My Best Friend is a Trump Supporter

[janx]

73. I think there's been some kind of embarrassment on the part of hard righties, especially

Trump supporters.

The forwarded emails I mentioned in my last post really hit that point home to me. My brother would forward these emails with right-wing talking points, conspiracy theories, guns, etc. to me and to my other brother. Neither of us was remotely interested in them. I noticed, however, that they came from a group of guys my brother had known for some time, from various places, and the forwards seemed to be fairly routine. Nary a female on the list.

A little over a year ago, I reconnected with a guy via Facebook and email whom I hadn't seen in 40 years. Great memories of smoking weed out of an orange by a river at a church retreat, Jack Kerouac, music, etc..He was living and working in Asia. It was fun to chat again. I was curious about the wildlife in Asia, especially the birds, and I discovered that there are enormous fruit bats in the Philippines, "flying foxes," that I thought he ought to know about. I'm a fan of overkill humor, so I kept sending him videos and pictures of these bats. Funny as hell. But he started sending political emails. I sent bats; he sent Hillary and Bernie debating with disparaging comments. He sent other emails, too, but the political group emails increased.

He said he was a Libertarian, capital L.

Then I got an email from him saying that our political views were at opposite ends of the spectrum, and that we should probably not communicate anymore. ?

And shortly after that, he started forwarding me emails with--you guessed it--right-wing talking points, conspiracy theories, guns, etc. Just like the ones from my oldest brother. The list on the emails contained all male names. I recognized a couple of them from high school, but I never really knew those guys. His best buddy from high school, who accompanied us on our river hijinks, was not on the list. It took me awhile to figure this out, but some of those group emails originated with his very elderly father.

It was around that time that I remembered the joke, sometimes posted here, that a libertarian is a republican who smokes pot. I don't know if he does at this point, but I had to laugh--because well, he did.

I also remembered something my right-wing brother told me once: that liberals think conservatives are stupid. That made me wonder if these circles of guys forwarding these things to each other aren't doing it with some kind of clandestine purpose in mind, consciously or unconsciously.

Has anyone else seen this type of behavior? Are these emails some kind of political guy bonding or something?

Recently, I have toyed with the idea of resuming the bat videos and pics--just to catch my old friend off guard.