My current favorite trending topic on Twitter is #FAFO. Reasonable, normal, sane people are posting screenshots of conversations and threads with their Trump-voting family members where boundaries are being set: I don’t want to be around you, we don’t share the same sense of morality, the country you want to make is not the country I want to live in, etc. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trump voters are shocked that we think they’re bad people and they’re whining all over the internet about being disinvited from Christmas this year.
There is also a lot of emotional labor that goes into explaining to a stupid person (either organically stupid or willfully stupid so they can justify their worldview without facing facts that they really do know) that you are going to set a boundary and disengage. So let’s do an old-school political post, a throwback to So Let’s Talk About, because I do have the energy to engage right now and I think y’all are wasting words on people who will not actually digest them. Just keep it simple and stick to the main issue: If you voted for Trump, at the very least I do not know you as well as I thought, and it’s highly likely that you are a bad person as well.
The narrative that Trump voters are so much dumber than everyone else is a bit misleading but also kind of useless. Let’s go with the argument that they’re stupid…okay now what? Does that acknowledgement make them smarter? Are they more inspired to seek out a greater understanding of civics? Will they try harder to figure out how the economy works? Will they go back to school to deepen their worldview and start reading above an 8th grade level? No. All you’ve done is make them even more defensive and that much meaner so that they sink further into their crevasse of cruelty where their only mission is to “own the Libs” and attempt to use their vote to punish everyone who makes them feel inferior.
But also: non-Trump voters aren’t that much smarter. True, there may be a larger portion of college-educated folks voting for Democrats, but for those of you who have been to college, would you honestly say that the people you met on campus are smart and that they understand politics, or is it just as likely that they had enough willpower and resources to complete a degree in a specific area that will make them more hirable in their chosen field? And, just a sidenote, resources seem to never enter the conversation when we talk about why Republicans capture a larger share of non-degreed people. We acknowledge that red states are poorer, make terrible use of government funds, and have underperforming school districts but never make the additional leap to the fact that a lot of people cannot afford college and won’t nab scholarships, and that’s even more likely to be true if you’re from some place like West Virginia or Mississippi. Regardless of the level of education though, the average Democrat doesn’t know any more about politics than the average Republican. The difference between a Liberal and a Conservative isn’t really intelligence. The two main differences are empathy and your echo chamber.
Liberals come from a place of helping others and Conservatives come from a place of hurting people who are not like them. That’s the bottom line, and if you’re a Conservative reading this and saying “well not me,” okay…but look at who you have aligned yourself with. Look at the violent bigots, racists, and misogynists in your camp. If you personally believe that you are an empathetic Conservative, you need to ask yourself why the policies you support are so attractive to very mean, angry people.
Taking empathy out of the equation, we’re just left with the bubbles we find ourselves in. A Liberal voting for policies based on science and statistics does not mean that the information is being understood and digested by the person doing the voting — it simply means that we find ourselves in an information ecosystem where we still trust the experts. Conservatives do not. They live and operate in an alternative reality, manufactured by grifters who prey on fear to stay in power and enrich themselves, where everything they see, read, and hear is telling them that you cannot trust the conclusions being made by scientists and professors and economists. Information is no longer a neutral collection of factual statements. Information in a Conservative ecosystem equates to Liberal Propaganda.
So when you are talking to the Trumpers in your family, remember that a lot of the people you know who are Liberal are only lucky enough to be that way because they were blessed with a natural inclination toward empathy and altruism, and they currently live in a social network where facts do still matter (at least a little). For the people I know whose families disappointed them this election cycle, the two major talking points are abortion and the economy.
If you are wondering how someone could choose to make abortion the foremost policy underpinning their vote, you need to look at abortion from within a Republican ecosystem. Throw out all of the science-based information you know about abortion and understand what those voters are trying to do: save little babies from being murdered by evil Democrats. That’s it! There’s no nuance needed here to understand that position! Republicans successfully turned abortion into a topic where Democrats want to kill chubby-cheeked babies in the 9th month because the mom just decides “nevermind.”
Even voters who were soft on abortion were turned during this election cycle because Republican messaging beat the same drum over and over: save innocent babies from slutty mothers who can’t keep their legs closed because those whores who just want to have casual sex are killing babies right up until the due date.
If this is what you actually believe as a voter, then there is no greater policy to vote for. What does the economy matter if we’re killing babies? Who cares about gay marriage if we’re killing babies? Yeah, maybe Trump will invalidate your marriage, but at least you’re alive, and you can go to a lawyer and have all of the requisite papers drawn up to visit each other in the hospital and make provisions in your will. Saving the babies is far more important. Yeah, maybe Trump will outlaw abortion and you’ll have to carry your rape baby to term, but at least you’re alive, and you can give it up for adoption. Even if your pregnancy is difficult and you die, that’s still countless babies that will have been saved from being ripped apart by murderous Liberals.
And then there’s the economy. Gas prices are a tangible thing. You can see how that affects your pocketbook immediately. Eggs, milk, bread — all tangible things. Saving democracy? Intangible. Codifying bodily autonomy into law? Intangible. Every four years, Republicans do a pretty good job of convincing their voters that whatever bad thing is happening to the economy is the fault of Democrats and whatever good thing that you remember from yesteryear is due to a Republican policy.
