WHAT FRIENDS I HAVE!

By Edwin Cooney

I can’t say that I’m bragging and I can’t say that I’m not! All I can assert is how lucky I am that I have the set of friends I do. They are a strange lot, but when it comes right down to it, I’m also a bit strange, too. So, I guess that’s why it all works out.

I share this with you this week for two reasons. The first is simply because it’s fun to boast a bit, but even more, I share this with you because of an item I read some weeks ago.

According to an article I read in the New York Times, Americans are becoming increasingly divided along socio/political lines. Just a few years ago, it didn’t really matter much to most people as to what political affiliation their friends and even family members belonged. According to this piece, both voters and politicians (to say nothing of what political commentators say or don’t say) are increasingly choosing their friends and even their potential spouses because they agree with their political views. It used to be that religious affiliation counted more in the creation of intimate relations than political affiliations. Now it’s the other way around. That, to me, is exceedingly disturbing.

Back in the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Senate GOP Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen could vigorously go after each other in the press several times a week and still drink scotch together at the White House after 5 p.m. As late as the 1980s, it was frequently reported that President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Thomas (Tip) O’Neill worked exactly the same way.

Sadly, things are much different today. From what I read and hear, Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Donald Trump are as likely to socialize together after 5 p.m. as Ann Coulter and Hillary Clinton!

Additionally, some pretty powerful people are paying talk show hosts of all political stripes millions of dollars a year to keep you and me all riled up. After all, anger can be as energizing as devotion to a just or charitable cause — although angry people are inevitably limited in their capacity to draw a distinction between cause and effect of both domestic and international conditions. The real tragedy of today, as I see it, is that a once charitable people who created such important institutions as the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps and, lately, AmeriCorps, have exchanged their optimism for cynicism. As I’ve often asserted in these pages, fear is the father of anger. Therefore, if we’re driven by our fears, our fate is as set for us as the fates of Nazi Germany, the Union of Social Soviet Republics, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and (I believe) North Korea were.

However, the genesis of today’s musing is quite opposite from either anger or criticism. Two of my closest friends from the time I lived in Northern California is a couple whose social and political views are nearly 180 degrees opposite to mine. I’m a Jimmy Carter/Barack Obama Democrat while they are conservative Republicans, lately followers of President Trump. Throughout the years between 1996 and 2013, we have debated many hot topics. During breakfast this morning, we exchanged sentiments on what is happening today. We’re still very opposite. They insist along with the president that climate warming is a hoax designed to profit liberal science and academic types while I insist that blaming climate warming on scientists is like blaming doctors for disease. Additionally, we debated the need for regulations and the cruder side of President Trump’s character. Nevertheless, most of our discussion had to do with what has taken place since I last saw them both in March 2013 when my wife and I were married on their deck overlooking San Francisco Bay.

There’s little doubt that our opposite assessments of the cause and effect of 21st Century America was a tad uncomfortable. However, we jointly reached the conclusion that there was little future in the criminalization of politics.

The heart of today’s political conflicts has to do with people’s sense of the morality and the immorality of issues. Conservatives insist that their stance on issues such as life versus freedom of choice, or prayer in the public schools, or the need to champion Christianity over Radical Islam are vital moral issues just as J. Edgar Hoover’s crusade was against “godless” Communism back in the 1950s. Liberals insist that civil rights, support for the poor and economic equity are all moral issues and seldom the twain shall meet.

For as far back as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed debating these issues even when I had my own reservations with an issue. Only very rarely am I put off personally by a person’s stance.

Once, however, about fifteen years ago, while sitting at a bar in Alameda, California, I did shut down a discussion a fellow imbiber wanted to have regarding the historic influence Jews supposedly have negatively had on America’s well-being. “I’m not going there with you, sir,” I insisted. There was no anger on my part, just a desire to avoid an unjustifiable justification.

Yes, indeed, there’s a part of me that enjoys constructive, even sharp, debate, perhaps especially with my readers. After all, as far as I’m concerned, friendship goes far deeper than our individual need for intellectual and even spiritual reinforcement!

My chat this morning with this couple was something of an oasis amidst the hot sands of political heat. It was downright refreshing to actually feel comfortable and loving toward these wonderful political luddites. 

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats was right when he observed:  "Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY