not recently. i lost them in 2015 and 2016. most of them were not even real-life friends. two were and i was sad to see them go.

one was a friend i had known for years, longer than i was even on facebook, where we settled in because we don't live in the same part of the country. he is an orthodox jew (i am a secular one) and he was offended when, in 2015, i compared the rise of trump to the rise of hitler. i stand by my comparison, which grows stronger almost by the hour, but he said i was cheapening the holocaust. i feel i was, rather, trying to prevent another one. he said he couldn't be my friend anymore. i gave him sources that agreed with me. he said it was fake news. i gave up.

the other friend was someone i knew in college, and we'd been close enough that i was at his (catholic) wedding. he's a born-again christian now. he said he could not longer be friends with me because i am pro-choice. i have never had an abortion, but my very OPINION drove him away. i am quite sad about that but i am who i am and i stand by my pro-choice position. he left, not me. i have had to unfriend and block people who were facebook friends because of racist crap they posted; i don't do that just because they support trump. delusion isn't a crime. racism, in terms of keeping my friendship, is.

there was one exception. i had a friend i never met in real life but with whom i hung out in a virtual universe called there, so we were pretty good friends. we never talked politics there that i recall, but when there (briefly) closed down and we migrated to facebook (not even close to being the same thing but the there friends wanted to keep in touch somehow) suddenly politics not only drove a wedge between us but drove her to start calling me names and being BEYOND rude; she was vile. i had to block her. i wonder if she ever figured out that her life was not better because of trump? probably not.

g