Yup, I have found that after a life of hating, detesting, and vilifying all right-wingers, I can now have friendships with them, play music with them, appreciate their strengths, and pardon their weaknesses...as I hope they would do with me. If not, I can live with it.

We still disagree about politics and how to run a society...

But, what the hell.

Politics ain't everything.

I no longer define a person's whole nature as a human being on the basis of one or two of his attitudes which may differ from mine in one or two areas of life.

A text I read on psychology once said that a healthy mind looks for the similarities in other human beings, while an unhealthy one focuses on the differences. And that's where prejudice comes from. That's how wars arise. The common German, Russian, British, Japanese and American soldiers in WWII, for example, had far more in common as human beings than the political issues and beliefs that divided them. Too bad they, like most people, could only see the DIFFERENCES. Hitler rose to power by focusing on the petty differences between people, and the whole sorry affair then took its inevitable course. Too bad he fooled a majority of the German electorate so thoroughly, or it could have been avoided. People are easily fooled, specially when times are tough, as they were in Germany in the 20's and early 30's.

So...Let he among us who is without prejudice it cast the first accusation.

(*.....HUGE SILENCE.....*)

No war worth fighting here, is there?

- LH