Refraining For the sake of Friendship

MY ONCE AND FORMER FRIEND, a MAGA man who stands six eight and has the personality of someone who stands six eight and knows it, acted like a cocaine addict, and could not refrain from starting trouble. Imploringly, I had suggested, in the presence of his wife (who agreed with me), that if he and I but refrained from further political discussions, our friendship of forty years would endure. We could talk basketball, weather, or a billion other things under heaven and earh. Easier said than done, as we like to say. He simply had to have his fix of venom spewing election denial. An angry lot these days, those MAGATs. Invariably, he would awaken the beast, engendering anger even when I vainly tied to change the subject. Implacable, he. Full disclosure, on one occasion I was the offending party. With his wife again in the room, I broached the taboo topic, but flatteringly, in a spirit of conciliation. My remark was that he my dear friend is simply much too good a person to support and be repesented by Donald Trump, who is a man of demonstrably reprehensible qualities, well known to all, the very personification of all seven deadly sins, and then some. He deserves better, all six foot eight of him. We all deserve better. My friend's wife nodded in agreement when he wasn't looking. He responded that it isn't about personal characteristics, its about the direction in which Trump was taking the country, before the presidencny was stolen from him. I responded, like a real smart ass, that if "we", whoever in hell the "we" might possibly be, stole the election, we sure as hell got away with it. That's when he went off like a proverbial rocket: "See?! That proves it! You just admitted it! You just said you got away with it!... Well, like Agathon said: "Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain". And so goes the desperate logic of conservative America, including the huge evangelical Christian wing thereof. God moves in mysterious ways. He often elevates thugs and punks to places of high importance, to use them for HIS glory....Peter the rock was a rogue, until Jesus straightened him out. So was King David. And the beat goes on....Then along came "Two Thousand Mules", the purely propagandistic sham documentary which purports to prove the election theft, but only succeeds to purport tired, nonsenical, unprovable claims, all of which have been debunked, repeatedly. Then there ae those who assert that Trump indeed made America great again, but only for four years. It became great on the day of his inauguration, and then became ungreat the day he left office, like some mystical, miraculous transubstantiation. Reason makes an impresion on me. I am still wiling to convert from progressive sanity go all out MAGA, but you have to show me why. Show me why it was beneficial to the country to deny the results of a election without a whit of supporting evidence of fraud, and to send a mob of angry well armed people to the Capitol to "fight like hell", in a violent attempt to overthrow the American government by hanging the Vice president, among other questionable behaviors. The only thing my friend has done is to showe me that he needs help. On July 29, 2021, he bet me, and I am not kidding, a case of cold imported beer that by year's end, Trump would be back in office, as if by divine intervention. He lost the bet, and I made him pay up. He still resents me for that. He later admitted that it was, as he put it: "an emotional bet". Oh, really? My friend also showed me why I should, after an all out attempt to retain his friendship, abandon it, reluctantly. At least I tried.