The View from a Drawbridge

I’m struggling to remain friends with someone because of the ignorant things he continues to post on his Facebook page. Based on his actions in the world, I know him to be a generous and kind individual who does a lot for the homeless. I have seen him stick up for the underdog. He’s always been a standup guy. If we hadn’t become Facebook friends, that would be my assessment of his character, if anyone asked.

Given those qualities, the things he posts online are hard for me to reconcile. Many months ago he posted something that disturbed me so much that I’ve been low-key stewing about it ever since. I knew I’d have to blog about it eventually, but I couldn’t quite get past my visceral reaction in order to formulate a response. I think that is primarily because some of his most hateful posts seem to be directed squarely at people like me, and I know we’ve been friends, so how is this possible?

As the months rolled past, a voice inside me kept saying, “Pick your battles. Let it go. It’s not worth it.”

And I almost did that. Truly, I did. But then, out of the blue, another, completely unrelated friend, this one someone I dated at the end of my senior year in high school, contacted me. I hadn’t talked to him in decades.

We were texting. I expected a nice little catch up. What’s new? Still crazy after all these years? How’d your life turn out? Instead, what I got, with no segue whatsoever, was, basically, that I’m a communist, and he’s glad his kids/grandkids have blonde hair and blue eyes, and death is too good for me.

I mean… what the flying squirrel? What did I do to deserve that? He felt the need to track me down after decades to say… that?

Had I known, back in 1982, when we were making out in the back seat of his Buick Lesabre, that one day he would say something like that to me, I’m thinking that things would have gone differently. I mean, holy crap, I haven’t even given the man any thought in decades, and yet he seems to have been able to muster up a towering rage toward me. And I don’t get where it even came from.

Needless to say, that was the end of the conversation. But it made me think again about the weird posts the friend I mentioned above had put on Facebook for the world to see. They must be things he believes. And suddenly, these hard lines being drawn took on a more universal meaning. Or at least a national one.

The polarization in this country has reached what I fear is a point of no return. Speaking out about it isn’t going to change anyone’s mind. I’ve truly given up on that. I don’t think I’ve ever changed anyone’s mind about anything substantial in my entire life.

I feel as though I’m not really writing this post to persuade anyone in the present day. It’s pointless. I’m writing this to the future. I want people to know that not everyone wanted things to be this way. Some of us actually see what is happening and are crying over it. I don’t want revisionist history to make it seem otherwise.

So here are my thoughts. First, I’m not going to show my friend this post about his Facebook posts. And I’m quite sure he doesn’t read my blog, so there’s more chance of him being struck by lightning than there is of him stumbling across it on his own. That, and responding to him specifically after so many months would be rather silly. It would be akin to someone insulting you, and then you charging into their office four months later and delivering a scathing insult in response, shouting “So there!” and then walking out and slamming the door. You’d look unhinged.

So this one isn’t for him. It is for you, Dear Reader, if you’re interested. But it’s mostly for the future, so they won’t judge all of us quite so harshly. I suspect this era will come to be known as the time when America lost its ever-loving mind.

I can’t give you a direct quote of the Facebook post in question, because in order to find it, I’d have to dig through months of his hateful memes, and that prospect leaves me feeling queasy. But it was created the day after a particularly brutal antisemitic terrorist act somewhere in the world (and they have been on the rise of late, unfortunately). To paraphrase the meme, it said that those #@*%ing liberals sure can whine about what is happening to the Palestinians, but you won’t hear a peep out of them about what happened to the Jews in XYZ yesterday.

And in the comments below that, someone said that every #@*%ing libtard she ever met was an antisemite. Her response, of course, got a lot of likes. My friend did nothing to contradict her comment, but why would he? He had posted the meme, after all.

I was astounded, not only at the level of hatred espoused by those words, but also by how foreign those opinions were to my 40 years of liberal experience. While anything is possible, I suppose, I’ve never heard any liberal speak out against someone for the mere fact that they were Jewish. Not only that, but if this Pew Research Study is correct, the American Jews themselves are the most consistently liberal and Democratic group in the US population.

But then it dawned on me that my friend and his ilk seem to be viewing the current Israel-Hamas war (as some are calling it) as if it’s some sort of a sporting event. They seem to think that one should be able to pick a team and it is as simple as that. They think that if you are outraged at what is happening to the people in Gaza, then you cannot, by definition, be outraged at what Hamas has done to the people in Israel.

You have to root for the Yankees or the Dodgers. Pick a team. You are either a Shark or a Jet, a la West Side Story. And as we all know, “when you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette, to your last dyin’ day.” Once the teams have been formulated in some arbitrary group’s mind, you have to pick a side. Black or white. Yes or no. Up or down.

I wish life were that simple. Let someone else divide the pie chart for you. Then all you have to do is pick which slice you want, and stick with it. If it were that easy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have been settled in the 19^th century.

But there are many ways to divide a pie chart.

Surprise, surprise! I can feel compassion for both Palestinians and Israelis. I feel compassion for anyone who is in fear for their life, who has been ripped from their home, whose livelihood has been taken from them, who has seen loved ones die, all because people with power are making evil, selfish, violent decisions over which the common people have no control. Famine and pestilence knows no borders, nor does hunger. People suffer on both sides. It is not for me to decide who suffers more, or who “deserves” to suffer.

I genuinely believe that a Palestinian child who has had her legs blown off deserves my compassion. But that does not mean I’m an antisemite. I feel an equal amount of compassion for an Israeli child who has the same experience. No one deserves to go through that. No one.

Why are we allowing others to divide our pie charts for us? The people who make my friend’s memes want us to choose the blue side or the green side on this chart. The Israelis or the Palestinians. Instead, why can’t we choose the bottom half or the the top half? The bottom half are the ordinary people, who are suffering in various ways, whereas the top half are the people in power who are allowing these atrocities to continue.

That is how I divide my pie chart. If the pie must be divided at all, I’ll choose the bottom half. If that bothers you, if the fact that I refuse to comply with your definition of what makes a team, then that is your problem. Please do not insist on making it mine.

There are a lot of pies out there. Maybe we shouldn’t divide our pies based on race as we have been instructed to. Maybe we should divide them based on the obscenely rich vs. the rest of us. Maybe we shouldn’t let those obscenely rich people pit us against each other. Maybe the pie chart shouldn’t be divided between those who follow rules that were set down centuries ago vs. those who believe in science, and instead we should divide it between those with compassion and those who are ruthless? Maybe there should be a pie for peace vs. war, learning vs. ignorance, and selflessness vs. manipulation? Maybe the privilege pie should not be apportioned only to those who were lucky enough to be born on the right side of a randomly drawn man-made border. Imagine that.

Any division has got to be better than the type of division we have now. As Americans become increasingly polarized in the next 4 years, I feel the need to plant these seeds, in hopes that they’ll take root with someone, somewhere, somehow. We need to stop allowing others to decide what constitutes our “us-es” and “thems”.

I send this message to future historians. Despite what may have been passed along to you through the thick filter of censorship, many of us in 2025 could not care less about what bathroom someone chooses to use, or what religion they espouse, or the country of their birth. or any of a long list of hateful designations that have been designed to divide us. No, we prefer to judge people based on the amount of integrity they have. Many of us work hard to prevent ourselves from losing sight that fact. Only you will know whether our efforts have borne fruit.