Trumpers believe things were better under Trump because Trump was a better President, not because Obama left him a stacked deck. Things are bad now because Biden is a terrible President, not because Trump left him with a terrible economy. There’s no world in which you can teach macroeconomics to anyone let alone an American who is only interested in watching news that will confirm his biases. When someone says they are voting for Trump based on the economy, they really may believe that they are, because they don’t know any better. They know what has been fed to them and they know the economy is a thing they can actually feel. Your marriage or your rights to abortion are not. If you can’t afford eggs, how could you afford an abortion or a wedding anyway?
So I think policy discussions are waste of time. Unless you are an expert, and the person you’re talking to is open to believing an expert, then leave the policy discussions alone and call it what it really is: your family member voted for an incredibly stupid, dishonest, racist, embarrassment of a person to be the representative of America again, and there’s nowhere to go from there. I can forgive being misled by Republican propaganda into believing that Trump will be better for the economy, that Trump will be better suited to end foreign conflicts and prevent World War III, that Trump is right to restrict abortion to save babies, that Trump will bring back jobs, that Trump’s tariffs will make the price of goods go down, that Trump is going to save America from immigrants using all of our resources and paying zero taxes, etc. I am too familiar with the uncurious nature of the average person to muster up any outrage for people who believe propaganda at face value. Critical thinking has been lost for at least the next two generations and I don’t have the energy to be upset about people who cannot parse fact from fiction.
I cannot forgive your vote for someone like that. You knew who he was before he won the first time, and throughout his Presidency, he showed more of himself. In the years since, he only got worse. This is a man who sexually assaults women, believes you can inject bleach to kill COVID, proudly proclaims that immigrants are eating their neighbors’ pets, and is unable to put together coherent sentences about anything unless he is ranting about his crowd size. This is a very small man who has taken political discourse to a level of the basement that hadn’t even been constructed before 2015. He is the forefather of a movement that has introduced the Nazi flag back into every day life! He emboldens angry men to taunt women with rape, emboldens white supremacists to send mass texts to Black people about picking cotton, and emboldens his rabid supporters to burn mailboxes of ballots and make bomb threats to polling places. The country he has created is so much more miserable to live in. The division, the anger, the disrespect, the violence, the lack of joy, the overall embarrassment at being from the United States! I have not told anyone I’m from the US on any international vacation since 2016. I always say Canada. This is a nasty place to live, and this is what you voted for?
So you enjoy this? Your eggs matter more than this? I understand the inability to wrap your head around a nebulous existential threat like a fascist dictator akin to Hitler assuming power and never leaving, so I understand why that wouldn’t factor into your vote. I don’t understand your ability to see that this man kept boxes of classified documents in his bathroom, that he was showing them around at parties because it makes his ego feel good, that he is selling US defense secrets, and that he wants to be best friends North Korea and Russia, both of whom have sworn to destroy the United States if they ever get the opportunity. I don’t understand your ability to still pretend the GOP is the party of Family Values when your President is a rapist on his third marriage.
I’m going to speak to the few Trump voters I know who are reading this. I recently discovered I have some family members who voted for Trump and a couple of old co-workers revealed their true selves and I had to go No Contact. I say this directly to you:
I don’t know who you are as a person. Either your ability to judge a Good Person from a Bad Person is so incredibly flawed that I cannot trust you to make good decisions around me or in relation to me, or you did accurately conclude that Trump is indeed a bad person and it simply does not matter as long as your gas is cheaper. Either way, our morality is not set up the same. I don’t want to have Christmas dinner with you. I don’t want to talk to you, perhaps ever again, because I only want to surround myself with good people that bring joy, not bad people who delight in the misery of others.
Many of you cannot wrap your heads around your friends, family, and acquaintances drawing a boundary over morality, because so many of you have a warped sense of morality at best or, at worst, you are totally bankrupt of it when you have to choose between What’s Right, and What’s Right For You Personally And To Your Benefit. It is what it is.
You cannot continue to align yourself with a party of meanness, hate, and violence and then clutch your pearls when other people assume that you are full of that same stock. If you are offended or sad that people have distanced themselves from you based on the company you keep — or the politicians you support — then you need to reexamine why those family and friends you purport to love have decided that No Contact is the drastic measure that makes the most sense.
Liberals have decided that you are an untrustworthy, unsafe person to be around based on the political party whose policies you support. If that confuses you, perhaps you do not know enough about those policies and you need to take some time to really research and digest what you are voting for.
When you say “I never cut off any of my family over their vote for Biden or Harris,” I have nothing to add to the conversation, because Biden and Harris didn’t make hate, discomfort, revenge, retribution, or violence a part of their campaigns. Cutting you off isn’t about politics — it’s about human decency. The fact that you can’t admit that Biden is a better person than Trump, that Kamala is a better person than Trump, that Walz is a better person than Vance, that there is no Democratic equivalent to the MAGA movement out to stoke fear and strike terror in the hearts of their political opposition — the fact that you can’t admit those things is why you can’t come to Christmas.
And if you can admit those things and voted for Trump anyway, you will never come to Christmas ever again.
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