Just had a *heated discussion* with my best friend about politics

[Lisa0825]

I read the topic by suigeneris about the freeper/former friend, and decided to post what happened with me and my friend tonight. I know she'll still be my best friend, because we have been so for 22 years now, but it still left me reeling a bit.

She's a warm, fuzzy Democrat... you know, the kinder, gentler type, who wants us to play by the rules, even though *they* don't... who wants us to walk the high road, never sink to *their* level, etc.... basically, who I WAS about 8 years ago... before I'd gotten angry enough.

She's a wonderful person. Way nicer than me. The most caring person I know in the world. which is why it bothers me to argue with her.

99% of the time, we agree on politics. But tonight, she said she felt sorry for Ryan, over the sex scandal. I said I didn't. I said anyone who belongs to a party whose platform is built upon legislating morality, automatically makes their morality fair game. Playing nice hasn't gotten Democrats anywhere, and I no longer want my party to tiptoe around dirt. As long as the Rethugs feel that MY morals, MY body, and MY sex life are THEIR business, then anything they do in their personal life is fair game.

She told me she thought I was getting *too radical.* LOL! She's never been to DU! I'm pretty tame in this venue!:-)

So..... I think many of us have had experiences where we have backed off or had it out with Repug friends... but have any of you had situations come up with fellow Dem friends? Did you enlighten them, or keep your rhetoric down around them?

[salinen]

1. Maybe she's been

to a sex club?

[Lisa0825]

2. LOL! I don't think so! Actualy, I am the wild child of the two of us!

But she felt like it was bad for his kids for that to be made public. and honestly, I do too. But I still feel that anyone who represents the party that wants to intrude in my bedroom and my doctor's office deserves any invasion of privacy he gets.

[kikiek]

3. I don't try to hide it anymore.

There are people who ask me questions about things sometimes, and others who avoid political discussions. Especially around me! I don't care if I alienate some people. My belief is that it is your patriotic duty to be well informed and know what is going on. All these people dying to spread democracy to another country, and we have more people voting on American Idol. Talk about traitors. Of course this administration loves that.

[Lisa0825]

9. ''it is your patriotic duty to be well informed'''

You know what??? I am almost 36 years old, and back when I was 16, that was part of an essay I wrote to qualify for Girls' State! Little did the American Legion know what a rabble-rouser I'd become, eh? LOL!

I completely agree with what you said. I guess it's just had to shake it off when it's someone who is basically closer than what little family I have. It's like having a fight with your only sibling.

I hope she'll get angrier after she sees F9/11. She generally relies on ME for most of her info, so I was shocked that she seemed to judge me on that opinion.

[kikiek]

16. Wow..years ahead of yourself. I love it when kids pay attention.

I was in 4th grade when Nixon beat Humphrey. I was devastated. Both of my parents were political. I can't talk to my sister about it though. She shuts down. Can't get her to F911. She votes democratic anyways, but everyone should see it.

[Jade Fox]

4. Sorry for Ryan? Has he been seriously hurt in some way?

He's not going to be a Senator from Illinois. That is not a tragedy, even
if you think he is being treated unfairly. (I agree with your logic: They
made peoples sex lives a public issue, so too bad).

Your friend is way TOO nice.

[Lisa0825]

12. have you ever heard the saying,

"the same things you love about someone are what makes you crazy?" LOL! Yes, she is nice in the most excessive way... but that is also why I love her. We have rarely fought over the years, so that makes me more sensitive about this disagreement, than I would be if it were anyone else.

[Morning Dew]

30. The best part about it...

is that he spent $3 million of his own personal "fortune".

I may be wrong on the amount but he spent a bunch of his own funds on the campaign.

[shockingelk]

5. I'd probaby take the side of your friend

To me, it seems like you see stooping to their level as well and fine. I don't.

What does Ryan's sex life and messy divorce have to do with you? I think the golden rule is applicable here, and I'm a fan of it.

The political arguments I get in with my friends are almost always:

a. 2nd Amendment. I think it should be repealed and left completely up to the states, my friends tend to want to ban guns everywhere.
b. Government bloat. Pork and waste don't seem to bug my friends. They always try to hear that I'm talking about taxes.
c. Living wages. My friends tend to think raising the minimum wage is going to help something, and also tend to hold on to that belief so strongly, I don't think they thing about living wages.

