I think all we are asked to do in this life is to love. That usually looks like swallowing our pride and opinions but sometimes looks like gentle insistence where caring overrides argument. Lowering the temperature in myself is an important step to listening and asking questions. I don’t have to agree but I will never change someone else’s mind if I come in for the attack. And if I don’t listen to their story, I will have no hope of understanding why they think the way they do.
I am an evangelical Christian disgusted (even angry) at the evangelical church in America. I feel your pain and (to be honest) find reading your poignant description of it to be very therapeutic. Thank-you. (And I'm sorry...)
There is much here, but I want to comment about the Vietnam War. I am 73 and though I heard stories about soldiers being harassed, When the draft lottery came, i had a high number.... I knew vets who returned - I did not witness the harassment. I can believe it occurred but It was hardly widespread. I say this as someone who was in college in NYC so very leftwing and anti war. At the protests themselves - yes the language was harsh. Sorry your father does not support the Vietnam War Memorial. In fact (I write this as an artist) ... this memorial changed all memorials going forward - so removed some of the exaggerated patriotism but acknowledged the suffering. To me it is very moving - and is for many vets as well.
I also remember vets who were not officers - all of them used at least MJ, some heroin. They were angry then and felt left behind by their college bound peers who mostly avoided the war. Though some like Kerry fought, many, especially after 1968 avoided it al (like Trump and Bush II).
PS - perhaps if you lived near a base it was different re the protests.
I just wonder why it's our side that has to do the work (or feels the need) to heal the schisms in relationships. It's tiring and frustrating and I can not envision anyone in maga-land even pondering the questions you raise. Let alone acknowledging such questions. Thank you for giving words to my thoughts better than I could have done.
Using your metaphor, I plan to exit at the next available rest stop and walk around a bit before I get back on the road. If that doesn't work I may go to a campground for a few weeks and hike in the woods. To continue on the road right now would make me a less than charitable driver and a bad representative of the "better people".
I think people hunger so mightily for certainty in a world that seems random, arbitrary, and cruel. I sympathize with that hunger. I get it...up to a point. Because adopting some absolute certainty, some unarguable story that explains everything, is a denial that the world is, in fact, random, arbitrary, and cruel. It's not a way of dealing with it; it's a game of Let's Pretend. It's childish, or at least child-like. And we're not children. We ate the apple. We left the garden. We made that choice.
Our love and understanding and empathy--even all our values and codes and beliefs--are all built in order to deal with the reality of the world, not to deny it. Meaning isn't inherent. We bring meaning--we make the world meaningful by imbuing it with value. That's a good thing. It's a grown-up thing.
Well Holly, it is a conundrum. I have cut off a childhood friend because of her beliefs. Ghosted her actually. I cried over the decision and the loss. But I realized her world view was so different than mine that there was no current commonality in our relationship. The commonality was in things I had long ago given up. I too was raised in a very closed religious bubble. This friend is still in the bubble. I have moved on.We are in our mid 60s and her views have not changed about anything. She is strident and sure of them. I just realized we no longer have anything that would maintain a current friendship. Everything we had was based on our childhood and I have grown up. Life has seasons as do friendships. I grieved letting it go, but I did let it go. PS: I let Facebook go yesterday. No more content moderation means it may turn into the hellhole that X/Twitter is. I don’t need that in my life either. Hang in there.
I’m starting to believe that lots of folks (including those with graduate degrees!) just operate at a very superficial level, certainly for politics and now I’m thinking the same with religion, especially those of the Protestant flavors. Digging below the surface just causes too much cognitive dissonance to deal with. People want to just stay at a high level of tribalism from their past and ignore the shifting that has occurred in the last 8 or maybe 24 years.
Agree with you 100%. With politics, most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I understand that since people have so many other things going on in their lives. They’re likely to just hold on to their old, established beliefs (including party tribalism) rather than spend time thinking about alternatives with better outcomes. It’s up to others to try to break through those beliefs to help them understand what’s at stake. That’s hard, and impossible in many cases.
