Roles, Friction, and Friendship

We push into the tension of friendships during political stress, mapping why people with the same heart still clash when one acts as a Protector and another as an Integrator. We set clear lines on safety while honoring different methods for reducing harm and keeping communities whole.

• naming the friction between protectors and integrators
• trauma-informed reasons behind sharp boundaries and speech
• why different audiences require different tones and tactics
• separating values, tactics and hard boundaries
• role clarity as a stress and conflict reducer
• designing personal systems to lower reactivity
• time horizons for safety now vs conversion later
• gratitude, accountability and smarter critique across roles

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Friends Are Pissing Us Off
• 3:15 Safety, Outrage, and Gratitude
• 6:10 Roles: Protector vs Integrator
• 9:30 Trauma, Stress, and Voice
• 12:20 Being “Nice to Nazis” Debate
• 15:10 Different Demographics, Different Missions
• 18:20 Boundaries, Intolerance, and History
• 21:05 How People Change and Who Helps Them
• 24:00 Accepting Friction Without Surrendering Values

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly Podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. I'm your host, Owl Medicine, and in today's podcast, I want to talk to you about, well, really an extension of a conversation that I've just been having with a friend earlier tonight. You see, do you have any friends who've been pissing you off lately? Like, especially if you're American. If you're American right now, with everything that's happening with fucking Donald Trump and this nightmare of a country that we have, do you have friends that are pissing you off that you are trying your best to stick it out with? And I don't mean the closeted racist, nationalist, Nazi fucking friends that you're finding out turns out are white supremacists. Fuck all those fucking people. I'm talking about the ones that you know have a heart like yours. I want to know if there are people in your life that are pissing you off that you know better than to let them piss you off. Are there people in your life that have been upsetting you that you know have a heart of gold that you know are doing everything they can because you've met them? You know who they are, you know in your core, you may not know every detail of their life, but when you know a person, you know a person. So is there somebody in your life that you are upset with recently? Because maybe they're not hateful enough to fascists? Because that's where I'm at. That's exactly where I've been. And I just had a phenomenal conversation with a friend. And Lord, God, if it weren't for my friends, I'd be such a mess. I mean, I'm still a mess, but Lord, if it weren't for my friends, I can't even imagine. My friends are the best part of me, and my friends continue to be the best part of me, and they continue to piss me the fuck off occasionally. And best of all, I know for a fact I pissed them the fuck off too. They probably wouldn't put it that way because they're nicer and kinder and more lovey than I am in that kind of way, but they know exactly what I mean when I say that. So I want to talk about these relationships for a second. It's a wild time to be alive, and all of us are genuinely deeply looking around at our friends, at our family, at our neighbors, at our coworkers, at our communities, and we're wondering, are we safe? Way too many of us are. And it it gets really hard when people that you know and love are nice to Nazis. It's really hard. And I want to say I recognize that it's really hard. And I want you to say thank you to them. And I want them to say thank you to you. And this is why. You see, the friends that have been pissing me off lately, and not by anything big, I say pissing me off because that's the way I fucking talk. But there have been a few little things here and there, online mostly, that people that I love deeply have said or not said that have upset me one way or another. And things I've said that have conversely upset them. And that's really hard to deal with when we're all this dysregulated. When people that you deeply, deeply love become upset with you, or people that you deeply love you become upset with them. It gets it gets sticky, man. It gets hard to navigate sometimes. And I was just having a conversation with a friend that I thought was worth sharing. And I honestly just recorded about nine videos, three and a half to five and a half minutes long, trying to make one short enough to share on Instagram and Facebook just to get the little thing out, just to get the thought out. Because the conversation that we had, I think is important enough to share, but I couldn't get it in less than like a 90-second reel. So I figured I might as well do a podcast about it. So here's that podcast. If your friends are pissing you off, here's what I want you to do. Like, again, not your fucking accidental fascists and your sleepy Nazis. Um, that's what I call them, the people who they that don't recognize that they're fascists and don't recognize that they're Nazis, but they support one. I'm not even talking about those people. Do whatever you want with those people. Um, we all have our different roles. That's what I'm talking about here. The roles. You see, I I feel deeply. And I feel strongly. And not everybody feels as deeply or as strongly as I do. And I know the neurology of chronic stress adaptation. I literally wrote a book about it. I understand that the reason I feel so deeply and so profoundly is exactly because of my trauma. It is exactly because of my chronic stress adaptation. That doesn't mean there's a single fucking thing wrong with it. The way that I operate works for me, and it works to protect people. And I