Posted on 03/03/2012 5:59:02 AM PST by Kaslin
“We are not the same. I equate Republicans’ political views with thoughtlessness, intolerance and narcissism. They’re neither kind nor empathetic.” The preceding words are a direct quote, written by Diana Wagman, a novelist, in an Op-Ed piece she penned for the Los Angeles Times, on February 21, 2012. Ms. Wagman, who describes herself and her husband as, “…both bleeding heart liberals”, related her tale of an inadvertent discovery of the political views of the couple who own a vacation cabin across the street from the Wagman’s own spread, in the Sierra Nevada, just outside of Fresno, California. Ms. Wagman described her shock when, after an evening spent playing poker and sipping scotch, she found, to her horror, that the aforementioned couple across the street were conservative-Tea Partying Republicans. Your humble Townhall correspondent assumed that the rest of this piece would become a rather commonplace “can’t judge a book by its cover”, missive, but at that point it spun off in exactly the opposite direction.
Ms. Wagman informed her readers that her across-the-street acquaintances were the perfect neighbors. They were pleasant, helpful, and friendly. As Ms. Wagman put it, “They are a lovely family: husband, wife, and four smart, funny, polite children. I was sure they were Democrats.” They were also an interracial family, with an African-American mother and a White father.
The trouble began when the Wagmans invited their new friends in for a final drink after the annual Camp Sierra Association poker game. The friends announced that they were members of the Tea Party, and for good measure, they added that the Tea Party was not racist because, they, an interracial couple, had been eagerly welcomed and accepted by their Tea Party compatriots. In Wagman’s own words, “…I was shouting, his wife was trying to calm him down, my husband was trying to calm me down, and our other friends-all Democrats- were trying to keep everybody from breaking the furniture.”
Ms. Wagman goes on to describe the downward spiral of the evening. She states that they argued about healthcare, welfare, Obama’s religion and citizenship, and the war on terror. Things soon descended to name-calling; “He called me a spoiled idiot and worse. I called him selfish, shortsighted and worse. It was awful, and it went on until after 3 AM.”
It is sad when friends sometimes fall out over politics, but it does happen. Thomas Sowell may have been correct in the late 1980s when he argued that political bickering masked deep divisions of a cultural and sociological nature, and that these divisions could never really be bridged. Be that as it may, in this particular case apologies were proffered, but not really accepted. “The next morning, they knocked on our door and we apologized to each other and laughed sheepishly…But my feelings about them are changed. I cannot respect them as I did before…I don’t want to be friends with someone who is a member of the Tea Party, or is a Newt Gingrich Republican. We are not the same. I equate their political views with thoughtlessness, intolerance and narcissism. I think they are neither kind nor empathetic.”
Ms. Wagman goes on to express her wish for conservatives: “If only they would all go live in Gingrich’s moon colony.” She then rattles off a listing of her certified liberal views and argues that they “…seem so logical to me…these are no-brainers to me, and it kills me that my neighbor disagrees.” She idly wonders if any number of bitter misfortunes, such as having a son killed in Afghanistan, a daughter turning up pregnant, or a sister announcing that she was a lesbian would change her neighbor’s opinions. She finishes her article by stating, “Next time I drive to our cabin, I’m going to make sure I take everything I could possibly need. I don’t want to ask my neighbors for help. I hope it’s their weekend to stay home.”
Let us hope that Ms. Wagman is speaking for herself, and does not represent the views and attitudes of the modern American liberal. It seems quite bigoted, small-minded and petulant to argue that simply discovering that the neighbors are anti-Obama Tea Partiers precludes the possibility of friendship, or even cordiality between their respective families. This is pretty incendiary stuff. Whatever became of the Hubert Humphrey School of “Happy Warrior” type liberalism?
The material point in this column is quite simple. Diana Wagman is likely the type of liberal who bemoans the polarized nature of our politics, the divisive state of our culture, and the vanishing of civility from our public discourse. Yet, in her Op-Ed piece she freely admits that she is a liberal and that she essentially hates Republicans because they are conservatives. Certainly Ms. Wagman would argue that Rush Limbaugh should be censored, that Ann Coulter is a national disgrace, and that George W. Bush was the worst President in American history. She does not consider these views over the top. On the contrary “they seem so logical” to her. (Perhaps these attitudes represent the worldview of regular readers of the Los Angeles Times.) It goes without saying that she considers hating conservatives to be quite logical, too. If Ms. Wagman really wants to pin the “polarizing” and “divisive” tails on the political donkey she can start with herself.
