I heard this sort of excuse for the Vietnam War - the “it’s bad but we had to do it for our country.” Ditto the Iraq wars and Afghanistan. Your friend’s lament would sound the same in German, with Jews instead of immigrants. Did he ever in the prior discussions describe what terrible things these immigrants have done to threaten his country? Were any of them valid? I suspect he ran out of justifications for being a terrible person who supports a terrible policy and that’s why he blocked you. He doesn’t like this latest wave of immigrants, but no doubt thinks the wave who brought his ancestors here was meet and just. As a descendant of the Pilgrims, I would reassure him that, given time, a true American can come to value any immigrant, no matter their race, creed or country of origin. If he can’t, maybe he should live elsewhere.
I've certainly had to abandon relationships (were they really friendships? I'm not sure) when I realized the other person believed dangerous or barbaric things and was unreachable. I want to spend the years remaining to me in the healthiest way possible and I find people like the "friend" you describe are poison.
I'm not a saint and I don't do brain transplants, so miracles or transformation aren't options. The best choice for me is to walk away and don't look back. YMMV.
I am REMARKABLY tolerant of other people's political views. I am a hopeless romantic for trying to see the best in people, honestly. Except for certain people who I have written off based on how many people they have hurt and/or are hurting.
Your ex friend was too weak for the load of a friendship and gave himself over to the convenience of letting other people make decisions and bleeding the humanity out of him.
"Love of country" is the thinnest of reeds to hang our morality on.
A novel I read long ago had our hero defend himself from an accusation of national infidelity by defining uncritical love of country with undying loyalty "to foods eaten in childhood".
/I know you think my support for final solution is authoritarian. I think it’s protective of my country. It’s ugly watching jews sent to gas chambers. I can’t watch it. But enforcing the law has always had ugliness./
You do have to understand — and this is scary to think about, but history shows us time and time again — about 80% of people fall into the category of person. If say, some far left politician came to power in 2032 and started arresting landowners and engaging in a Stalinist maximum programme, you'd probably be able to keep 60% of Democrats on board throughout. Not because these people are authoritarian communists. But because they are followers of the community groupings they are in. And they will follow the herd.
Great essay, Mike. I consider myself fortunate that I haven't had to dump friends or family over the past 10 years over politics, probably because I have always needed to surround myself with people with similar worldviews and grew up in a liberal household. Maybe it's too harsh but I would call your former friend a "good Nazi" and you're well rid of him.
I'm a bit in an opposite muddle. I recently moved to a rural area and many of my neighbors are deeply religious and I'm sure maga. I actually have many lovely casual interactions with these ultra polite Southerners and I value that, especially as many of them are farmers and local food producers. I feel so much safer and at home here than in South Florida that became so hostile over these past 10 years and now I am trying to overcome my pretty much life long bias that these people are idiotic religious crazies. The local democratic party committee is focusing on bringing people who are suffering under maga policies over to our side but I feel unable to talk to these people. One of the things I resent most about these past 10 years is how much I hate people now. I may have wanted nothing to do with certain people, but I didn't hate them.
Well, I maintain these relationships because social relationships are what make life valuable. And I hope to influence people in my social circles — sometimes I do, and sometimes I fail. Here, I failed.
Honestly, it's a bad strategy. it drives further polarization. In fact, I may have inadvertently played into radicalizing my friend even more. That I wrote about it ... probably more exhibitionist in nature — me blowing off steam about the shape of the world — than a piece that will do any good.
I don't know if your silence is a better strategy, Mike. I could be wrong but at any rate, you're not responsible for his choices. And I appreciate the opportunity to discuss my own shortcomings and discomfort with this subject.
In Sweden, we'll have an election in September. We have a fascist party that wants mass deportation, just like your Republicans. They wanted to advertise on buses with a slogan "Mogadishu is waiting for you!". Since a lot of our bus drivers are Somali, and they refused to drive those buses, the bus company had to remove the advertising. We have a lack of bus drivers, so letting them go was not an alternative.