Looks like real life is playing out in these comments as well :-\
Like you I'm not sure how to navigate these troubled waters. Like you, I also have someone in my life who's an RFK Jr. fan -- my sister. I've never felt more alienated from her politically than I have in the past year. The only way I know to deal with it is to simply tell her I won't engage with her on political topics anymore. She essentially gave up her career because of her adamant refusal to get vaccinated when Covid was running rampant in NYC, where she lived (she's a singer). What possible chance is there that I can make her believe differently?
I'll continue to do what meaningful good I can in the place I call home. That's where I have a chance to make a difference. As for the country (and my state, which also breaks my heart), I guess I just need to let it experience what it has signed on to experience with this election.
I'm 71 years old and I protested the Vietnam War back in the late 60s early 70s. What I remember is that I do believe I did the right thing, but I acknowledge any service man or woman or their family and I thank them for their service. That is what the war taught me. I can disagree with war but not the man who is a soldier or their family.
Thank you for sharing such personal account of friendship and familial bonds fractured due to political differences. I would like to respect others’ opinions but only to a certain extent. When people are delusional, there is no appeasing enough. The thought of Charlie Kirk insulting your intellect is nauseating. But in a world full of Charlie Kirks, we need more Hollys.
It's important to remember that people who have been consuming certain news media have been programmed to go straight into fight mode. (And this is true on both the extreme left and the right.)
I posted something condemning the words of someone who was not Trump, but I didn't name the individual because I didn't want to give him any more air time. People assumed it was about Trump and took offense. For some people, there is literally no way you can address anything politically without offending them, because they've been told for decades now that "the other" wants to persecute them.
For me, the line will be when they start blaming me and other non-Trump voters for the problems that will inevitably arise in his administration. I've had to think about how I will respond, and I think that the response will be "your guy is running things, and I'm not going to discuss further." But where I live, if I cut myself off from everyone who voted Trump, I'd be even more isolated than I already am, and I would lose my entire extended family. (I know my parents didn't vote Trump, but I also know they preferred him to Harris, so I'm not sure how I would navigate that were I to cut off all the Trumpers.) But at the same time, I'm not going to accept responsibility for something I didn't do. Lord knows I've done that enough in my life already.
Also, you should send out another reminder about paid subscriptions around the end of February/beginning of March, when people's finances will have mostly recovered from the holidays and tax returns will start coming in.
As a serious (and possibly subversive) question what *solutions* does your friend think RFK offers?
Based upon what I have seen and read from him he seems to be offering a convenient target for blame (Big Pharma) and the same old bootstraps story which sounds empowering ("you can control your health") but ultimately just puts the blame all on individuals for their failures and excuses the young and healthy from ever taking collective action like getting vaccines or masking. I'd love to hear if he has any actual solutions, especially if they can actually help people, but so far it seems like just an old retread on blaming everyone else.
I had a few conversations, mainly around vaccines/covid, but I don't think it's a particular issue/solution--certainly I don't think he has any cures for the diseases her family deals with--vs. a "vibe" he gives. As with many things, it's not entirely rational.
Once again, your post has connected with me on several different points. My feelings about friends and family who voted for Trump? Yes, but I’ve decided at this time to ghost rather than confront them. Confrontation won’t change them and my mental anguish will not help me. But I will weigh in on the situation with your dad over Vietnam since I served there (as an officer advising ARVN) in 68-69 and left with a totally different mindset. While there I read “Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911 - 45” by Barbara Tuchman and felt that we were making the same mistakes as she documented in her book. While I liked and respected many of the Vietnamese people that I knew and worked with, unfortunately, their leadership was riddled with graft, corruption and incompetence while our side had too many people at all levels who were committing war crimes or whose goal was to get as many medals and promotions as possible from our “dirty little war”. I’ve had several arguments with supporters of that “American War” (title given by Vietnamese people who I met during my month long visit in 2014) who believed that the USA could have won the war if our leaders would have supported it with more troops, time and money. I could not convince them that it was not possible to win, however they wanted to define a win.
