I was trying to describe what lead to the current political situation, and the political supporters that caused this. The person kept insisting that these people were simply racists. While I don’t deny there may be this group who came out to vote, that’s not the way they see it, and simply labeling them as such will not be constructive, because not being able to relate to a person on the other side of the political spectrum merely marginalises them. They know it, and thus will be more likely to commit to such extreme choices when not feeling that their own concerns aren’t acknowledged.
This person asked “Why can’t we just call a spade a spade?” Well, people were already labeling these people as racists, but it didn’t give anyone the political outcome they had hoped for, so obviously something didn’t work out. Then again, there’s that third-party Candidate X who this person believes stole votes from the other candidate, because they simply pointed out the fallacies of the other two candidates. In any case, as I simply don’t want to talk about it any further, this person said,
“This may be fun for you, but it’s not for me. Let’s change the subject.”
In all frankness, my inability to drive my point across in a convincing manner was actually very much irritating for me, not the least “fun”.
If this was me just a couple years ago, I would have done what everyone would have done: Re-evaluate our friendship based on this one tiny political difference. Now, I actually appreciate the fact that this person was able to identify their boundary, and let me know clearly that they wanted to end this for the sake of preserving a well-meaning friendship. There probably could have been a better choice of words, but considering how I wasn’t about to change my stance to match opinion, there could have been worse ways to put it. Honestly, if it were me, I’m not even sure I would have been able to handle it quite in the same, manner they did. So this is indeed something to learn from.