The problem with deportation is that we need their work. In Sweden it's drivers and health care personnel. In the US, it's farmers and service providers.
Who's going to pick the vegetables and the fruit that's rotting in the fields?
Those racists are scared of someone looking different and refuses to see them as human beings.
It's repeated over and over again in the bible how we should take care of the foreigner that lives among us, so they can't say they are doing what Jesus wants.
This is an excellent essay but I feel like you missed something in not questioning his premise. "I think [mass deportation] is protective of this country." In what way? How does it protect our country to remove our agricultural workers, home health care aides, construction workers, and so on? How are they harming this country? That's what sticks in my craw.
Having argued with him for dozens of hours over the past 18 months, I have to say he doesn't have much past "it's a legitimate conservative policy position for which reasonable people can differ". He doesn't have a deep philosophical argument.
I enjoyed your piece and felt the sadness in it. As you said, so many friends and family members and lovers have broken up over differences too difficult to reconcile. But a couple of thoughts. Put simply, your "friend" is philosophically backing "the means justify the ends." And as you suggested, this is morally corrupt in and of itself. At what point would he stop looking away and take steps? When children were murdered and thrown in mass graves to dispose of them? He speaks in simplistic terms as if "dirty work" were the only option to deal with immigration. We've spent so much money on dirty work that no infrastructure has been built to address eligibility and orderliness around borders, all of which would have cost much less in money and human lives.
He also relies on the claim that you blame him for loving his country, again a huge conflation of patriotism and dirty work.
I think it takes a lot of mastery to debate how to solve issues, and it certainly won't come from obtuse and overly generalized positions which your friend invests in.
I liked what you said about his self-identification (which, in general, may not be a negative). He obviously is suffering some moral injury when identifying as a good person willing to tolerate and look away from bad actors doing back things.
Here is the truth: most people's political views — which are tribal groupings for too many people — are triangulations within social groups. So when my friend is arguing with me here and distilling the empty moral logic he advances, he's thinking about other people in his life that he's closer to than me, and their worldview. Once you have mostly conservative friends — which is the case for him — he's in the situation where if he were to agree with me, he will lose all his conservative friends. And 80% of humans will choose their friends in that case.
It's just true. I'm not saying this to be cynical. Coastal elites with liberal arts degrees are not representative.
It's not a matter of morality. Most well-adjusted adults will always choose friends and family over politics. That's a good thing, mostly. It's the social fabric that minimizes violence.
I have one single conservative friend. He is actually a second tier TV personality on Fox Business. He calls me his favorite liberal/communist. (I am a social democrat). I am sure 95% of his friends are conservative and mostly MAGA. I call him my favorite fascist. He is funny, articulate and charismatic and Irish American Catholic. We get into unending text exchanges on politics and philosophy and agree on almost nothing. “Why?” you may ask. Somehow I think we are both able to clarify our ideas and challenge the other. Neither of us backs down. He is probably more polite than I, who can be ruthless. But he understands I am attacking his ideas not him. I want to represent something of a conscience for him. I rarely succeed but I want him to be aware of the consequences of his thinking. He prays for me. I pray that he may see the grifting going on at the highest level (Qatari planes, selling early access to Truth Social tweets for $100,000 a month, mass pardoning of wealthy convicts etc) is unprecedented. He responds about how bad Swallwell has been, or brings up Hunter’s laptop (again!) I do think some of my views get through but he is unable to stray far from his cultist views (yes my judgment). It can be hard to have a meaningful discussion with a friend on politics when you agree on everything. With someone who stays around for years who opposes my viewpoints it only helps make my resolve stronger and my perspectives clearer. Is his MAGA resolve also stronger through our almost daily interactions? Maybe but that is the risk I take.
