Politics, diffent communities and some thoughts
I have been doing some thinking about groups and politics. I have been thinking about this since I started to look into the biking “community” in Pittsburgh. I have found that this so called community is very intolerant of any one that holds any political view that is not their own. I tried to ignore the politics of the other cyclists in Pittsburgh. But I found it very hard to ignore, since at the places they run they have anti-republican posters. They also make all their events political in nature, even if it is simply a bike ride, they will find a way to put a political spin on it. The final straw was they have been harassing me and a few of my friends at our pro-life rallies. I know that they have the right to make their statements but they are trying to push us off the side walk and into the road, where we can not be legally while protesting ourselves, so they are in a sense violating our free speech. At this point I have come to the conclusion, that I have found the the cycling community, and I do not want to be part of it. A good number of people in the biking “community” has also made it clear to me that I as a conservative am not welcome around them at all.
As to other groups I belong to. The first group I am going to explore is wplug I know that most computer people are liberal leaning, but at wplug I have not had a problem of me being discriminated against or made fun of for being a conservative. For the most part the people at wplug do not really care what the other people’s political views are. A few people there (I included) have talked politics, even though we did not agree. It was still civil, which I can say is more then the cycling people in Pittsburgh. For the most part I will say that on the whole wplug has good people.
The next group is my church (First Trinity), and politics do not enter into it. At church the only thing that is at issues is the Christian (Lutheran, LCMS) faith.
I think that covers the groups I am a member of right now. And even where I work which is academia which is historically very liberal, there has not been any problems for me as a conservative, I just for the most part keep to my small work group, and do not go to far out of it, and things for the most part have been fine. In fact I don’t even think that they really care about my politics there, which is a good thing, since the work place should be a place that is free of politics (unless you work for a political organization.)
I wonder if there is another set of cyclists in the Pittsburgh area that are either, conservative, or less confrontational about politics.
What bike communities are you talking about? Do you race at the oval on M-W-F? Do you do triathlons? Are you going to ride The DAM Ride in Sept?
I expect you’ll get a lot of bad noise at a Bike MASS (whatever) and at FreeWheeling in Construction Junction. But there have got to be others in the mega “bike community.” Yes?
It’s pittsburgh after all and they’re pretty liberal out there, so I can’t say I’m surprized. You should leave and find a better biking group, I doubt there is more than one. As far as most computer people being liberal leaning, I don’t know about that. Most of the world is religious in one way or another and although the computer was created by a homosexual (I love saying that to staunch anti-gay people that run websites), I’d bet that if there isn’t a good divide between liberal/conservatives online, the conservatives are becoming increasingly up to speed – the power of political blogs is just the tip of the iceberg. I still hate using that term. There are no liberals or conservatives, there are people whose views tend to coincide with more liberal than more conservative, but not on all issues, and not a fundamentalist on either side. Still, annoying and widely used sterotype 🙁
The people I am talking about are the kind that do criticalmass and free ride in Construction Junction. The people that when you see some one biking during the week day that are just biking to work, I am not really talking about the weekend only riders. The kind of people that they live their life on the bike, don’t own a car.
I will say I was looking to find these people because right now I don’t have a car, and I think I can get along (for now) with out a car, and so far I have been doing well at that.
Max when I talk about these people as being liberal, I mean they are LIBERAL, they make Al Shaprtan look like a neo-con. They are so far left that you would think (if you held there view) that Pittsburgh was a Mecca for Republicans.
Sorry, I couldn’t stop laughing after imagining Al Sharpton as a neo-con… good one :):):)
I am happy you found it funny, I will admit that it does sound funny.
Its not right for people to treat you that way. I lost a friend (a conservative) who kept insisting on talking politics with me (I am a run of the mill liberal) though i asked him not to.
I just got tired of it one day and no longer speak to him. I had known him 12 years.
We need to get away from this sort of nastiness even if we completely disagree on issues.
Agreed there is to much nastiness some times when it comes to politics. Sorry to hear that politics ended a friendship. To that conservative I would have to ask does he not have any thing more to talk about then politics?
WPLUG seems to have a fair mix of viewpoints but people keep the politics out of the business and fun of the group. I say this having only ever attended one meeting… but I’m on the mailing lists which are fairly active.
Another group is the Pittsburgh Perl Mongers (http://pgh.pm.org), if you’re interested in perl programming (with sometimes a few other topics thrown in: like Haskell, JavaScript, etc). We also tend to keep the politics out or at a restrained level and everyone gets along great.
Cool on the Perl Mongers, but unfortanatly I am not a perl programmer, I probably should look into it abit and learn perl. Also maybe you can come down to wplug again sometime. Beth is going to be giving a talk on “Cheap Security Audits with Linux LiveCDs” check out the wplug website at http://www.wplug.org