I convinced my conservative Trump-supporting sister to sit down for an interview on my program to illustrate that even with our profound differences, we would never allow politics to break our love for each other, nor should it yours!
Progressive & Conservative; A Frank Conversation.
Podcasts (Video — Audio)
Before going into the meat of this companion article to the enclosed video interview with my sister, I want to thank her for acquiescing to my request for her appearance on my program. I appreciate her trust in me and willingness to come on with no preconditions.
Many members of our Politics Done Right family, the PDR Posse, speak to me privately about their problems, fights, and animosities with family members because of their ideological and political differences. I give the same advice, whether the grievances are between family members, friends, or acquaintances. Do not allow politicians, economics, or ideologies to get between your relationships. Politicians do not care about anyone on a personal level; economics is fungible, and ideologies change with time.
I grew into this position as I became an activist with various organizations, some based on civil discourse with those who do not share your current stances (Coffee Party USA, Living Room Conversations, The Bridge Alliance, etc.) and those that are more purpose-based (Indivisible, Move To Amend, Move On, Occupy, Democratic Party, etc.).
I have two sisters. I am the middle child. My younger sister is progressive, and my older sister, the one in the interview, is very conservative. We all grew up in the same household and attended the same school system and churches in Panama. If I sit back and objectively review all the conversations I have had with my mother and father, they would fall on the fairly conservative side of social issues, not the Republican/MAGA side, based on the way the issues are defined today. In other words, while they would be relatively conservative, they would not necessarily want government law to force issues. Ironically, I believe this applies to most Afro-Latino Caribbeans.
As I write this, I came to the above conclusion after asking, ‘How can my older sister be so different ideologically than me and my little sister, who grew up in the same household?’ The reality is that, in the aggregate, Latin America and the Caribbean have some of the same hangups that conservative Americans have with the gay issue, sexism, abortion, perceived economics, and a few other issues. I superseded the ideological beliefs I was culturized with to understand that, except for science, most things aren’t absolute.
Most ideological stances are not logical, but their stronghold on us is hard to break. This is especially true when external forces weaponize ideologies.
My family joined different churches and organizations as we established ourselves in the United States, and external forces affected all of us. I attended the University of Texas in a progressive part of conservative Texas, Austin. I abandoned a conservative church and became a humanist when the church refused to march against UT’s divestiture from South Africa. My older sister lived in a sometime-conservative town in California, San Diego, and became active in several evangelical churches.
Interestingly, we share compassion and love for our fellow people. Unfortunately, while progressives want certain freedoms and programs codified, conservatives want to project their ideologies onto others irrespective of consequences. This stance ultimately creates the divisions that our economic system depends on to maintain a hierarchy of social and economic disparity, equality, and oppression. I will not try to explain that profound pronouncement in this article, but it becomes readily evident to those who read my articles and listen to my program.
I want to get a bit personal here because it relates to our body politic. I thought building several businesses in the past was tough. I have had the roughest five years of my life, during which bad things seemed to happen one after the other. My family often visited my sisters’ families and mother, who now live in California. I had not seen any of them except my beautiful niece who visited my daughter and me in Washington DC as I cared for my daughter in the last few years. Within those five years, my mother-in-law died, my daughter had two debilitating strokes, I had to relocate to DC for almost a year to care for my daughter as she finished medical school, my close cousin got damaging COVID, my father-in-law died, my best friend died of a massive stroke, my wife’s Lupus relapsed severely after contracting a debilitation case of shingles that held her down for several months, my brother-in-law had a stroke, my sister had a serious health issue, and I could go on and on. Why do I mention that? I would not have made it through this period without friends, family, and my PDR Posse of all ideologies. We all lose when we allow politicians and those who drive the externalities that subliminally control us to determine who we maintain relationships with. They win from the divisions they create.
I love my sister to all ends. When my conservative sister called me late one night and told me she was coming the following week, I was excited to see her and her husband, who I had not seen in a few years. My brother-in-law, a retired navy officer, marched around the house and fixed and built stuff in a few days I never could or would (shame on me). Knowing that my wife was on the mend, my sister just came in and took over doing a lot of stuff throughout the house. As we had fun reminiscing and having those Californians work me harder than I had worked physically in a while, all I could think of was imagine if we could get everyone to concentrate on what really matters.
I will never allow ideological differences, politicians, and the purveyors of divisive externalities to break my bond with family, friends, or acquaintances, even as it is often frustrating, one of the reasons I wrote the book “It’s Worth It.” I strongly believe that at some point in our history, planted seeds will bear fruit if we keep avenues of communication open. Guess what? That is the fear of the puppeteers and the reason why they invest in promoting disunity and dissension.
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