Yes, You Can End Relationships Over Politics

“You shouldn’t let politics get in the way of your relationships.”

You’ve been hearing that for the past few months and seeing the sentiment pop up on social media in the wake of the election: the idea that family members and friends are too important to lose over a political position or a ballot choice.

I just wanted to offer a slightly dissenting opinion: bullshit.

That made philosophical sense in the past, prior to 2016, when we had parties and candidates who genuinely desired the common good, when we were just debating methodology or financial approach to problems that we all agreed were problems. It made sense when we imagined that our fathers, cousins, neighbors, and lifelong friends cared about diversity and justice and personal freedoms and helping people as much as we did.

We are way past that, dear friends.

Throughout this campaign, Donald Trump and his surrogates offered an openly nihilistic, misogynistic, hate-poisoned vision of an intentionally-divided nation without empathy for the poor or the sick; a naked declaration of white supremacy and intolerant nationalism; a movement completely devoid of policy and erected solely on those it would exclude and punish and banish.

And that is what so many of the people we once shared this life with have chosen, many for the third time now. That doesn’t just point to political fissure or ideological misalignment, but a complete moral incompatibility.

This is no longer about a policy difference, not a simple disagreement on the humane and responsible way to deal with collective national challenges, it isn’t a matter of agreeing to disagree on less-than-critical subjects where a stalemate is acceptable.

This moment is about the rejecting or embracing of abject hatred of difference, of unapologetic racism, of dehumanization of vulnerable human beings, of fierce, narcissistic greed.

And this is worth cutting people off, of severing ties, of social media blocking.

Because the lives of hundreds of millions of flesh-and-blood human beings hang in the balance because of these decisions: their freedom to make healthcare decisions for themselves, their access to fundamental liberties promised in the Constitution, their agency to govern their own destinies, their basic sense of safety from harassment and harm and violence. In fact, it may be your life or the life of someone you love that someone you know has chosen to disregard or erase with their vote.

If there was ever something that justified a deleted contact number or an empty chair at the Thanksgiving table or an exodus from a church or the termination of a friendship, it is this.

At some point, we as adult human beings knowing that our time here is finite, each need to choose whether we will lean into our deepest convictions or into relationships with people whose presence increasingly causes us to compromise those convictions.

We need to decide whether we will keep a tenuous peace with those we share blood and tradition with, but little else—or whether we will step out into the raking light of full authenticity and fight for the things things that break our hearts and boil our blood, for the human beings we know are and will be under great duress because of the choices our loved ones and friends have made.

The tangible, life-shortening, pain inflicting, fear-delivering impact of this election on people of color, on LGBTQ human beings, on the sick and the poor and the elderly, on our immigrant communities (let alone the rest of the world) is beyond what we can comprehend right now.

I’m not telling you to disconnect from everyone you know who voted for him, but as this all unfolds over the coming weeks and months and years, as we work to mitigate the damage and minimize the injuries, many of us may decide that we cannot forgive or abide those who not only allowed it to happen, but did so with perverse joy and unrepentant cruelty.

If that isn’t reason to end a relationship, nothing is.