With Trump's presidency now behind us, I'm hoping this will be the last political post I make. I wasn't political until lately, and what few views I had I tended to keep to myself. Politics was a hot topic that seemed to only end in arguments was my view of it. Then Trump came and I found myself disagreeing more and more with the people I knew and grew up with. And that bothered me. Once 2020 hit, I kept hearing online and in real life how friends and family members were becoming disconnected over political views. I found that happening to myself as well.
I found myself becoming a bit of an online troll, posting comments on friends' and family members' FB posts just to see what their reaction would be. Some were people I hadn't interacted with for years. Others were ones I called friends and had worked together with and often hung out. I found more and more of my comments were being seen as inflammatory. They didn't like what I was saying. And it wasn't even in a mild "I disagree with your viewpoint"-style. I ended up unfollowing or unfriending some friends and family, and I'll admit I felt guilty about it.
I wanted to the the bigger person. I wanted to believe in IDIC, Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, and say that although I disagreed with their viewpoint, we could still be friends. But I found as these people continued to support Trump and decided to join the nearly 70 million other idiots to vote for him again in 2020, I couldn't bring myself to be the better person. I kept asking myself why they believed Trump and why it was so important to me that they did.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was less about political views and more about personality and belief. More than any other president I could think of, Trump's presidency was based on personality, mostly his. His political actions were not something people debated. There wasn't very many concrete actions in which to say "he should have done this" and "I disagree, he should have done that." Instead, it came down to how Trump treated people. And Trump treated them like shit. Under his presidency, things that we as a nation were trying to put behind us, like racism and sexism, were being given a green light to be the norm. With his bickering against fake news, threats against governors trying to get medical equipment for coronavirus patients, and so much more, the endless negativity and flat out nastiness he espoused was being encouraged.
Never before had it became so apparent how much of a cue the public takes from the president on how to act. And with the way Trump acted, that terrified me. I was so discouraged and ashamed to see fellow Americans cheering for a man who was a proven liar and racist. Who would use political pressure against others to make then that him like a king and be damned any civilians who got caught in between. And that got me thinking: if you're attending Trump's coronavirus superspreader rallies, if you're wearing a MAGA hat, if you're posting posts that support his actions and ideologies, what does that say about you? And in turn, what's it say about me? Do I want to still associate with someone I've known for fifteen years but now realize would be okay with Christian nationalism, that thinks a democratic process should be overturned by armed force?
No, I don't.
These past few years have seemed to bring out the worst in people, and I'm sad to see that many people don't seem to regret that. It's shocked me to see friends so readily support policies and ideas so different from mine that just seem so wrong and unjust. It's because these differences isn't about foreign policy or the economy or any number of political actions. The differences are about human dignity and human rights. To see friends that oppose basic things like universal healthcare, it just shows they don't care about other people. That they are okay with more mass shootings. I feel living abroad has given me a different perspective than many of my conservative friends. I see that there are different ways to do things, and that so many of the awful things that happen in America are not the norm.
I will miss talking with some of these people. But part of me wonders if I ever knew them as well as I thought I did. Maybe I've simply moved on.
