Wherein a neutral point of view disputes bring rise to disagreements of personality or perspective, political disputes bring rise to that much and to the ability of control.
Politics extends beyond the study of government and of the state. Politics is an art used to control other’s actions and thoughts.
When discussing politics the fundamental dispute should address a public matter without an agreed-on answer, and without a method of coming to an agreed-on answer.
The art of political discourse addresses the superiority or inferiority of ideas, economic systems, safety, security, and so on. Political discourse doesn’t address superiority or inferiority emotionally charged complexes between personal relationships, i.e., traditional relationships of the family or of endured friendships.
That’s not to say that disputes regarding ideas does not bring insight to and incite between family and friends.
Not long ago (I believe it was a Wednesday, 1/18/2017) I received a text that read, “We’re going on separate roads” from a very dear friend.
Not gonna lie, that text hurt – badly.
Hurt but also confused, I immediately responded by phone asking for clarification. I was given a vague, indirect, and confusing response …Something about how in past days I kept asking how he was and how he couldn’t offer another reply. The response (I consider more likely a “complication”) followed with surface talk before the call ended.
In hindsight, political discourse -by itself- didn’t bring about tension. Political discourse wasn’t the origin that leads to me receiving such a text message, neither was the lambasted conversation that had followed.
How have I come to realize this? In answering that question there’s another: Who has helped me to realize this? Gail has, by way of me being exposed to brilliance for far too long to have not gained some psychoanalytic understanding.
Within a patient to therapist shared intimate experience (I the patient) viable past psychic labors cultivated allows me to approach a minor ability to understand aspects of the unconscious or slight ability to gain some intentionality and forward-reaching illumination.
When speaking to Gail about politics I’m hardly respectful, I’m overly combative, I’m critical, I often talk with a hortatory or encouraging tone, and yet she’s not plagued with regulatory anxiety.
With Gail I have acted out and said ridiculously offensive and aggressive bullshit I don’t and haven’t expressed to close others; me acting more repressed, reserved, and appropriate.
That alone (Gail not feeling vulnerable by periods where I’m aggrandizing moral illusions) should exclude me from feeling self-guilt for holding an opposite political opinion to that of my close and dear friend who hasn’t been “beaten up” like Gail has.
Yes, I know Gail is different from a friend and that she holds unique qualifications to not get distracted or caught by mental transgressions. Still – however, altered the relationship between her and me verse the relationship between him and me, I know I’ve not committed atrocities.
That same Wednesday, I followed up with an email and didn’t hear from this friend until this Thursday, 2/23/2017. The central theme of our discussion was related to politics, which followed with an email of the linked opinion piece concerning taxes.
I wish the conversation had been about something more relevant and meaningful, but I’m still processing this feeling of abandonment and anxiety, always with the struggle to learn how to be more direct while feeling uneasy.
When I should (and God knows how easily I can) write an argument against the linked piece, instead, I’m grappling with a weighed and anxious thought: I wonder if there’s abuse between us. I have to ask myself that question because I’ve concluded that when abuse is present in a friendship, both survivor and perpetrator may be driven by intense feelings of anxiety, worry, and fear.
Fear of abandonment. Fear of blunt truths. Fear of attack. Fear of being wrong. Fear of psychological scorn. Now, I’m with wonder if it’s fair of me to seek help outside of this friendship while also confronting this fear of feeling more alone and unable to cope with certain aspects of my being without this friendship.
Sagely Salvaged 