Ah, summer: a time for sunscreen, grilled meats, and your cousin showing up to the family cookout, quoting Joe Rogan between bites of brisket.
Or, as happened to me recently, you post something on Facebook, and, all of a sudden, here comes that high school acquaintance you haven’t talked to in decades, ready to share their thoughts on tariffs.
And, like clockwork, someone inevitably offers up the same line: “But don’t you think we should be talking to them? Bridging the divide?”
I’ve thought about this a lot. Because my overwhelming urge is: No. No, you do not need to talk to people who voted for hate. You do not owe them your time, your patience, or your emotional labor. And if that sounds harsh, congratulations — you’re still clinging to reality, which is more than we can say for a lot of people wearing red hats these days.
“We should talk to people who disagree with us” is nonsense from pundits in New York or D.C. who have never had to listen to someone at a sports bar complain that he saw someone buying soda with a Lone Star Card.
If you live in a red state like I do, you’ve had to talk to these people your whole life. And you also don’t need me to tell you that it’s soul-destroying.
President Donald J. Trump isn’t just another “guy with bad ideas.” He’s not your garden-variety conservative uncle who grumbles about taxes while secretly loving Medicare and Social Security. This is a man who tried to overturn a democratic election, is currently running a shady crypto operation, and seems to be cosplaying as a Bond villain by outsourcing political repression to El Salvador. Oh, and now judges are getting arrested.
And yes, things are messed up now and people elect strongmen during chaotic times. For decades, we’ve let president after president (from both parties) give more and more tax breaks for the rich while cutting the safety net for the rest of us.
Which has led to skyrocketing income inequality. In 2021, the top 1% of households made about 139 times more than the bottom 20%, according to the progressive think tank Institute for Policy Studies.
That sort of amoral wealth gap — where most people are living paycheck to paycheck while a few live like kings — is a big cause of social instability.
And there’s fewer people reporting on this theft due to the ongoing collapse of local newspapers — an estimated 7,000 newspaper jobs were lost in 2023, according to the Medill School at Northwestern University.
In its place has sprung a vast sewer of misinformation, with talking heads on TikTok and Instagram posing as experts even though their main qualification is “owning an iPhone.”
All of this has led us to Trump, a TV host with a lot of dumb, cruel ideas. And for a big chunk of his supporters, this is exactly what they wanted.
They’re not misinformed or being duped. They know what they’re supporting — a movement rooted in white grievance, authoritarian power grabs, and the erasure of basic democratic norms. A 2-year-old U.S. citizen was just deported. They’ve chosen this. Repeatedly. And loudly.
“Talking across the aisle” only works when both parties are on the same planet. If you’re over here trying to discuss health care policy and they’re busy suggesting we bring back public executions, you’re not having a conversation — you’re performing emotional CPR on a corpse. And frankly, it’s starting to smell.
Meanwhile, every time we treat Trumpism like a valid political stance and not the dumpster fire it is, we shift the Overton window so far right it’s practically falling off the ledge. Suddenly, advocating for mass deportations, banning books, and criminalizing protest isn’t fringe — it’s Tuesday. When you normalize extremism under the guise of “hearing both sides,” you’re not being open-minded. You’re being a doormat.
At some point, the grown-up move is knowing when a conversation is a waste of time. You don’t have to be the explainer-in-chief for people who’ve chosen ignorance like it’s a loyalty program. You’re allowed to say, “This isn’t a difference of opinion. It’s a difference of values.” And then block them with the same energy you use to delete that “Volunteers Wanted” email from your kids’ school.
And as I’m typing this, I know that we still have to build coalitions. We still need votes, movements, and alliances to move forward. And ultimately, as progressives, we need to peel some of these people off. But how to do that when the lines are so starkly drawn, when the leader of their party is this irredeemable? Their enabling of such an amoral man (while usually ballyhooing their own religious bonafides) feels like a betrayal of the highest order, especially if it’s a family member or a friend you’ve known all your life.
And the reality is that we’re going to have to welcome some of these people into the Democratic Party’s notoriously rowdy big tent. (As you can see, I’m still struggling with it, too.)
For now, though, it’s darkly funny to watch a significant number of GOP voters react badly to getting what they wanted. They’re tired of not getting dates? Their kids are going no-contact? To quote an all-time tweet: “Well, well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.”
At the very least, I’d say some views don’t deserve a platform. Some people don’t deserve your patience. And fascism, no matter how it’s dressed up in patriotism and Bible verses, isn’t just another side of the coin.
Things seem to be collapsing faster and faster. Administration flunkies are now posing in front of prisons and gleefully dismantling aid programs. And if you want to walk away from it, I don’t blame you. Hopefully, one day, we can build something new from the wreckage.