[Lisa0825]

13. Hypocracy is my answer to the golden rule...

I usually take the high road, but if the person on the other side of the issue is being a hypocrite, then I say the gloves are off.

I do respect other points of view, thought. I did my best to make that clear to her, while trying to make my points.

[shockingelk]

15. That seems hypocracy once removed

In this case, desiring to keep your private life private, but once someone delves into yours, theirs becomes fair game.

The circularity of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict come to mind ...

[Lisa0825]

24. I guess I don't think that one's hypocracy, exposed,

has any right to be protected. Yes, if someone attacks my private life, his/hers is also on the table.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

19. The rightwing of the GOP needs to understand that we're NOT going....

...to turn the cheek any more. I've personally had enough of it.

The only thing they understand is someone standing up to them and pushing back much harder than they got pushed. Being nice to those people has gotten us absolutely nothing.

[shockingelk]

23. what was the slap in the face?

I'm not sure how you've been damaged or affronted by Ryan wanting to have consensual sex in front of other consenting adults.

[Lisa0825]

25. THEY made sex the issue... consentual sex, at that.

and now they expect us to keep quiet at THEIR foibles? if they wanted this topic to be off limits, they had the choice to bury it. It is the Republicans who chose sex as a major campaign issue, and they have to live with that choice.

[shockingelk]

32. Maybe I don't understand your opinion

As I see it, you can do one or the other:

a. Call authoritarian Republicans out on their hypocrisy
b. Play the same game as Republicans by making personal choices everybody's business.

If you do "a", you can say people's sexual choices should be private if the individual wishes them to be private, if you do "b", you can't hold the same opinion without holding a double standard of some sort.

This sex stuff is just the result of a nasty Republican primary is it not? They didn't need any help bringing it upon themselves ...

[DrBB]

6. Well, okay. But on the Ryan thing

...I take your point, but I think my own view trends closer to Kos's line. This post, as well as his earlier ones on the "sex scandal" issue are worth reading. If it were just a matter of fighting fire with fire, well, you've got a point, but i guess what bugs me most is that it ends up feeding into a fundamentally corrupt and lazy attitude within the media.

Quote from a Republican on this:

Fitzgerald said Friday that he had encouraged Ryan to stay in the race, calling the response to the scandal "grotesque."

"I told him that it troubled me greatly that so many party leaders who had no trouble stomaching years and years of corruption and insider deals and scandals under George Ryan were now lining up to throw stones at Jack (no relation to George Ryan)," Fitzgerald said.

Why can't the same kind of attention and outrage be directed toward real corruption and malfeasance? That's what I'd like to know. This time it's a Reichpublican; next time a Dem, and on and on and on the media will go, happily focussing on garbage like this instead of things that actually matter.

[Lisa0825]

26. Thank you for posting that.

I read most of it, and sent it to my friend. I think the variety of viewpoints posted in that thread can give anyone food for thought.

[maggrwaggr]

7. does she think Ryan would play by those rules?

HA!

Fuck all the scumbag GOPers who try to shove their "morality" down our throat.

They are the biggest hypocrites I've ever seen.

To hell with all of them.

[murielm99]

11. In the case of Ryan, no democrat stooped to "their" level.

Obama did not do this. Blagojevich, Daley, and all the rest of them did not do it either. They stayed miles away from it, and were very circumspect in their comments.

A newspaper outed Ryan.

Democrats do not really get that upset about sex.

Repukes set the tone. Repukes yell so much about morality and family values that reporters know this sort of thing is not off limits at all.

Hoisted on his own petard, and it serves him right.

Obama would have won, even without this crap.

Let them sleep in the bed they made.

[kikiek]

17. And they did it I bet on their own. Sex sells newspapers

Way more than war or anything that really matters. If you're gonna be a senator, and your're thinking of sex clubs..gotta let go of one. The time when they coexisted went out years ago.

[sandnsea]

8. Ryan's responsibility to protect his kids

We aren't responsible for other people's bad behavior, they are. Ryan should have thought about his kids before his sex club shenanigans, he didn't, now they all have to pay. That's the way negative consequences work. Besides, Republicans are the ones who say character counts so they have the right to know who they're voting for. He's their candidate, if they really mean what they say about character.

