I have some rules that help me navigate the world without having to spend too much time stressing over silly things like what to wear and whether a particular sentence is appropriate in a particular story.

The rule for the latter is much simpler than the rule for the former (which is a series of rules), so that one goes first. The rule is: Story trumps everything. Well, the core of that is that Story is Character, but the rule of thumb is that story is more important than any other aspect of writing. This from the woman who created an entire series written in a whitewashed version of the Appalachian dialect, so yeah, I may take my writing philosophies a little too literally.

As for clothing choices, it's a little more complex, but still quite simple: Black shirt with jeans or shorts. Going out? Black dress shirt. Cold out? Black turtleneck. Ballgame? Black hoodie.

Hmm. Maybe I need to expand my color choices there, but honestly, I'd rather save my decision making for important things like what to write next.

I also have a rule for maintaining friendships. Yeah, seriously. It's a very simple rule (as such rules should always be) and it has a familiar cadence to it: Friendship trumps everything.

Well, not everything. I'm not going to help anyone hide a body (that I would admit to), but we're not talking about extremes here. We're talking about maintaining relationships that are important to me and how I handle it when discord arises.

Take my friend Kris, for example. Kris is a politically left-of-center gentleman who's just a few years younger than me. He's a nice guy, we share a lot of interests (reading and movies, to name two), but we also take different stances on societal and cultural issues.

This is easier to understand if you know that I'm a libertarian (small ell deliberate) and consider myself to be non-political, though I don't always achieve that ideal. I try, though, and I keep growing and learning, all of which is an important part of my daily routine.

Kris is rabidly anti-Trump. I take a more pragmatic view of our current president: I didn't vote for him and I don't like a lot of his policies, but I admire that he tries his damnedest to keep the promises he made while on the campaign trail. Not many politicians do, so there's that.

The last time Kris and I had dinner (at a really wonderful Mexican restaurant near the junction of 385 and Woodruff Road in Greenville, SC), he started in on politics, which I avoid like the plague, not least because he and I don't always agree. After countering his arguments as reasonably as I could for about 30-45 minutes, I finally lost my temper and nearly yelled at him that we were friends, politics is not the most important thing in our lives, and we have better things to talk about.

I hate yelling. I hate even more that I was pushed to that point because I didn't nip the political talk in the bud. I know exactly why I didn't, and I'm not sure I can consider it a flaw: I value Kris's friendship and, therefore, his viewpoints. He's an intelligent, educated man, and he has a knack for challenging my own viewpoints, which I like.

Yes, I said it. I like to have my beliefs challenged. They end up stronger in the end and more logically consistent, and being an INTP, logical consistency is supremely important to me.

But so is maintaining a friendship. If I hadn't cut into the conversation and pointed out that we have better things to talk about, I'm not sure our friendship would've survived. No, seriously, the discussion was getting that heated. So I made a choice and my choice was to try to preserve the friendship.

I'm a severe introvert. I don't have many friends, so I tend to value the ones I have.

Case in point: Recently, a long-time friend posted a scathing (if politely worded) commentary on the link between farm subsidies and tariffs against China, and the potential decrease of funds for SNAP pushed by (apparently) Trump and other Republicans.

As a libertarian, idealogically I don't believe that government is the appropriate mechanism for charity in any form, especially since private charities are more efficient at helping those in need.

Pragmatically, I have a much bigger problem with corporate welfare than with social welfare, and so I tend to focus my arguments and objections there, which is exactly what I did in response to my friend's post: I argued (as best I could in the limited space available) that farm subsidies not only distort economic measures, like prices (which ultimately hurt the poor in a variety of ways), but that they can also lead to environmental harms, such as the starvation of bee populations due to planting monocrops, excessive fertilizers seeping into ground water due to planting the same crop in the same field year after year, and so on.

I also argued that opponents of President Trump were focusing on the SNAP issue for political expediency, though I was careful to articulate my belief that she would never do that (because she wouldn't; she's ethically a very high-minded and thoughtful individual). To be honest, she was arguing me under the table, but she's a lawyer and I would expect no less from her.**

I finally abandoned the discussion, not because I felt that I was right and my friend was wrong, or because she and I were poking holes in each other's positions, but because I value her friendship. We've been friends since at least the 6th grade, making her one of my oldest and dearest friends. While we don't talk often and our friendship is maintained mostly through the things we routinely share on Facebook, I can't imagine my life without her in it.

But she's a political progressive, and while we agree on many subjects (the abhorrent track record of our criminal justice system, for example), we disagree on many others.

At some point you have to make a choice. Which is more important, winning an argument or continuing a nearly lifelong friendship?

This is a no-brainer for me. In nearly every case, I will choose to maintain the friendship, even with someone whose beliefs are very different than mine. There are exceptions***, but those are truly exceptions and not the rule.

And to help me follow that rule, I try to never discuss politics, religion, or money with those outside my small circle of close friends and family members, a very tiny group indeed. The key word there is try. I don't always succeed in abstaining from political talk. Otherwise, I would've let my friend's comments pass without remark and simply found another silly meme to share on my timeline. Alternatively, I could've focused on a social issue instead; believe it or not, we have a lot of social problems that require no political (i.e. government) intervention whatsoever, but no, I had to engage.

Oh, well. You live, you learn.

* If you're wondering, the post Political Disney World at Wait But Why was the spark for my own ruminations on the intersection of friendship and politics.

** Funnily enough, she and I were on the debate team in high school at the same time, arguing together, in a team, in the affirmative. She now works part-time with Legal Aid where she does an outstanding job helping others. 

*** I unfriended another long-term acquaintance on Facebook due to her zealous and unreasoning adherence to Communist dogma. Unlike my progressive friend above, this acquaintance has no rational basis for her beliefs, which the logical side of me finds intolerable. I wish I'd been able to push her bias out of the way in search of the greater truth behind her beliefs, but alas, I'm not perfect. Instead, I turn to author Cory Doctorow's writings for a more rational view of left-leaning, anti-capitalistic beliefs. Also, Doctorow's a helluva writer, so there's that.