So my wife and I were invited to meet up with an old friend of hers for drinks. This friend of my wife was in town with her Aunt and they live out of state.. Texas of all places but are still Democrats. They invited some random friends and family from the area that they haven't seen in years so it was fairly large group of us. This was the first time my wife and I did anything is a public group outing since before the lockdown, around 2019 Holidays. We are both vaccinated and felt it was time to live our lives again. We had a great time, had plenty of different wines and all got along great. It was very encouraging with not a hint of politics or agendas from anyone. I felt optimistic about humanity for the first time in years.
Fast forward through the evening... we were all at a winery that was closing up at 8pm. What nonsense is that right? While some of the group went home, 6 of us decided to head up the road to another winery that was open much later. We get there, we order a few more bottles, get some snacks and find a nice table.
After maybe 20-30 minutes of talking to one another, one of the lady's in our group (The Texas Democrat) started picking the brain of the only other guy (unknown political affiliation at this time) at the table about something political. That conversation led to whether he voted for Trump or not, Covid being a hoax to manipulate people, climate change not being real and that women should be sent to jail for abortions.... At this point the winery had silenced and all the patrons were listening these two argue about this stuff. The rest of us were trying to diffuse them and let them know the entire place was listening to them. The woman point blank asked the guy what he thought about abortion. I could see he didn't want to talk about it but she kept digging at him about it since she knew he was a Trump supporter. Honestly, I blame the entire poop show on her regardless of the guy showing his true colors eventually. He eventually stated that women need to be sent to prison for abortions. A woman that could hear this debate at another table across the restaurant stood up and starting shouting at this guy all kinds of things and took her friend and stormed out of there. Other people got up and left too. (This was literally an episode of Seinfeld unfolding before my eyes but the HBO version) The guy's viewpoints cleared out the restaurant when he went on a anti abortions rant and how democrats are all fucking crazy and are to blame for the worlds problems and started swearing at and insulting the woman from the other table and the woman that asked about the abortion rights. He was triggered hard. I could see one of those cheap Chinese made MAGA hats immaculately forming on his head as he spoke.
Needles to say, the night went way south.
I tried talking the guy down that everyone has there own opinions on the matter and treating our friend that way was not cool. His argument was that women are aborting babies at nearly a week before they are born. As absurd as that is, he believed it to be true and couldn't be told otherwise. Our group slowly dissolved and my wife dragged me out of there making that guy completely shunned from the group.
It was a sad demonstration of how extreme peoples political beliefs are. The vast majority of what people believe as reality is not even true but no amount of evidence or facts will change their minds. Once someone picks a team, as with sports, they go down with the ship out of loyalty without reason.
I don't think society is ready for unity when alcohol exist.
