So you’ve decided to ghost your Trump-voting friends

Don't be ashamed to end a friendship over politics - but make sure that's what you really want to do.

A few years ago I saw a Facebook post from a lawyer with whom I’d worked and who wasn’t a close friend, exactly, but we’d always been on good terms. I’d noticed her posts becoming angrier and more radical and culminating in a demand that anyone voting for the Conservative Party unfriend her right then and there.

I was happy to oblige, and that was that. Last time I checked, she’d done a political 180 and went all-in on supporting the “Freedom Convoy,” got disbarred and now performs tarot card readings and stuff on YouTube.

With Donald Trump having won the recent Presidential election - God, it still feels weird and creepy writing that - after a characteristically nasty, divisive and dishonest campaign, many Trump supporters and opponents have used social media as a crowdsourced therapy session, debating the morality of ending or continuing friendships, family relationships and even marriages over their 2024 Presidential vote.

Specifically, it seems to be mostly Harris supporters saying and even bragging about cutting off the Trump voters in their lives, with the latter responding by acting surprised and hurt. (In a country of 350+ million people, I have no doubt there are examples in the opposite direction, though it’s less evident online.)

Contra Mr. Hole84, I think there are some political views which, when held by people you’d thought of as friends and loved ones, at least ensure you’ll never look at them the same way.

What views are these? That’s completely up to you.

Personally, I am nowhere near the point where support for a President-elect whom I despise is, in and of itself, something that justifies destroying a relationship.

How the person expresses their Trump support, of course, can be a difference-maker.

It’s one thing to have backed him as “the lesser of two evils” or because you were mistaken about his policies (or, as I’ve seen much too often, because you simply don’t believe Trump will do what he says he plans to do).

By contrast, if you’ve made your support for Trump your very reason for living and talk about him constantly like you’re trying to get me to sign up for an multi-level-marketing scheme, yeah, I’m probably not inviting you around anymore.

The former I’d consider merely wrong or mistaken. The latter are probably too far gone, though I’d like to believe they’ll see the error of their ways eventually, kind of like some relatives who really got into Amway a few years ago and wouldn’t stop talking about it, but broke free before it destroyed every relationship they had.

But I do have some other beliefs which would be deal-breakers: explicit support for Hamas, for example. And everyone reading this has his or her own deal-breakers. If it happens to be support for Trump (or Harris, or anyone else), that’s your moral code and you aren’t obliged to let anyone else talk you out of it.

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That works both ways, though. If you are going to end a relationship over a political issue, at least make sure that’s what you want to do, and that you aren’t being shamed into it by your IRL or online “friends.”