Too many so-called (self-proclaimed) “good men” admitting the evil and DOING NOTHING. Sad, but there are always more cowards than those willing to challenge and change their convictions. Any man who can say “I can’t watch it but somebody must do that evil to children in my name” is unworthy of his Y chromosome. 🤬 That nameless “conservative” bubba probably thinks he’s doing what Jesus would do … and he’ll vote for evil again like a good sheeple. 🙄 But he’s not man enough to let you make him feel bad? Awww. Let him go cry in his cyber tonka toy. 😈
I completely agree with your comment about our prosocial, tribal nature, and the difficulty of standing in belief-isolation from those closest to you. What's notable to me, per your comment, is the false dichotomy he feels stuck in--your friendship or "them". It's not that border security is a concern for only conservatives. All the notable attributes of a democracy--housing, food, health, safety--are pertinent to everyone. What's preventing dialogue I think is what you said about identity, which leads to 'my people versus your people' in his mind.
He has more conservative friends than liberal ones and that matters enormously. I believe his wife is very conservative. So the moment he agrees with me, his marriage is in trouble. People hold beliefs to "fit in" more than genuine belief. Hence why it's often so easy for people to change religions to marry into religious families, etc. People are like this with politics, too.
Your friend is right and you put entirely to much much time, effort and emphasis into it. Everyone today has an opinion they feel the need to force down the throat of others. We're now living in a society of massive control freaks The lethal injections solidified that. The one question I always ask people is:
WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONG?
About everything, about every single thing in your life. Why does no one ever contemplate let alone consider that? They might actually be wrong, about everything?
For the record I don't vote never have nor ever will. We live in a completely lawless society devoid of any and all truth. It's non-existent. Everything you see and here and think you know, is a lie. Good luck trying to find the truth, because it now ceases to exist. Subterfuge is omnipresent.
Life is short, we're now on the precipice of nuclear war or at least tactical nuclear war. Enjoy your life, your family and friends. The rest is all copy - to quote Nora Ephron.
You took it to far, you put entirely to much emphasis on everything. Let it go. There are seven billion people on this planet all of which have different opinions It was obvious your forced yours on his.
Politics is all about deliberately pitting people against each other. Some day people will eventually wake up and realize there are more of us then there are of them, join forces in solidarity and fight back. WHY the deliberately pit you against each other. Their greatest fear is a revolution.
Not only do you pay for your TV but then go and parrot everything they brainwashed you into believing! Talk about free advertisement. I read the weekend edition of the WSJ this week and swore I was reading a fictional book. It was truly amazing.
Politics is all a LIE! It's theater, you have a better chance of changing the weather by farting then changing anything by voting.
I don't vote never do now ever will but you now have the greatest lie in the history of this Country occupying the WH. The man is undeniably, indisputably and inarguably learning disabled and people actually believe his existence. His entire life is a lie as solidified by the 34 felony counts for forgery. If you walked into a ER and he was your doctor how fast would you run out of the hospital, yet they believe all of it.
Then you have Joe Biden - and people believed that too. The man was not fit to serve office back in 2018 but people still fall for all of this.
not even close, it's all theater, a deliberate dog and pony show which is why forest gump trump was deliberately installed, the greatest distraction in the history of politics and boy has it paid off.
You say "someday people will eventually wake up." I say that day is past due and the earth can no longer wait for the sleepy heads to awaken. I am going to war with the woke.
You're right Pam. The cell phones were a deliberate and intentional distraction and dumbing down of society. The day is quickly approaching where they ask, what the hell happened, when they turn on the faucet and nothing comes out. People are so oblivious to what's really going on in the world it's frightening. I have never recalled this magnitude of stupidity in my entire life. It's like a bad dream dream and truly there for the taking.
There is a time in each of our lives when clarity becomes painfully obvious. I suppose we begin our lives, many of us, idealizing how the world should be, and then the harsh reality of "that which is" steps in. It is like a Harry Potter movie using phrases like "he who shall not be named." Much of what we believed in we now see as oxymorons. Words of great importance now are seen as hypocritical, glib, and frankly, as bullshit.
The exact words from Mike's friend are below.... I would like to critique this and show my comments in brackets.
Mike, you are a friend. But I cannot continue this [sic] debates with you anymore. You are a talented man and writer. But I am a conservative. I know you think my support for mass deportation is authoritarian. I think it’s protective of my country.
