Are Good Friendships Possible Across Polarized Boundaries?

It’s no big secret that people are having a hard time getting along these days. Americans are politically polarized.

The Pew Research Center has found that the United States is currently more polarized than at any other time in the last fifty years.

And it’s a divide filled with hard feelings. In 2018, Professors Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins University and Nathan P. Kalmoe of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that 40% of Democrats, and also 40% of Republicans agreed that members of the opposite party are “not only bad for politics, but downright evil.”

This is an amazing statistic. Is there any way to possibly change it?

Luckily there are two people who provide a model for how to have a great personal friendship across the political divide. They are Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginzburg (both recently deceased). Scalia was a rabid Republican and Ruth Bader Ginzburg was a raging Democrat. Total political opposites! But in spite of their wild political differences, they did things in their personal lives that enabled them to have a good, amicable relationship. And these are things that any of the rest of us can do, too.

Here are five specific things they did to create a good friendship across a political boundary:

Have a Friendly Feeling Toward the Other Person

It is important that you feel good with the other person, politics aside. In the case of Scalia and Ginsburg, they had a genuine liking for each other, even though their politics were completely opposite. A truly good feeling toward the other person can work wonders in any relationship.

Respect.

Both Scalia and Ginzburg were highly skilled practitioners of the law, and each appreciated and respected the other’s expertise. They each used their legal acumen to achieve very different ends politically, but they nonetheless had great respect for each other’s ability.

In developing a friendship with another person across a daunting political boundary, a strong respect for the other person is absolutely essential. It’s also highly possible. Sometimes people who disagree with us are quite brilliant and highly accomplished. (Who would have thought?!)

Acknowledge the political differences between you, but treat them as something that’s not a big deal. Be able to joke about it! Scalia and Ginzburg did.

They both were renowned for their sense of humor. It was one of the great traits that they both shared. It enabled them both to have a terrific friendship.

Have some great love or enthusiasm that you both share.

Scalia and Ginzburg were both passionate enthusiasts of opera and gourmet cooking. Ginzburg’s husband (also a lawyer) happened to be a gourmet chef. They all had many wonderful evenings together, where they swooned over Puccini operas and marveled at Ginzburg’s sumptuous gourmet feasts. Note: If you ever want to make a great friend across some perilous boundary, share something you love that's also something they love. It’s the secret sauce of friendship.

Be intentional.

Abraham Lincoln once said (quoting the Bible), “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Our American house, the United States, is currently more dis-united than at any other time since the Civil War. A valuable way we could begin to knit it back together is by reaching out across the abyss of polarization to fashion new friendships. There can be fear, uncertainty, and occasional disappointment in such a process. A satisfactory outcome is not guaranteed. But one of the best things we can do is to create friendly relationships across the barren terrain that divides us. And we must not just reach across boundaries, we must also imagine across boundaries.

It may be that our current level of polarization is so ingrained and calcified that only a miracle could save us.

If so — then go be that miracle!

© 2023 David Evans