know this because I constantly get private messages from people thanking me for the extremity of my views. Like thanking me for how extreme, I mean, my views are. And I know that seems crazy to some people, including my more moderate friends. But I get every time I post something that is really, really divisive and is really like, you know what? Fuck you to the right, to all of their bigoted bullshit. I get people who were like, you know, you're alienating a lot of people that you could be helping. I get a few of those, and I get a buttload of people being like, Thank you for saying what I can't say because I'm a teacher, because I'm a I'm a I'm a public official, because I'm this, that, or the other, because of the role that I play. I can't say what I feel, but I see you saying it, and that makes me feel better. So people thank me for my role. And I love my role. My role in this modern world, in this bullshit Trump 2025 nightmare, is Protector. I just put out my new debut, my new debut single that I'll be um, or I just recorded. I haven't put it out yet, not on Spotify. I'll be putting that out soon. It's called Red Hat. And it's not nice. It's not nice to Nazis, it's not nice to fascists, it's not nice to MAGA because fuck you. The end, because fuck you. But you see, I have friends that are nice to Nazis. Yes, me. Mm-hmm. I have friends that are nice to Nazis. And it's fucking hard. It's fucking hard to stomach. And you know, if I didn't know these people so well, and if we didn't have hours and hours and hours of deep, meaningful, like thoughtful, heartfelt conversation that solidified our understanding of each other, who knows where the relationship would be now. But after this conversation I just had with a another friend earlier today, I realized that the role is the friction. For my friends at least. Maybe your friends aren't like my friends. Maybe you're not as lucky as I am. I have the greatest friends in the entire planet. I mean that. My friends are the best part about me. They hold up mirrors to my rage, they hold up mirrors to my compassion, they hold up mirrors to my being and to my doing, and they reflect back at me the parts of me that I cannot see for myself. My friends are the absolute most indispensable part of me being a decent fucking human. The end. And they still be pissing me off. Like, they be pissing me off sometimes. Oh they be pissing me off because they're not mean enough to fascists. But here's the thing. I'm a protector. At least that's the way I see my role in the larger social thing of America. We're all lots of things. I'm inter, I'm I'm an intersectionalist. I've mentioned that I don't know how many fucking times now. But we all fill a million different roles. One of my primary roles that I fill in this modern world, in modern America in 2025, is that I'm a protector. I want to protect the little queers. I want to protect the little trans. I want to protect the little gay boys who are just like I was as a child, who were raised in the households of people who preached the same nationalist evangelical fucking bullshit that Charlie Kirk preached. I grew up in that world. And I have a deep, deep hatred for it because of that. But you see, the people that I grew up with are completely unlike the people that my friends that are pissing me off. But completely different from what they grew up with. And that's what matters. But why does it matter? Because here they and I we have the same heart. We know each other. We see each other, we get each other, and we piss each other off, and we hold each other accountable. But you see, I'm a protector in this way. I want to take the people who are the most vulnerable and I want to give them a place to be. I want to give them, I want to hold the banner that says, come stand by me and I will die before I let them hurt you. That is the world I live in. That is the world in which I operate. That is the role I play. However, my friends, my friends don't have that same role. My friends have a different role. My friends are integrators. Not all of them. But the ones who piss me off the most, they're integrators. And they're also the ones that I love the most. You see, the people that have been pissing me off lately piss me off because they're not mean enough to Nazis. And you'd think that that was a simple thing. You really would. You'd think that that was a simple thing, but it's not. If I'm gonna be an intersectionalist, I have to be an intersectionalist, and as much as it pisses me off being mean and cruel to anybody I deem a Nazi, is not that fucking simple. You see, the reason they're not mean to Nazis, not as mean to specifically what I call like sleepy Nazis and accidental fascists, or sleepy fascists and accidental Nazis. I use the two terms interchangeably because they're kind of the same. They're not identical if you want to talk to a historian or whatever, but whatever, they're close enough for me. And the thing is, is as integrators, the demographic of people that they work with is fundamentally different from my demographic my demographic of people. I don't give a fuck about a sleepy Nazi. I don't give a fuck about why you're a Nazi. I just give a fuck that you are one. I don't give a fuck why you're a fascist. I just give a fuck that you are one. Because my job is to protect people who were like me. To protect people from not only the threat and from the ass kickings that I got, but from the literal ideology that I was surrounded by and that was inescapable for the first 18 years of my life. The ideologies that I grew up with were absolutely inescapable. And it was the same bullshit ideologies that Charlie Kirk touted across America with turning point fuck all. Fuck every one of them. I don't give a shit. They can all fucking die, and the world would be a better place. That's how I