Friendship challenges inequalities as it respects difference.

I look at this from a psychological angle where one compares the difference between intimacy and enmeshment. I found this on the web some years ago:

Enmeshment may feel like intimacy, but it is not. Intimacy comes from knowing each other very well, accepting shortcomings and differences and loving each other anyway. Enmeshment is attempting to feel and think as if you were the same person.

Now, look at the Bush administration. To them, friendship meant loyalty above all else, which is an authoritarian principle. Were they accepting of differing beliefs within the administration? I think we all know what happened to those folks. They believe enmeshment is friendship, which is a mentally unhealthy and dysfunctional belief system.

The key to healthy support and friendship is that it is offered freely by one person to another. The support could be solicited or unsolicited, as long as the supporter freely decides what they are willing to do. When a person resorts to manipulation of another person to get the support they desire, then it becomes coercion. It ceases to be mentally healthy support.

I think coercion is another weapon the Bush administration and authoritarian leaders like to use on their “friends,” their authoritarian followers. They effectively use toxic shame on their followers, accusing them of not being “good conservatives” if they don’t enmesh and go along with the agenda.

I think if we can get agreement on what real friendship is, that would go a long way to achieving your goal Glenn.

- Tom