[seabeyond]

10. just send her this post

and then let her know this is who you are in all your glory. you are so nice and respectful to her in your post, ah, she will feel your love and maybe better understand and not be so afraid of your passion.

i on the otherhand, totally embrace you on your passion. hell ya, repugs are going to tell me what christianity is and judge me as patriotic or moral or good, then hell yes repugs had better walk the talk, or i dismiss repug too (talking about ryan and his scandal.)

[notbush]

14. If a paper gets ahold of JFK's sealed divorce records

and there's something embarrassing there.......are you gonna sell him down the river?

[kikiek]

18. Oh is he thinking of running again? HAH they got way more on him

than any other president in history. It would have to be a barn burner to outglow his already exposed past.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. The poster was referring to John Kerry...those are his initials...

...just like John F. Kennedy.

[kikiek]

22. Showing my age. I firmly believe any candidate that has

something to hide has no business running. I don't agree with what is done at all and I really couldn't care less about private sex lives. I would be angry at Kerry for not recognizing his weakness, and letting someone else take the nomination. I doubt there is anything there frankly.

[Lisa0825]

33. I didn't sell anyone down the river this time, so the answer would

be no to that too. All I said was that I didn't feel sorry for Ryan after all the GOP has done to try to legislate morality according to their standards, and to ruin any Democrat who dared not adhere to their standards. Would I feel sorry For Kerry (I REFUSE to refer to him as JFK) if something embarressing came out? That would depend on the circumstances.

[Cheswick2.0]

20. you are right, your friend is wrong RYAN IS A BAD BAD PERSON

This is not a matter of consensual sexual relations. He took his wife to a sex club, she said no so he took her again. She said not again.....so he took her a third time and got angry at her when she started crying.
A person like that SHOULD NOT BE a senator.

If he didn't want his kids to know about this he shouldn't have run for the senate. He knew they would go after him.

[tinrobot]

27. It's still just sex...

My opinion is a candidate's private sex life shouldn't be a factor in ANY election.

I didn't give a crap about Clinton's private sex life. I also don't really care about Condit's, Livingston's, Hart's, or now Ryan's. So Ryan's a bit kinky... big deal. Still a private matter, regardless of party affiliation.

[Lisa0825]

34. I agree that it shouldn't matter. But it matters to THEM,

and I admit it amuses me when they take down one of their own for something I don't even think should matter. Now, the matter of him trying to force this behavior upon his wife is a major factor, aside from the sex club factor. I think he is a real bastard if he did try to force her to do something she did not want to do.

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Yavin4]

29. Your Friend May Be Right; They're Going After Kerry's Divorce

records which have been sealed.

[Rabrrrrrr]

31. Ah, my dem friends and I still argue quite a bit

one of the good things of the dem party which the repuke and freep parties wil never acknowledge is that we actaully DON'T march in lockstep with one another. We agree on methodology - that we should think, read, get information, come to a rational intelligent answer - but the answers we come up with can be quite different, and we challenge one another.

Some of my friends think I'm too radical, some think I'm not radical or liberal enough, some think I'm too libertarian, some think I'm too communist, some think I'm too "conspiracy minded", some hate my lifelong NRA membership, but what the hell - at the root, we agree on the foundation: that all people are created equal, that everyone should get a fair shake, that all people deserve food, a place to live, and at least some level of health care; that the environment needs to be protected, because we require it for life; that government and religion is an explosive, doom-filled combination (and pretty much ALL my friends are Christians, many of them ministers); and an equal unification to get that war criminal George "ToiletBrain" Shrub and his cabal out of the white house so that the earth, and all the people on it, can be safe again.

[Lisa0825]

35. Yeah, actually, I used the term 'lockstep' while we were arguing.

They have been much more united than the Dems, so I blame each of them for any bad policies, as representatives of that unified party. So, to me, Ryan (whether or not he personally supports these things or not) supports the party of discrimination against women, minorities, and homosexuals, and is trying to take away my reproductive rights, and legistlate what I tell my doctor, and what goes on in my bedroom.

[Commendatori]

36. All the time, because I'm a pro-gun Democrat

Most of these people believe in outright gun bans, and actually seem to believe such laws would work. When they try to pick apart the "militia / shall not be infringed" wording or punctuation, I ask them to show me how those words were ever intended to mean that only the government should have guns. We go around and around, and never get anywhere.