Quote:You will end a friendship over Trump? Or even over Bernie Sanders?
Isn't that a bit too extreme?
I lost a friend over Trump. Pretty pissed off about it too. He was a guy I've known since middle school. I helped him graduate. I helped him get through college. I cleaned up his place and set him up on a date with his first real girlfriend. I've been there for him whenever he needed something for 25 goddamn years.
And he's refusing to talk to me because I like Trump.
Obviously, he's a BernieBro. He's never really been into politics, but for whatever reason he went hard into Bernie fandom this election. Sure, whatever. In the most likely case, Bernie's going to be an afterthought in 3 months, and in the worst case, he'll be gone in eight years. I figured it's not worth ending a two-decade friendship over.
So I don't talk to him about politics, and when I do, it's positive to neutral stuff about Bernie. Things like, "I like how Bernie is making an effort to appeal to our generation," or, "Bernie did good in Michigan, huh?" Real simple stuff like that. But for whatever reason, he kept sending me "funny" youtube videos about how awful Trump is. The latest was a set of two videos, one from that loser who took over from Jon Stewart, and one from Saturday Night Live, calling Trump Hitler.
Now, the smart thing to do would've been to let this go. But I let my emotions get the better of me, and told him that calling Trump Hitler was really, really childish. The two of them have nothing in common.
He linked me to some stupid JPEG he found on Facebook that had six ways that Trump was like Hitler. One said Trump was an "anti-Muslim fascist" just like Hitler was an "anti-Jewish fascist". Now, this is a guy who literally flunked out of US History. It almost stopped him from graduating high school. His knowledge of history is basically nil. So I just said, "Can you define fascist? I don't mean tell me how Trump is one. Just give me the meaning of the word, without going to Wikipedia, or googling it. And don't link me to that stupid Umberto Eco piece."
Well, that set him off. He started ranting about how I "always talk down to him" and I was "trying to make him look fucking stupid" and "trying to make him look like a fucking idiot".
It went on from there. He's "terrified" of Trump. He doesn't understand why I "worship the ground Trump walks on." Trump has a "secret agenda" that only he knows about, and it's really bad.
He was upset about Trump's policies to target the families of terrorists, and I told him that Bernie supports drone strikes that kill innocent, unrelated civilians. He told me that this was okay because Bernie had promised to "minimize" the use of drones. Bernie would just wait, he said, until the terrorist was alone with no civilians nearby, and then he'd blow them up.
I told him that this was naive. If it were that simple, Bush and Obama would have been doing it already.
I also pointed out that by calling Trump Hitler, he was calling me a Nazi. Because that's what fans of Hitler are, right?
And that was that. He flung a bunch more personal attacks at me, and hasn't spoken to me since. I doubt he will again. And I've got no desire to speak to him unless he apologizes.
Two decades of friendship, down the drain. Fuck you, Bernie. I can't wait for your campaign to crash and burn.