Which reminds me: You still owe my folks for junior year summer school (I should have known the atomic weight of tungsten was not "carrot.")

Strong friendships can survive strong, even fundamental, differences if one wants to or cannot resist engaging. If the differences are so great they may endanger the friendship, nonengagement may be the best course. The balance is often hard to find, and I claim no expertise.

The day of the Oslo massacre a good friend of mine in KS came on Skype to ask if I was OK, and agreed to pray for the missing and injured classmates of my father-in-laws stepdaughter. The next time I heard from him, about the time we heard the missing girl had been found dead and the injured one was undergoing a second life-saving surgery, was a FB post complaining the real crime was liberals victimizing conservatives over the massacre. Needless to say, we had words, over several weeks, then had none for several months. We ultimately resolved it and remain friends, but were reminded there are some topics on which our feelings are too strong to safely discuss.

The best advice I can give, from negative experience, is not personalizing issues. Once I started talking to dart_board outside wotmania political threads he seemed like a decent guy with whom I even share some basic values—we just strongly disagree on politics, and are not shy about voicing our opinions, sometimes hyperbolically. Knowing that facilitates keeping person and positions distinct.

The flip side is, sometimes people are more invested in issues than in relationships, usually ending the latter sooner or later. We must take people as they are, not as we wish them to be, but sometimes that means accepting, caring about and AVOIDING them. Likewise, a relationship is just that, and if one person disengages there is not much the other can do about it. Here is hoping you and your friend can patch things up and agree to disagree.

You still follow my news feeds from Alex Jones though, right?