Well, all that talk about Big Shawna and her Bush has got me going now, really it has.
Nice to know you have friends; lots of people with blind spots the size of yours tend to shed friends over time - in my experience. I think it’s related to constantly having these friends use that blind spot to shield from your view the hard things they sometimes throw at you, those pesky flying objects that you somehow never see before they whop you upside the head.
You didn’t ask, but hey, it’s a public forum. Here’s what makes sense to me. If you think digging a ditch - a firewall of sorts - is good for your family (despite warnings from almost all your good friends that, knowing as well as they do your historically peripatetic foreign policy, the long-term benefit of digging that ditch doesn’t even outweigh the short- to mid-term cost of sharply increased risk of putting you and yours in some significant, additional danger) yet still you find yourself feeling it’s important to have at least a minimum of support in your labor, then you probably want your friends to help dig, natch. And if they won’t help, then at a minimum you want them to stand out of the way and not throw clods at you while you dig alone.
If this is the case, then I would recommend not ridiculing, denigrating, or otherwise publicly casting dispersions on them unmercifully - or at least wait until you’re both in the ditch hip-deep or so to begin.
This is very important!
That way, see, when you do criticize, it’s in their own best interest to cooperate fully with what are now fully-shared ends. Even if they continue to throw stuff at you, even while you’re both deep in that ditch - stuff you can’t see because of that drat blind spot - you know you’ll eventually need their help; after all, even though they’re your friends, they’re still bastards and they’ll do stupid things like that. Not only that, but what better time to fundamentally change your relationship than when you’re both standing chest-deep in forming the ditch? They throw a clod, you pop 'em one, they see the error of their ways, everybody plays nice, the ditch is built pronto, the friendship thrives. Common sense (diplomacy?), no?
You already knew going in that they’re thin-skinned bastards, though, so no biggie, right? Keep your eye on the prize - a fully functional ditch! Remember, you have to just suck it up a bit and weigh what’s really important to you: the ditch or what amounts to little more than minor head pain.
If you decide that ridding yourself of the head pain is more important than digging that ditch, then don’t complain when your friends won’t play along and help you with your stupid ditch. We both know they’ll continue to throw clods anyway, that’s just the way they are. And this is, after all, a relationship you’re vested in, one the bridge to which you’d like to keep whole. Just in case. You never know.
Second, if you choose to go ahead and dig that ditch alone (screw the Friends! Cheese-eating surrender monkey bastards!), when you get all the way in and your head is now below ground-level and you begin to worry that the damn walls might just collapse on you, stop digging.
To stop digging ought to be like, job 1 at that point.
Just saying.
And, weren’t those ‘Freedom fries’ you ate?
$0.02
