I have a history of counter-intuitive friendships with heterodox or conservative older white guys. These are the types of people that you’d expect me NEVER to associate with, given that I’m a young liberal hipster queer.
Currently, I consider myself a friend of a certain gentleman who holds a high rank in the NYPD. He has never been a beat cop, but he shares many of the political views you’d associate with police officers and has a particular hatred for Hillary Clinton (it’s not misogyny, however, he blames her for underfunding work that matters to him in the police). He, I think, knows that I am gay–he certainly knows I worked in gay organizations–but we don’t talk about it and sometimes our little luncheons and coffees have the quality of a grandfather or older uncle taking his young relative out to assure her future is on the right course.
In his case, this often takes the form of interruptosaurus-style lectures on politics, which end with him asking me ‘So you’re voting Republican, right?’ and me saying, ‘I don’t think so.’ I think they end that way because I nod when I listen, even when I don’t agree, but also because I do understand his worldview and his logic, even though I disagree with his fundamental premises, which include things like ‘people cannot be trusted because they will always act in their own interests or those of their closest relatives’ and ‘government will always by definition be full of waste’.
I really enjoy these exchanges, though, because they keep me from getting to smug and insular and encourage me to be empathetic across important differences. What about you? Counter-intuitive friendships? Thoughts on empathy for diverse opinions?
