On bridging (or not) the divide in today's politically charged US.

Over the course of my adult life, during random person to person (not email or social media) social interactions, I have never been first to raise a putatively controversial political topic. When someone else raised a topic counter to my own conservative beliefs, I would usually demure or change the subject. Not forgotten is the time when one of TIMDT's tennis friends, while visiting TIMDT at our Miami condo, stuck her head into my office where I was listening to Rush Limbaugh and said, "what are you listening to that crap for?" I responded with a polite smile and a shrug.

No more. Starting about ten years ago I modified my posture. I continued to refrain from raising political subjects in
social settings, but when someone else did, I would engage. My rebuttals would frequently give rise to uncomfortable conversational stand-offs. Often, my association with the "other ideas" person would wane over time. Today, my address book is littered with the names of former other thinking "friends" with whom, after engaging in tense political discussions not initiated by me, I am no longer in contact. While I would have been happy to remain in contact with my other thinking interlocutors, it seems that they, by contrast, are more prone to isolate themselves from those with whom they disagree.

I am not cut off from other thinking people all together. One (not the only) example, I participate in a nonpartisan ROMEO group whose members dot all points along the political spectrum. Our ROMEO group thrives as it avoids politically charged topics. There is plenty to talk about: how many baseball caps each member owns; the upcoming deer hunt; college football results; financial markets; entrepreneur successes, the coming wave of AI etc. Our ROMEO group occasionally invites political speakers, but we invite speakers from both sides of the political divide.

I'm generally content in this human interaction space, ambiguous though it may seem, that I've carved out for myself in today's politically charged environment, even if it means giving up contact with those who could not abide my countering of their hard-wired liberal positions. I've concluded that keeping political positions to oneself in social situations where the other party challenges conservative thought, particularly when timeworn principles such as individual liberty, free speech, Second Amendment etc. are under assault, is tantamount to being an abettor of the other party's views.