[How absurd for anyone to say that "mass deportation is protective of my country." This is an open declaration, a confession so to speak, of deeply rooted racism. This is the sort of individual who would betray his Jewish neighbor in Nazi Germany. And this individual conflates what Trump is doing, somehow, with protection of the U.S. If you examine EVERYTHING that Trump and the Republican Congress, and the conservative members of SCOTUS have done then you will see that 90% of it falls into the following:
1. It has been and continues to be DESTRUCTIVE to the integrity of the U.S. and all Americans.
2. It is something that Putin, Kim, Xi Jinping and every dictator on Earth smiles at. Thank you comrade Trump.
3. It puts money and ego into the Trump et al organization.
4. It fulfills the Mandate for Leadership, (aka Project 2025)]
It’s ugly watching little kids get rounded up. I can’t watch it. But enforcing the law has always had ugliness.
[This, your friend, is one sick mother-fucker. He knows shit about our immigrant population. What Trump and the Republican Congress have done by allocating billions to DHS and ICE has turned a democracy with a plowshare. There is no assessment of an individual's criminality. People of color are rounded up without due process. Habeas corpus is violated. Freedom of speech is tossed into the trash. But your "friend" calls this enforcing the law. Enforcing the law would have put Trump in jail for most of the indictments against him. Trump's violation of the emoluments clause goes flagrantly unchallenged. American citizens like Good and Pretti are shot to death by ICE. They have been murdered by Trump et al. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have worked here for decades and are peaceful members of our community are summarily imprisoned and/or deported. How many administrations of democrats or republicans are guilty for not passing laws that provide for a pathway to citizenship for these unauthorized individuals? Yes, Biden, in my opinion made some bad mistakes about immigration. But this is true of both parties. The KEY word here is proper vetting at the border + focusing on where the heaviest illegal crossings occur. The solution is NOT to stop those with green cards from becoming citizens, nor shutting down the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) category from those fleeing a country but rather to do VETTING properly, like how we should have vetted Trump when he first ran for office. We did not do this an we allowed a criminal to become POTUS. Now we are seeing that crook rob the US taxpayer of billions.]
I am sick of you making me feel like a bad person for just wanting to protect my country. hich comes form [sic] love. Have a good life Mike. You’re a different person now. You’ve become very left-wing. I agree Trump is a mistake. But the mistake was elected a corrupt man. The policy is correct. We need to have a country. That means a border. We shouldn’t have let 20 million people in, in the first place. Now they have to be rounded up. The mistake was made in the past. Not today. Now conservatives have to be hated for doing the dirty work liberals forced us into. You’re blocked now. I can’t do this.
[Your supposed friend is blind. He who knows not And knows not that he knows not Is a Fool
Shun him. He may not be a bad person but he is blind. Trump is far more than a mistake. Trump combined with the spineless Republican Congress, and throw in the Trump sycophants on the Supreme Court bench, and you have the ingredients for the destruction of democracy and the rule of law. The words of this horribly misguided person fit Kipling's poem "If" perfectly. "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you." Most of us see what has transpired in our country. We see the threat to world peace, as well as peace at home. We see not simply a loss in the balance of powers but the loss in balance in what MLK would call "things that matter." "Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter." — Martin Luther King
All the great personages in history would shutter at what has happened in the Error (sic) of Trump. Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, and thousands of other great minds going back to Plato and Plotinus.
Under Trump the Traitor we are witness to America: the death of a nation? This once glorious melting pot of a country with its incredible diversity has now been turned upside down in the name of racism, greed, and a lust for power.
If your friend, or others, want the full picture of immigration and the crisis we face, then take a look at:
Maybe, although I doubt it, if your "friend" really cared about truth, he would read and learn the facts about the immigration crisis in the U.S. and how the American public has been duped with false information, and a flagrant lack of due diligence to do what could have been beneficial to every American, and strengthen America, not bring it to its knees.
Most of us probably have those friends. Mine goes back to childhood. We grew up together, then raised kids together. We came together at gatherings. We never talked politics.
Now I wonder, was she always like that. Did she believe those things and the algorithm just brought them out? Or, was she "converted" by the algorithm?
