Friday, February 10, 2017

Tolerance

Years ago I made friends with a woman whose son was in my son's grade school class.  Her son is disabled (cerebreal palsy).  Over the years, she and I, and even the son, became friends and had a lot of contact.  She went through a difficult divorce (I guess they are all difficult.), and I was a listening ear when times got tough.  She was a very different person from me, but we had a sort of spiritual connection.  I know this might sound weird, but I swear that months and months would go by without our talking,  then suddenly I would find myself thinking about her, and within a few days she would call me.  This happened over and over, even when she moved far away.  Her lifestyle was very different from mine.  She was a recovering alcoholic, I am an LDS non-drinker.  She lived with her boyfriend before marrying him.  I believe that one should be married to live with and have sex with a man.  She swears like a sailor, I abhor swearing.  I'm not saying all of this to say that I am superior, only to show how different we were.  Through it all, I remained supportive, and never once criticized or berrated her for her life choices.  I never told her how much I loathe swearing, or smoking.  I wanted to be a good friend, and allow her the freedom to live her life as she saw fit.  After I moved to China, we stopped talking on the phone.  (For obvious reasons). Even after I moved back to the States we never talked because we didn't have contact numbers anymore.  But eventually, to my surprise, we connected on Facebook.

After becoming Facebook friends, I noticed she posted many liberal memes.  I try not to post many political things, although I do "like" many political posts.  I did post something that she disagreed with.  Next thing I knew, she had unfriended me.  I was quite surprised because I thought we were close friends.  After a couple of months, I got another friend request from her.  I won't lie, I considered not accepting it.  I was still stinging from her unfriending, but mainly I had lost trust in her.  But I decided that I need to be tolerant and forgiving, so I accepted.

At first things were fine, although I remained guarded.  Then I noticed her posting highly offensive things.  I'm not just talking about anti-conservative things, these were sometimes explicit, and more often than not were founded on false news or half truths.  I wanted to preserve the friendship, so I just unfollowed her so that I wouldn't have to see the swearing and offensive falsehoods.  That seemed to work, and I felt things were going okay.

One day, out of the blue, she posted an offensive meme on my wall.  Then in the comment section, she posted some sort of explicit memes, and wrote things that I found distasteful and inappropriate.  I didn't want my friends exposed to them so I deleted the post.  She came back and posted in the comment section of a non-political post.  Once again, she posted very offensive things, and swore at me, and berrated my religion.  Somehow she tied my religion to my politics.  I deleted the explicit comments and replied that I felt we should keep politics out of our friendship.  She hurled more attacks at me, then unfriended me.

You might be tempted to say, "Well, she wasn't a good friend, was she?"  Well, she was initially.  To me, this is more about the current trend of anger and hate coming from the left.  They cry "tolerance and love", then turn around and spew intolerance and hate.  Never in my life have I seen a group so filled with hatred.  For those of you who are liberal, know that I don't paint you all with the same brush.  But there is a core majority that are raging.  It's the pure definition of inhumanity in my opinion.  The love of man has waxed cold.  If the left was truly tolerant, we would not be seeing rioting, or beatings of conservatives.  I can understand disagreeing about politics, but throwing away a friendship over it is shameful.


5 comments:

Becky said...

This is so sad. I, too, was surprised at the passion from some of my liberal friends. The memes and links they've been posting really do seem quite insensitive. I unfollowed quite a few (and these ARE church friends with the same moral standards, and even relatives) because scrolling through Facebook was just getting too sad and depressing.

Right after the election I was visiting with nephews who voted differently than I did, but they had done so intelligently and with good reasons, and then had an "oh well" attitude afterwards. As I heard some one say, it's too bad we can't all differentiate between politics and government and get behind the leaders that are chosen once the choice has been made.

Mike Goad said...

Such a shame.

In 2008, I considered myself a slightly left of center independent. Since then, liberal politics, in general, has moved further left and, as a result, I've find that I agree more with the right.

The anger and hate coming from the left is disheartening. I think that it is going to drive many of the more tolerant away. That may not be a bad thing.

Inklings said...

I am sorry you had to have this experience. It really is a shame to let politics stop friendships, but it is the times we live in and you didn't make that choice, she did.

Maria said...

It's probably inappropriate to get into this now, but you can unfollow someone on FB while remaining friends. You can also put people on a restricted list so they only see your public posts. FB is a great tool if we lern how to use it wisely. The trouble is, many of us don't learn until we've made a few (sometimes awful and upsetting) mistakes.

I am sorry you had to go through this. I've had a few friendships like this too, especially with people who I actually liked although they didn't share my values. It can be very hard sometimes. Hugs.

Delirious said...

Yes Maria, I unfollowed her because of so many inappropriate posts. But then she got angry and unfriended me. I guess I've seen her true colors after all these years.