two World Trade Center. We both survived that day, and so shared that terrible day in common. You would think that this would smooth over the differences we had politically, but in the virtual world of Facebook, he would more than occasionally post some Fox News BS article about Obama, and I would have to shoot the BS article down.
He would cool off for a while, but there would always be a flare-up of his posting nonsense - pure Rush/Beck/Hannity madness - which I would again shoot down. I was geting tired of this, and yesterday was the straw that broke this fragile, barely-there "friendship."
He re-posted the nonsense about Michelle Obama saying "that damn flag" - at the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
How does this happen? This is not a unintelligent person. And yet, he felt he had to believe this in order to be able to hate Obama?
I replied - "this is crap. Un-friending now. Get rid of the hate or it will kill you."
He sent a one word e-mail to me - "Bye."
I feel sad that this is how he lives his life. And yet, I also realize that I will never change him. This is the dark side of this country. It makes me want to work even harder for the president's re-election.
BTW - on lunch now and really busy - I will reply to any comments when I get home today.