In either case, it has led to a change in relationship where communication happens much less frequently, and ends for months at a time.
Some may think that your good friend who became MAGA is somehow less MAGA because you didn't see it before, whether it was there or not. I don't know.
The algorithms (and before those, Talk Radio and FoxNews) make people believe things that are not true. By repetition, social familiarity & gatherings, etc. Which then leads to a [faux] identity and a feeling that to give up the beliefs & views will be social suicide. And so it was! But the lies became more intolerable to me than the prospect of loneliness, and closely following that was the way in which my rightwing friends reacted whenever I expressed doubts or raised questions (albeit very timidly at first). I gradually realized they were doing exactly what I’d been doing for far too long, which was looking away, dismissing, justifying, and just plain swallowing steaming hot bullshit with a zombie smile on my face.
Mostly stunned silence or refusal to engage, then immediately seeking refuge in numbers by talking about me behind my back… like, “what is happening to her?” In the case of my mother, she’d confront my husband and when he reaffirmed my positions and doubts (often more sternly and coherently than me), she would blame ME for leading him astray. This makes me laugh now but when she was still alive it sent me into a rage.
Sounds right, unfortunately. I don’t think it matters just how eloquently you can express your reasons, there is too much emotion, and at times, tribalism built into it.
I heard this sort of excuse for the Vietnam War - the “it’s bad but we had to do it for our country.” Ditto the Iraq wars and Afghanistan. Your friend’s lament would sound the same in German, with Jews instead of immigrants. Did he ever in the prior discussions describe what terrible things these immigrants have done to threaten his country? Were any of them valid? I suspect he ran out of justifications for being a terrible person who supports a terrible policy and that’s why he blocked you. He doesn’t like this latest wave of immigrants, but no doubt thinks the wave who brought his ancestors here was meet and just. As a descendant of the Pilgrims, I would reassure him that, given time, a true American can come to value any immigrant, no matter their race, creed or country of origin. If he can’t, maybe he should live elsewhere.
Touching essay.
I've certainly had to abandon relationships (were they really friendships? I'm not sure) when I realized the other person believed dangerous or barbaric things and was unreachable. I want to spend the years remaining to me in the healthiest way possible and I find people like the "friend" you describe are poison.
I'm not a saint and I don't do brain transplants, so miracles or transformation aren't options. The best choice for me is to walk away and don't look back. YMMV.
I am REMARKABLY tolerant of other people's political views. I am a hopeless romantic for trying to see the best in people, honestly. Except for certain people who I have written off based on how many people they have hurt and/or are hurting.
I understand.
I'm romantic, too, but I'm not sentimental.
This is a powerful, sad, and radically honest essay. Thank you.
Well I for one don't think of you as a liberal. You are a thinker and want to know. I have learned from the things you write.
I came across this yesterday (maybe an over simplification for your brain power) but it makes depressing sense to me to a degree.
https://substack.com/@lucasbean/note/p-211491940?r=2sm3x
Your ex friend was too weak for the load of a friendship and gave himself over to the convenience of letting other people make decisions and bleeding the humanity out of him.
I wouldn't be offended if you thought of me as a liberal. I am quite that.
"Love of country" is the thinnest of reeds to hang our morality on.
A novel I read long ago had our hero defend himself from an accusation of national infidelity by defining uncritical love of country with undying loyalty "to foods eaten in childhood".
Yep.
some friend you had…
/I know you think my support for final solution is authoritarian. I think it’s protective of my country. It’s ugly watching jews sent to gas chambers. I can’t watch it. But enforcing the law has always had ugliness./
You do have to understand — and this is scary to think about, but history shows us time and time again — about 80% of people fall into the category of person. If say, some far left politician came to power in 2032 and started arresting landowners and engaging in a Stalinist maximum programme, you'd probably be able to keep 60% of Democrats on board throughout. Not because these people are authoritarian communists. But because they are followers of the community groupings they are in. And they will follow the herd.
Yes. H. sapiens is a tribal species.
