On the way to my new office I drive past the office of a relative whose law office I once worked in as an intern, many years ago. He was kind and generous. >
But politics... politics, like sex, changes everything.
He is a committed Clintonite. >
I have tried to avoid personal conflict with him, but above all I have been astonished at his intellectual dishonesty about the people and causes he supports. >
I always liked him. But now I am driving by his office regularly, and I don't stop in. >
(This is why you go to the great universities, by the way.)
And we started corresponding. >
Everyone can have his blind spots, and politics is, well, funny. After all, his generation was raised to believe that Nixon was the antichrist.
Nixon was not the antichrist. >
And rather than excerpt his comments, presumably meant to be private, let's just say what I hoped was not the case, is the case:>
This cannot be a matter of how we understand or perceive facts. The way people on the left describe facts is a manifestation of an outlook that is a set of choices.
These choices are not defensible any more, if they ever were. >
And I thanked him for this thoughts, and promised I would write back.
I have not written back.
I guess am tired of doing the work with ... these people. >
But I guess I am tired of going out of my way to assuage them, reassure them, be the moderate one, pretend to think their takes could be reasonable.
To pretend. >
He has tenure, and he wrote this publicly.>
I don't know if I can ever stop in at that office halfway between my home and my work where I had my summer internship 35 years ago. I like my dad's cousin, because I like most people.
But I do not respect him. He does not respect me. >
Or is it just rational to avoid inevitable conflict and inevitable retreat? <>