Karl Marx defined peace as "absence of opposition to Socialism".
Similarly, Ms Wagman would only want polarization, incivility and divisiveness to disappear on HER terms, namely the surrender of conservatives to adoption of HER viewpoints, rather than HER choosing to be more civil and truly tolerant.
I have heard that it is possible for a conservative republican to be friends with a liberal democrat. It does require a strictly-adhered to agreement between the parties that nothing political will ever be discussed. Beyond that, I think it’s a bit of a minefield to navigate social and cultural discussions, though I do know of people who have pulled it off for years.
A spot-on example of why I would not share one moment of my existence in the presence of a liberal, no matter what party affiliation and even a blood relative. They simply do not matter to anyone who appreciates life.
The lefties create nausea in me. I refuse to have friendships with such destructive losers...be they family members , coworkers or whomever. Life is too short asnd too valuable to waste it engaging these pathetic degenerates.
Diana Wagman was a professor in the film program at Cal State Long Beach.
So much hypocrisy in this, from so many different angles-the living breathing personification of liberals who want to impose their “morality” on others but not live with the consequences themselves. I bet she loves higher gas prices.
Hypocritical liberal moron.
PS She now is a “writer:”
Diana Wagman is the author of the novels “Skin Deep,” “Spontaneous” and “Bump.”
That’s pretty good for a Saturday morning.
LOL.
They are drones and not worth wasting your breathe over, although I always give it a try.
They have no morals, they know they have no morals, so to be able to live with themselves they project that no one has any morals but that they themselves are superior for admitting not having any morals.
Forum gets entirely too serious, sometimes.
I am a white female. Aside from the fact I’m female, nobody has any reason to assume I’m liberal. Yet liberals are always spouting off their opinions in front of me, assuming I’ll agree. That’s just how liberals are. The schools and the media are constantly patting them on the backs and telling them how right they are. So they assume that everybody agrees with them, (except for maybe a few gun-toting rednecks in flyover country or something.) So liberals shoot off their mouths, never stopping to think that maybe their audience disagrees or might be offended.
A most excellent piece of work, sir!
IMHO, you should start a thread with this essay.
PS It is too well written to be hidden away in the middle of a thread.
By Gov't subsidies, of course.
Lady, if you personally had to really take care of someone less fortunate, you wouldn't have the first idea of how to proceed.
I cannot abide LIEberals. And will not tolerate them in my presence.
Mainly because my experience of them is that they LIE. They have to LIE to themselves and to everyone else, including their LIEberal FRiends, to justify their pathetic existence.
That is why, when I wish to refer to “Progressives,” I refer to them as LIEberals. I also refer to them as LIEberal/Socialist/Marxist/Fascist Bastards FRom time to time.
Over the years, our society has gotten less tolerant of people who take exception to what, in my younger days, were “fighting words.” I grew up in the 50s and 60s, and back in THAT day, people were held accountable for their words and actions. A “Knuckle Sandwich” was often the reward for saying or doing something that was offensive. The threat of a “Knuckle Sandwich” often kept the rhetoric in a respectful place.
Then, something changed, and people began to be able to bully folks without having to take responsibility for their words or actions. Oftentimes, the offended person, while very much in his/her right to be offended and seek redress via a FRiendly punch in the mouth to teach the offender a lesson in civility, was arrested.
WELL! I don’t need to expound any further, do I? As soon as it became legal for these idiots to spout off and demonstrate without being held personally accountable for their words or their deeds, our civility began a downward spiral.
Somehow the First Amendment, which really only allows us to criticize the government, has been transmorgrified into laws allowing (nay, ENCOURAGING!) people to say & do most anything without being held accountable.
That is my opinion on why the USA are on our way to Hell in a handbasket.
This is one of the things she says in her article.
Is she so short-sighted that she thinks nothing bad has happened to him in his life?
Likely some of the hard knocks of life are what has made him want to be self-sufficient and free of Gov't so he can make his own way.
She's a dimwit.
That's a good attitude. Now that I am away from work (retired), I have no need for even that since I have no "colleagues." Thank goodness.
I avoid neighbors all together (and where I live, they most likely are conservative) since I think it is a mistake to strike up any relationships with them. Think about it: if you make friends with neighbors and the relationship goes really sour, you have your worst enemy living next door.
Are you not in a position to set them straight as to your views?
And that is the truth of it.
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