Make Love, Not War

Why Republicans and Democrats need to bury the hatchet and get it on.

by Angelina Sciolla

I once had a boyfriend who was a communist. He'd shook Castro's hand and marched with union workers in iron-curtained Dresden. He would often speak to me, a political science major with an interest in Latin American Marxist insurgencies, about the day when the revolution would come—so much so that one night I dreamed exactly that in vivid detail. When I woke the next morning and told him, he said, quite reflexively, "You mean the revolution happened and I was still hanging out with you?"

Clearly, said boy-friend's progressive politics held no sway over his behavior as a partner. An egotistical lout, he offered the following when we parted ways: "Your politics are OK, but someday you'll have good politics."

As I comprehend the reality of this month's presidential election results, I remain astonished by the number of singles who now require potential mates to mirror their political views.

Countless bipartisan romances were destroyed by the Bush/Kerry show and, to be sure, during the first four years of this presidency. Partisanship and demagoguery began their infiltration into affairs of the heart a few years before, during the Clinton impeachment period.

Just surf the Internet-dating sites and see how many people insist that respondents share their disgust/love for one candidate or party over another. If you dare mention an affinity for a particular point of view over a lager at the local pub and your audience disagrees with your alternately cretinous or overly nuanced views, you might as well yell into the karaoke mic that you have crabs.

The days of flirty arguments a la Tracy and Hepburn, wherein couples turned their opposing points of view into sexual heat and settled their scores amid rumpled sheets, are clearly over. Matalin and Carville are the exception, and certainly the prestige of being a Washington power couple makes their political differences a profitable sideshow.

Politics have become fiercely personal and more stridently proclaimed as a set of irrefutable "truths" rather than a declaration of opinions resulting from critical thought. We can, in part, thank the media for cutting the American audience into two political halves, blue and red. As a result, people increasingly regard their politics like religion—something that suggests a certain moral superiority and which should not be questioned.

A recent New York Magazine article underscored this nauseating and overweening trend among singles. One woman regarded her "exotic" one-night stand with a Republican lawyer as "sleeping with the enemy." She never entertained the idea of dating him because he was clearly the devil's disciple. Still, she remembered to mention he paid for all the drinks. Another claim made in the article was that "conservative guys in general are reluctant to give oral sex." Is there empirical evidence for this? An exit poll, perhaps?

Similarly, a Republican campaign worker I met two weeks ago at a polling place complained that his Kerry-supporting girlfriend refused to watch any of the cable news shows with him. "And that's a big problem for me," he said with furrowed brow. A big problem? There is no paucity of big problems out there in Bushworld, and solving them should be the focus, not constructing a political litmus test for prospective dates.

In the hysteria and political branding of the electorate, are we taking ourselves too seriously? Finding someone to hang out with for a night or a lifetime should not involve the kind of handwringing and posturing seen only during a congressional filibuster.

Here's a better litmus test: Is he nice to his parents? When you are faced with a problem, is she around for you? Does he disappear at the holidays? Does she condescend to those less fortunate, or does she simply fulfill her duty as a member of the human race without fanfare or regard for reward? Does he respect your opinions, even if he doesn't share them? These count more over the long haul than whether he thinks social security should be privatized or whether our troops should withdraw from Iraq. He may change his mind over time, like so many of us do and have over the course of the last four years.

And on a more serious note, such a dating trend could have measurably negative effects. Last year, while working on a story on terrorist psychology, I read the al-Qaeda training manual. (There goes my library card.) One of the stated goals is to divide the U.S. population against itself and plant seeds of mistrust, not only toward the government, but toward each other. There has been some success on this front, although it cannot be entirely attributed to the Bin Laden gang. Think of it this way, my fellow Americans: If Democrats and Republicans stop fucking each other, then the terrorists really have won.