I feel sorry for your dad, and you, that he refused to visit the Vietnam War Memorial with you. While still on active duty I knew some of the soldiers who worked hard to make their dream of a memorial that honored their comrades who died there a reality. Since I lived and worked in nearby Baltimore, I visited it whenever I could, especially when friends and family were visiting. It is a hallowed place that touches me deeply, just thinking about it. Your dad should go and see, as I know you have, the friends and family touching the engraved names, seeing the things that they leave at the base of the wall and grizzled old vets in H-D jackets standing while weeping for their lost friends. A few years ago USAA sponsored a traveling half size replica of Wall so that people could get the experience who weren’t able to travel to DC. One exhibit venue was the USS Midway (CV-41) Museum in San Diego where I worked as a docent. I stood a midnight to 8:00 AM watch on the deck assisting visitors in finding names. Fifty odd years later, those visitor’s grief was still palpable.
Thank you for your service and perspective. You also earned your view of the war the hard way. I tend to share yours, but I respect my dad's perspective. it was a complex situation.
“I will NEVER go to that memorial. That is an anti-war memorial.” I would say to your dad that anti-war memorials are the best kind. For me, the Vietnam War Memorial and the Korea War Memorial (with its ghost squad) are both very moving, while the newer WWII Memorial is a cold white marble of places, not people. In my opinion, the true and very moving anti-war memorials are the many military cemeteries around the world. I have visited as many as I could in my travels and they always move me as do the Nazi concentration camps and the many Stolpersteines memorializing the victims of the holocaust taken from their homes in Berlin and other German cities I have visited. For me, it should always be about the people.
Exactly what I needed to read as I puzzle through both real life relationships and the writing of a fictional story wrestling with these same issues. Thank you!
I think all we are asked to do in this life is to love. That usually looks like swallowing our pride and opinions but sometimes looks like gentle insistence where caring overrides argument. Lowering the temperature in myself is an important step to listening and asking questions. I don’t have to agree but I will never change someone else’s mind if I come in for the attack. And if I don’t listen to their story, I will have no hope of understanding why they think the way they do.
The older I get the more I think is true. And so difficult.
I am an evangelical Christian disgusted (even angry) at the evangelical church in America. I feel your pain and (to be honest) find reading your poignant description of it to be very therapeutic. Thank-you. (And I'm sorry...)
I highly recommend Caleb's book for you.
Have you written on what you did for the CIA anywhere?
this post has an interview at the bottom I did that goes fairly in depth https://hollyberkleyfletcher.substack.com/p/shedding-my-secret-identity?r=17nn2v
There is much here, but I want to comment about the Vietnam War. I am 73 and though I heard stories about soldiers being harassed, When the draft lottery came, i had a high number.... I knew vets who returned - I did not witness the harassment. I can believe it occurred but It was hardly widespread. I say this as someone who was in college in NYC so very leftwing and anti war. At the protests themselves - yes the language was harsh. Sorry your father does not support the Vietnam War Memorial. In fact (I write this as an artist) ... this memorial changed all memorials going forward - so removed some of the exaggerated patriotism but acknowledged the suffering. To me it is very moving - and is for many vets as well.
I also remember vets who were not officers - all of them used at least MJ, some heroin. They were angry then and felt left behind by their college bound peers who mostly avoided the war. Though some like Kerry fought, many, especially after 1968 avoided it al (like Trump and Bush II).
PS - perhaps if you lived near a base it was different re the protests.
I just wonder why it's our side that has to do the work (or feels the need) to heal the schisms in relationships. It's tiring and frustrating and I can not envision anyone in maga-land even pondering the questions you raise. Let alone acknowledging such questions. Thank you for giving words to my thoughts better than I could have done.
Better people do the work because they are better people.
If you want to be good, you have to be dedicated to keeping it up. Do you plan to be a bad driver just because so many other people are?
Using your metaphor, I plan to exit at the next available rest stop and walk around a bit before I get back on the road. If that doesn't work I may go to a campground for a few weeks and hike in the woods. To continue on the road right now would make me a less than charitable driver and a bad representative of the "better people".
Sounds like you're taking this seriously!
Good questions to which there are likely no answers but you’re not the crazy one here.
Such a good and important post.