feel. Because that's my role as a protector. There's more to me than being a protector. I also am a trauma person, and I've also literally lived their lives. I also used to wear a Confederate fucking flag belt buckle to high school. I talked about that in a recent podcast. I believed it. I bought it all hook, line, and sinker, and I got myself out of it. Because that was ignorant fucking bullshit. However, it took people to help me find my way out of it. And my friends, the ones that piss me off, are exactly the people I wish I had to help me out. But I didn't have them then. It took me a lot longer to make the changes, to become the person that I am now, to have the insights that I have now, to have the humanity that I have now, including the humanity to cut off an entire chunk of that humanity that is intolerant and say, fuck you, I will not tolerate your intolerance. And I feel very fucking good about that. And I feel very fucking good about that, even while my friends tolerate other people's intolerance. Mmm, that's the hard bit. That's the hard bit. You see, I won't tolerate people's intolerance. I read the fucking poems, I read the fucking books, I know how this ends. So I won't. I won't tolerate it. But you know what? So have my friends. So have my friends. They've read they read the same poem. They have the same heart, but they have a different role. So instead of me just getting mad every time I see a friend of mine who's not being quite mean enough to Nazis. Or even if they call me elitist for not being nicer to Nazis or fascists. Good. I don't like it. I think they're wrong. I think it's bullshit. And fuck you, it pisses me off. They're still right though. They are. They're still right. If they're going to do their job as integrators, they need to be concerned with the sleepy fascists. They need to think about the origin stories of those people. They need to be able to speak to them kindly and compassionately because their job is to take the danger that I am protecting my people from and to convert those dangerous people into people who are not dangerous. Which means their priorities are not my priorities. Their demographic is not my target demographic. Their approach to getting their demographic to be better is not my approach to get my demographic to be better. They're fundamentally different and in a lot of ways fundamentally incompatible. And that's why it pisses me off. That's why it's hard. That's why I'm recording this podcast. It's fucking hard to deal with people who are not seeing the world the same way you are, especially when the world is such a freaking nightmare and everything's up in the air and everything is a just chaotic joke. It's very dysregulating for all of us. And so if you have people in your life who have consistently shown you who they are, and that have consistently shown up for you, and that have consistently given you the benefit of a doubt. And that you know their heart, but yet they still be pissing you off sometimes, then maybe, just maybe, you can do as I've done, and you can slough off a little bit of that, a little bit of that stress, a little bit of that discomfort. Maybe you can slough some of that off by saying to yourself, they have a different role. Maybe you're a mama bear. Maybe you're an integrator. Maybe you're a limeliter or a spotlighter. Maybe you're a behind the scenes kind of person. Maybe you're a supporter no matter what, no matter what anybody does, but you you you you show up more and you support more for the things that you support more. And you don't show up in as quite a supportive way for things that are maybe a little bit more messed up. Now that grosses me out on some level. And on another level, I realize it's fundamentally necessary. So it doesn't fucking matter whether it grosses me out. That's a privilege I get to have by locking myself into one role. My my my ability to be like, I don't like that. That's that's fucking privilege. To a T. That's just privilege. Whatever it is that you are doing as your role, keep doing it. Know that it's right for you. And if you wind up in a situation where you have friends who behave differently, and you maybe don't like the way that they behave, or you don't understand quite why they move through the world in the way that they do, especially in the modern world with all this bullshit happening. Think about the role that you play and think about the role that they play. And think about who your role has to prioritize versus who their role has to prioritize. Think about what systems you could put into place to make your role or their role more efficient, and then look at any inherent friction that might come up between their system and yours. Because these not these systems are not just external. These systems are also how we integrate information, how we move through the world. They deeply affect us personally. So think about your role, think about their role, think about the way you need to prioritize, the way that each of these roles are going to be the most effective, who they target, why they target them, what the most effective system of approach is going to be to accomplish the goal. Because these people that be pissing me off sometimes, they've got the same goal that I do. The exact same goal. And on at least an occasion or ten, they're better at it than I am. As far as the if the goal is to make people more safe. Sometimes it makes people more safe to have a big banner to crowd under, like mine, that says, yeah, come fuck and try us, bitch. And sometimes, the thing that makes people more safe is when people who didn't know they were Nazis are treated like human beings for long enough that they eventually realize that maybe they were accidental Nazis. They're not wrong for that. And I'm not wrong for mine. Stay curious and stay uncomfortable.