Butler County Ohio Man Killed over politics

[GMDino]

(11-09-2022, 06:23 PM)Forever Spinning Vinyl Wrote: I had computer problems at my office 50 miles away from home so I put in an over nighter and about 15 minutes before the kickoff to the Bengals game last Sunday, I headed down to the sports bar to say hello to Ray for the first time in over two years. I wanted to talk about our wild ride with the Bengals before heading back to my office and watching the Bengals game later on the NFL Plus replay. Like I stated, I hadn't seen Ray since before lockdown . . . which means the last time we saw each other, Andy Dalton was the starting QB and Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase were only SEC Champions at this point. I had yet to see one full game of Joe Burrow playing football, and when we spoke, we never mentioned the Bengals because his story about Jerry just took over our entire 15 minutes. We were in the dining room section of the sports bar and he said that Jerry is over in the bar if I want to go talk to him. Ray said his only interaction with him now is SOMETIMES they'll kind of nod to each other passing in the Men's room at that one sports bar, but most of the time Jerry just looks past him.

When I chuckled at Ray's suggestion to go to the bar to go talk to him if I wanted, I gave myself a pass in this case as I normally try not to let people's politics get in my way of having normal face to face conversations. I always say "You're not letting my politics get in the way of us having a good conversation, you're letting YOUR politics get in the way." I have three other board members for our radio station that completely understand this. Two are hard core MAGA, the other is an Independent leaning right, I'm the Independent leaning left and we all get along great because when I come over, OAN, Newsmax and Fox News gets put on hold and we either watch documentaries(they are massively into outer space), cartoons like Archer, Rick and Morty and since they've grown weed for a couple of decades, we watch the **** out of South Park's Tegridy Farms episodes.

Most of the time, though, we're just smoking weed, listening to our favorite tunes while talking about old concerts, the first time we heard ____ and our favorite albums growing up. We're all still friends because we focus on what we like together, not on what we disagree on. It's a shame that people like Jerry won't allow themselves to see things that way.

My best friend, college roommate and we were each other's best man at our respective weddings is very conservative.  We meet regularly for dinner with another college friend that he went to HS with who is even MORE conservative.  We eat, talk about our families and jobs, discuss the Steelers problems and then end up talking politics for a couple hours.  And then we shake hands, hug and go to our homes knowing we had a good discussion and that neither of us hates the other because of the political leanings.

Now, let me add that neither is a racist or displays the hate I see in many on the right when they "talk politics" or I couldn't talk about it all with them.

I have other friends, that I made more recently, who are very extreme republicans.  What they post and say on social media is hard to even read sometimes.  But we don't "hang out" and when we do see each other we talk about the things we have in common and shake hands and move on.

You can get along with people and still disagree with them.