Op-Ed

“I could never be friends with a Republican.”

I said this while explaining to my Dutch coworkers how divisive the two-party political system is in America. I found myself taken aback having heard the proclamation come out of my mouth. I had never verbalized it before. I spoke it emphatically and with hostility.

Once a month I used to go out for dinner with a group of three girlfriends from work (during the time when women were meeting in groups of four due to the subconscious influence of Sex and the City). We had pretty great discussions. We talked about meaningful things and frivolous things. We made each other laugh and sometimes giggle. But over the course of one particular dinner, three of us jumped on the “what an atrocity the Iraq war is” issue. The fourth of us remained silent. When we had worn ourselves out from indignation and sorrow, she spoke up, “Actually, I support the war and I think George Bush is a good president.”

What happened next happens to many of us Democrats when faced with an outted Republican: we sort of became speechless. The three of us sitting at the table all made her confirm she wasn’t joking. We’d known this woman and her husband for years, but we’d never known their political stance. In Seattle where I lived at the time, everyone just assumes everyone else is a godless Democrat. After her confession (although I’m sure she wouldn’t call it that), it was pretty clear we had no other route but to get into a heavy political debate that would most likely end up in tears. The only civil option was to U-turn away from the topic entirely.

Not too long after this woman and her Fox News-watching husband (who was at one time my boss), made their Republican-ness known to us, they moved back to Ohio where for a reason just as inexplicable as being a republican, they felt more comfortable. It was probably a good thing too. Because I doubt that anything ever could have been very genuine among us for girls after that, and exchanging pleasant emails about the births of new babies and whatnot was very safe territory over which to converse.

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I have an aunt who married into a conservative Republican Midwestern Baptist family when she was 19 years old. She raised three children in a fundamentalist Baptist school. Missions. The devil. No alcohol. The works. The whole Christian upbringing didn’t really turn out so well for the family; my uncle-by-marriage flipped out and left the family, one of my cousins has a drug problem and the other got his girlfriend pregnant when he was 17. But the oldest of the three siblings moved out to Seattle with her conservative Christian husband whom she met at Bob Jones University: a school that they were both kicked out of. I knew that there was hope for both of them. They are in their mid 20s and have an infant and a toddler. They are doing fabulously. They are cool kids and I adore my cousin’s husband as much as I adore her. They have music and friends in their life. They are a lot of fun. They wear cool clothes.

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Just a few months before I was born in 1969, my paternal grandfather married a woman named Carolyn. She was “Carrie” to many but “Grandma Carolyn” to me. She was one of the most special people in my life and I cherished her. She was different from my family. She was what I perceived as wealthy. She was sophisticated. She was Episcopalian and she could sing like an opera singer. She had three children of her own who were all wonderfully eccentric and exotic. She had incredibly strong opinions about everything. She was fancy. She was a Republican.I remember when I was very young the family went out for pizza. As I was picking all the toppings off my slice (so as to get to the only edible thing a pizza had to offer an eight year old girl, being the crust), my father and my Grandma Carolyn engaged in a heated political debate. My grandmother remained steadfast in her opinion as something being irrefutably truthful. My hippie-liberal father (born from my artist-liberal grandfather) became flustered with the incomprehensibility as to how such an educated and kind and thoughtful and loving and generous woman could arrive at the opinions she held so staunchly. There would be many conversations between them such as that one imprinted in my mind, but most of them would happen after I had gone to bed or fallen asleep under the Christmas tree.

I look back on that unforgettable night, and see it now as my father must have seen it. But there is a difference. My father would never for one second not have considered his stepmother a friend. And I could never have a friend that was a Republican, right?

So here’s the thing that sucks for me: that woman who was in our party of four; my Baptist cousins; my Grandma Carolyn; and a few other friends I know who definitely lean conservative (but all live on the West Coast and therefore keep it very hush-hush) are at the top of my list of the most kind, most generous, most grounded, and most lovable and loving people I know. Damn.

My friend and her husband who moved back to Ohio were always the ones that started the donation pool for the underprivileged families during the holidays. They were the type of people that no one could *not* like. They were sweet and funny. My friend’s husband could always make me laugh. And my friend had a darker side to her that gave her depth. They were wonderful, good people.

My cousins have never received me with anything other than an abundance of love and affection…the kind of unembarrassed love that overwhelms you..the love that one can only describe in my pinched little world as “proactive.” It is the kind of love that just sits there waiting for you…waiting to burst out for you like an undiscovered geyser that needs only to be touched to rocket into the air. My tree-hugging conservative friends tend to be that way because they believe in financial accountability; all of them being quite well off since birth and not wanting to part with their hard-earned or hard-inherited cash to float the unmotivated not-well-offs. All of these friends have at any given time helped me in a way I could hardly ever repay them for. And never was one cent ever pushed across a table.

So what has happened to our political climate where a debate between a Republican and a Democrat is so volatile that it could all too easily end or compromise a friendship? I don’t know any funny famous republicans. Who is the Republican equivalent of John Stewart or Al Franken? I don’t know anyone who is a republican that had democrats for parents, although I can cite many examples of the reverse.

I believe most republican norms, especially economic and societal are wrong and misguided and rooted in ideology which always gets us nowhere—especially in times of war and especially-especially in times of fabricated justifications for a manufactured war. But, when I look at myself and my fellow democrats, what must I criticize us for? Hypocrisy? Is it just too convenient to be middle or upper middle-class and be a democrat? When did it happen where educated Republicans and Democrats couldn’t have a respectful yet unmitigated debate without the risk of it deteriorating beyond something irreparable? I mean, really, where did that happen? Was it Nixon? Reagan? Bush? Dubya? All four of these guys were lousy presidents but at least two of them were smart, most likely three.

This is the first presidential election where I really grappled with the issues determining who would get my vote. I’ve never betrayed my party lines, but this is the first time I had to wait until the last minute to make up my mind who I would vote for in the primaries. And I have to say, if McCain gets elected, I won’t be sickened. He does seem to be an honest and honorable guy, maybe more so even than the suspiciously ambitious Obama (who in the end won my vote because despite the rhetoric, change is indeed exactly what we need) or the recycled spin-off that is Hillary Clinton. I want Barak Obama to be the next president of the United States. I get excited and invigorated by the idea of the American people being their own collective underdog and pulling off the upset. But I also think that McCain easing in to a victory would at the very least, allow for Republicans and Democrats to find enough common ground where we might actually be able to talk to each other again. The fact of the matter is, I *can* be friends with a Republican. I would just love to see America become the kind of place where that wouldn’t be such a hard thing to admit.