My husband is a rightie, sad but true. Our marriage almost ended over the 2008 election so we decided that we cannot talk politics, it isn't important enough to lose our relationship over. That election was an absolute hell for me, we argued every - single - day.
I don't really have any "friends" that are righties that I see a lot, though a lot are on FB. I speak my mind on FB and if they want to argue fine, if they can't handle argument that's fine too. I don't hide who I am, though that would be the prudent think to do in Kentucky.
The thing about my husband is that I don't talk politics but I appeal to his gentle side when discussing things. We agree on so much but political labels prevent us from seeing that at times. This may be true throughout society, something gets a label as belonging to one "party" or the other and people change their minds on that issue. I've seen my husband do that. It's sad. But then I think I do it as well sometimes, or not enough to please people on liberal message boards at other times. I piss liberals off a lot of times because I don't like liberal misogyny any more than conservative misogyny, for instance. We expect everyone to get their marching orders and go on both "sides".
The political climate in this country is taking away our rational thinking ability, disrupting civility, and negating empathy. The way to talk to people on "the other side" is to talk about stuff in common, we are forgetting things we do have in common in the media driven haste to drive wedges between people. My husband LOVES animals and I bring stuff up to bring out that side of him from time to time. We have to do something to find basic, common ground with people, we are losing that rapidly.
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