I think people hunger so mightily for certainty in a world that seems random, arbitrary, and cruel. I sympathize with that hunger. I get it...up to a point. Because adopting some absolute certainty, some unarguable story that explains everything, is a denial that the world is, in fact, random, arbitrary, and cruel. It's not a way of dealing with it; it's a game of Let's Pretend. It's childish, or at least child-like. And we're not children. We ate the apple. We left the garden. We made that choice.
Our love and understanding and empathy--even all our values and codes and beliefs--are all built in order to deal with the reality of the world, not to deny it. Meaning isn't inherent. We bring meaning--we make the world meaningful by imbuing it with value. That's a good thing. It's a grown-up thing.
Well Holly, it is a conundrum. I have cut off a childhood friend because of her beliefs. Ghosted her actually. I cried over the decision and the loss. But I realized her world view was so different than mine that there was no current commonality in our relationship. The commonality was in things I had long ago given up. I too was raised in a very closed religious bubble. This friend is still in the bubble. I have moved on.We are in our mid 60s and her views have not changed about anything. She is strident and sure of them. I just realized we no longer have anything that would maintain a current friendship. Everything we had was based on our childhood and I have grown up. Life has seasons as do friendships. I grieved letting it go, but I did let it go. PS: I let Facebook go yesterday. No more content moderation means it may turn into the hellhole that X/Twitter is. I don’t need that in my life either. Hang in there.
I’m starting to believe that lots of folks (including those with graduate degrees!) just operate at a very superficial level, certainly for politics and now I’m thinking the same with religion, especially those of the Protestant flavors. Digging below the surface just causes too much cognitive dissonance to deal with. People want to just stay at a high level of tribalism from their past and ignore the shifting that has occurred in the last 8 or maybe 24 years.
Agree with you 100%. With politics, most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I understand that since people have so many other things going on in their lives. They’re likely to just hold on to their old, established beliefs (including party tribalism) rather than spend time thinking about alternatives with better outcomes. It’s up to others to try to break through those beliefs to help them understand what’s at stake. That’s hard, and impossible in many cases.
Looks like real life is playing out in these comments as well :-\
Like you I'm not sure how to navigate these troubled waters. Like you, I also have someone in my life who's an RFK Jr. fan -- my sister. I've never felt more alienated from her politically than I have in the past year. The only way I know to deal with it is to simply tell her I won't engage with her on political topics anymore. She essentially gave up her career because of her adamant refusal to get vaccinated when Covid was running rampant in NYC, where she lived (she's a singer). What possible chance is there that I can make her believe differently?
I'll continue to do what meaningful good I can in the place I call home. That's where I have a chance to make a difference. As for the country (and my state, which also breaks my heart), I guess I just need to let it experience what it has signed on to experience with this election.
I'm 71 years old and I protested the Vietnam War back in the late 60s early 70s. What I remember is that I do believe I did the right thing, but I acknowledge any service man or woman or their family and I thank them for their service. That is what the war taught me. I can disagree with war but not the man who is a soldier or their family.
Totally appropriate. Did not mean to imply all protestors were cruel to veterans. It was something my dad experienced (he says).
Thank you for sharing such personal account of friendship and familial bonds fractured due to political differences. I would like to respect others’ opinions but only to a certain extent. When people are delusional, there is no appeasing enough. The thought of Charlie Kirk insulting your intellect is nauseating. But in a world full of Charlie Kirks, we need more Hollys.
well we certainly need fewer CKs.
Amen!
It's important to remember that people who have been consuming certain news media have been programmed to go straight into fight mode. (And this is true on both the extreme left and the right.)
I posted something condemning the words of someone who was not Trump, but I didn't name the individual because I didn't want to give him any more air time. People assumed it was about Trump and took offense. For some people, there is literally no way you can address anything politically without offending them, because they've been told for decades now that "the other" wants to persecute them.
For me, the line will be when they start blaming me and other non-Trump voters for the problems that will inevitably arise in his administration. I've had to think about how I will respond, and I think that the response will be "your guy is running things, and I'm not going to discuss further." But where I live, if I cut myself off from everyone who voted Trump, I'd be even more isolated than I already am, and I would lose my entire extended family. (I know my parents didn't vote Trump, but I also know they preferred him to Harris, so I'm not sure how I would navigate that were I to cut off all the Trumpers.) But at the same time, I'm not going to accept responsibility for something I didn't do. Lord knows I've done that enough in my life already.
to be clear, I did not cut her off. She cut me off. I expressed my views, and she cut me off.
