To The People I Know Who Voted for Him,

Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash

To the people I know who voted for him,

You know how I feel about him.

I’ve never hid my contempt for him, never pulled punches in declaring with great specificity why I have so vehemently opposed him.
You’ve seen the precise detail I have gone into over the past decade in inventorying why I have been so steadfast in resisting him and his movement.

There’s nothing I could say about him here, that you don’t already know.

But as this next chapter of our nation begins, I just want you to know something I feel about you:

I am going to hold you responsible:

for every vile and disgusting thing he says,
for every way he perverts our systems,
for every reprehensible decision he makes,
for every human being whose life he makes a living hell,
for every immigrant he rounds up in hospital beds and churches,
for every legislative assault on the rights of women and LGBTQ people, the poor, and the elderly,
for every economic catastrophe he generates,
for every international conflict he enflames,
every public health emergency he exacerbates,
every natural disaster he weaponizes.

You chose this.

You chose him.

For likely the third time, you had a chance to reject his vitriol, to condemn his criminality, to prevent his lawlessness, to denounce his bigotry—and you flat-out refused. More than that, you celebrated it. That’s not something I can quietly abide.

You’re not some faceless statistic who is part of a theoretical voting block or a nondescript, red-hatted member of a jeering mob or a single number in some exit poll. You’re someone I’ve shared life with, shared holiday tables with, worked alongside, grew up with. I know who you are, at least who I thought you were, and so this is personal for me.

You know I have LGBTQ family members and you’re throwing them to the wolves.
You know I have a daughter I adore and you’ve participated in her marginalization.
You know the vulnerable communities I’ve tried to advocate for and you’ve willingly partnered in their discrimination.
You know the threats my family and I have endured at the hands of his followers and you’ve counted yourself among them now.

And no matter how you’ve chosen to justify your allegiance to him, ultimately you made your decision, and quite frankly, I have lost the respect for and the affinity I had with you. There is a divide between us now that will never be completely removed.

We may share history and memories but we do not share elemental values, and that’s something I won’t simply accept because this isn’t about some relatively benign topics we can agree to disagree on. This is about our fundamental values, our core moral principles, and our dealbreakers on how other human beings should be treated. This is about tens of millions of flesh-and-blood human beings who will be visited by adversity, injury, sorrow, and death because of the choice you made.

I’m telling this to you now, because we probably aren’t going to be talking as much in the coming months and this will be by design. I will be spending my time more judiciously moving forward, and I don’t believe in wasting any of the fleeting moments I have left here in pretending or performing or in feigning connection when that connection has been irreparably harmed by your affiliation with him.

And when we do see one another, there will likely be lots of talking around the real stuff: lots of surface-level conversations about the weather and the kids and sports, but just know that I will not be letting you off the hook for any of the horrors ahead.

You might label this all as petty or judgmental or hateful, but honestly I’m really not concerned with what you think because you’ve proven yourself to have fairly terrible discernment and questionable morals.

Though you’ll likely contend so, I’m not a hateful, bitter, or unforgiving human being, I’m just someone who has a clear understanding of what matters to me in this life, and I believe in holding adults accountable for the irresponsible decisions they make, the due diligence they avoid, the discrimination they perpetuate, the suffering they turn away from, the violence they nurture, and the ugliness they ratify. I don’t wish you ill will or hope for tragedy to befall you, even if it may come from the very man you’ve given power to. I want the same peace of for you that I want for every other person on the planet.

But by voting for him you have declared how little we have in common, how small our shared ground of agreement is, and how different the visions of this nation we share.

And as much as it grieves me, I’m simply choosing to believe you.