On Fri, 5 Jun 2009 01:27:54 -0500, "William Wixon"
wrote:


i more or less recently became acquainted with a 71 y.o. man (i'm 49), he
served in the air force during korea, i'd consider him "conservative" or
"ultra conservative". he's catholic. i collaborated with him on three
projects. first was volunteer labor cleaning up a hillbilly shanty town
(that's what i called it) mess at a girl scout camp here. the live-in
caretaker allowed a 10~15 year accumulation of junk to collect. he and i,
then mostly i, cleaned it up. second collaboration was picking up the
litter, junk, garbage along a local country road here. third was a year
later continuation of that same litter/garbage pick up effort. thing that
amazes me is he and i couldn't be more diametrically opposed in our
political beliefs but yet he and i can peacefully cooperate on projects
that, i believe, are to the betterment of our community. i'm absolutely
amazed i can remain in his presence for more than 10 seconds considering
his, what for me are RADICAL right wing opinions. it continues to amaze me.
my blood turns to ice the second he starts in on his political views,
thankfully i've been able to avoid having to endure listening to them very
often or for very long. i have a continuous fear that somewhere along the
line he's going to go off on obama or liberals or "socialists" and i
absolutely will not be able to tolerate it and my relationship with him will
come to a screeching halt. that would be a pity. i do enjoy hanging out
with him, bull****ting with him, working on those projects together with
him. thing i find surprising is there are areas of overlap between
"liberals" and conservatives. "caring for the planet", bettering our
community, respecting nature and local history, preserving open
space/farmland. he's pretty much the driving force behind a local movement
to stop a housing development that's slated to go on historic farmland here,
that's the part where much to my surprise, liberal and conservative overlap.
i'd assume you wouldn't ordinarily think conservatives would oppose a
housing development, but this is open historic farmland. i'd think
conservatives would be staunch "landowner's rights" proponents. he's very
active in the community, on the library board, member of the historical
society, constantly doing volunteer work for the community. an inspiration
to this "liberal" "socialist".
i was thinking the volume is turned up here on usenet discussion groups.
probably out there in the world "liberals" and conservatives cooperate on
all sorts of worthy projects, projects that get little or no press. i'd
like to hope so at least.

b.w.

I know the feeling. In my neck of the woods, I pretty much couldn't
have any local friends at all unless I'm willing to tolerate rabid
conservatives. Each has their individual volume level, so I treat them
accordingly. Some are good friends, and we either avoid topics of
disagreement or banter in good humor. Some become more acquaintances
than friends because needing to work around their issues devalues
their friendship. And some get cut loose entirely because they can't
contain themselves. Two of those got their emails blocked because they
refused to stop sending political BS despite being asked politely. I
find that those who promote nonsense such as BA being sworn in on the
Koran are just plain ignorant, a trait that carries over well beyond
politics. In the end though, things wouldn't be much different overall
even if I lived in a more liberal area. I can certainly imagine
blocking email from rabid left-wing neighbors (if I had any) for
example. Heck, even people I really like sometimes have to be told to
stop sending so many jokes, videos, etc. I think that the effect of
opposing political ideology is often overblown. People seem to have a
natural tendency to divide themselves into opposing camps, and if
there's no obvious reason to do so then they'll find one before long.
Anybody who's ever attended a homeowner's association meeting will
know what I'm talking about. :-)

Wayne