Also, you should send out another reminder about paid subscriptions around the end of February/beginning of March, when people's finances will have mostly recovered from the holidays and tax returns will start coming in.
As a serious (and possibly subversive) question what *solutions* does your friend think RFK offers?
Based upon what I have seen and read from him he seems to be offering a convenient target for blame (Big Pharma) and the same old bootstraps story which sounds empowering ("you can control your health") but ultimately just puts the blame all on individuals for their failures and excuses the young and healthy from ever taking collective action like getting vaccines or masking. I'd love to hear if he has any actual solutions, especially if they can actually help people, but so far it seems like just an old retread on blaming everyone else.
NOTE: I know from your post she isn't taking to you but I would be curious to know what she did say beforehand.
I had a few conversations, mainly around vaccines/covid, but I don't think it's a particular issue/solution--certainly I don't think he has any cures for the diseases her family deals with--vs. a "vibe" he gives. As with many things, it's not entirely rational.
That makes sense.
I wish you luck in repairing the connection and hopefully turning your friend away from where listening to RFK might take her.
Once again, your post has connected with me on several different points. My feelings about friends and family who voted for Trump? Yes, but I’ve decided at this time to ghost rather than confront them. Confrontation won’t change them and my mental anguish will not help me. But I will weigh in on the situation with your dad over Vietnam since I served there (as an officer advising ARVN) in 68-69 and left with a totally different mindset. While there I read “Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911 - 45” by Barbara Tuchman and felt that we were making the same mistakes as she documented in her book. While I liked and respected many of the Vietnamese people that I knew and worked with, unfortunately, their leadership was riddled with graft, corruption and incompetence while our side had too many people at all levels who were committing war crimes or whose goal was to get as many medals and promotions as possible from our “dirty little war”. I’ve had several arguments with supporters of that “American War” (title given by Vietnamese people who I met during my month long visit in 2014) who believed that the USA could have won the war if our leaders would have supported it with more troops, time and money. I could not convince them that it was not possible to win, however they wanted to define a win.
I feel sorry for your dad, and you, that he refused to visit the Vietnam War Memorial with you. While still on active duty I knew some of the soldiers who worked hard to make their dream of a memorial that honored their comrades who died there a reality. Since I lived and worked in nearby Baltimore, I visited it whenever I could, especially when friends and family were visiting. It is a hallowed place that touches me deeply, just thinking about it. Your dad should go and see, as I know you have, the friends and family touching the engraved names, seeing the things that they leave at the base of the wall and grizzled old vets in H-D jackets standing while weeping for their lost friends. A few years ago USAA sponsored a traveling half size replica of Wall so that people could get the experience who weren’t able to travel to DC. One exhibit venue was the USS Midway (CV-41) Museum in San Diego where I worked as a docent. I stood a midnight to 8:00 AM watch on the deck assisting visitors in finding names. Fifty odd years later, those visitor’s grief was still palpable.
Thank you for your service and perspective. You also earned your view of the war the hard way. I tend to share yours, but I respect my dad's perspective. it was a complex situation.
As is life!
“I will NEVER go to that memorial. That is an anti-war memorial.” I would say to your dad that anti-war memorials are the best kind. For me, the Vietnam War Memorial and the Korea War Memorial (with its ghost squad) are both very moving, while the newer WWII Memorial is a cold white marble of places, not people. In my opinion, the true and very moving anti-war memorials are the many military cemeteries around the world. I have visited as many as I could in my travels and they always move me as do the Nazi concentration camps and the many Stolpersteines memorializing the victims of the holocaust taken from their homes in Berlin and other German cities I have visited. For me, it should always be about the people.
What a world we would have if everyone were willing, or even capable, of engaging in such deep introspection and honesty.
Exactly what I needed to read as I puzzle through both real life relationships and the writing of a fictional story wrestling with these same issues. Thank you!