Great essay, Mike. I consider myself fortunate that I haven't had to dump friends or family over the past 10 years over politics, probably because I have always needed to surround myself with people with similar worldviews and grew up in a liberal household. Maybe it's too harsh but I would call your former friend a "good Nazi" and you're well rid of him.
I'm a bit in an opposite muddle. I recently moved to a rural area and many of my neighbors are deeply religious and I'm sure maga. I actually have many lovely casual interactions with these ultra polite Southerners and I value that, especially as many of them are farmers and local food producers. I feel so much safer and at home here than in South Florida that became so hostile over these past 10 years and now I am trying to overcome my pretty much life long bias that these people are idiotic religious crazies. The local democratic party committee is focusing on bringing people who are suffering under maga policies over to our side but I feel unable to talk to these people. One of the things I resent most about these past 10 years is how much I hate people now. I may have wanted nothing to do with certain people, but I didn't hate them.
Well, I maintain these relationships because social relationships are what make life valuable. And I hope to influence people in my social circles — sometimes I do, and sometimes I fail. Here, I failed.
I absolutely agree that social relationships are what make life worth living. However the failure is his, not yours.
Honestly, it's a bad strategy. it drives further polarization. In fact, I may have inadvertently played into radicalizing my friend even more. That I wrote about it ... probably more exhibitionist in nature — me blowing off steam about the shape of the world — than a piece that will do any good.
I don't know if your silence is a better strategy, Mike. I could be wrong but at any rate, you're not responsible for his choices. And I appreciate the opportunity to discuss my own shortcomings and discomfort with this subject.
In Sweden, we'll have an election in September. We have a fascist party that wants mass deportation, just like your Republicans. They wanted to advertise on buses with a slogan "Mogadishu is waiting for you!". Since a lot of our bus drivers are Somali, and they refused to drive those buses, the bus company had to remove the advertising. We have a lack of bus drivers, so letting them go was not an alternative.
The problem with deportation is that we need their work. In Sweden it's drivers and health care personnel. In the US, it's farmers and service providers.
Who's going to pick the vegetables and the fruit that's rotting in the fields?
Those racists are scared of someone looking different and refuses to see them as human beings.
It's repeated over and over again in the bible how we should take care of the foreigner that lives among us, so they can't say they are doing what Jesus wants.
This is an excellent essay but I feel like you missed something in not questioning his premise. "I think [mass deportation] is protective of this country." In what way? How does it protect our country to remove our agricultural workers, home health care aides, construction workers, and so on? How are they harming this country? That's what sticks in my craw.
Having argued with him for dozens of hours over the past 18 months, I have to say he doesn't have much past "it's a legitimate conservative policy position for which reasonable people can differ". He doesn't have a deep philosophical argument.
Hi Mike,
I enjoyed your piece and felt the sadness in it. As you said, so many friends and family members and lovers have broken up over differences too difficult to reconcile. But a couple of thoughts. Put simply, your "friend" is philosophically backing "the means justify the ends." And as you suggested, this is morally corrupt in and of itself. At what point would he stop looking away and take steps? When children were murdered and thrown in mass graves to dispose of them? He speaks in simplistic terms as if "dirty work" were the only option to deal with immigration. We've spent so much money on dirty work that no infrastructure has been built to address eligibility and orderliness around borders, all of which would have cost much less in money and human lives.
He also relies on the claim that you blame him for loving his country, again a huge conflation of patriotism and dirty work.
I think it takes a lot of mastery to debate how to solve issues, and it certainly won't come from obtuse and overly generalized positions which your friend invests in.
I liked what you said about his self-identification (which, in general, may not be a negative). He obviously is suffering some moral injury when identifying as a good person willing to tolerate and look away from bad actors doing back things.
Here is the truth: most people's political views — which are tribal groupings for too many people — are triangulations within social groups. So when my friend is arguing with me here and distilling the empty moral logic he advances, he's thinking about other people in his life that he's closer to than me, and their worldview. Once you have mostly conservative friends — which is the case for him — he's in the situation where if he were to agree with me, he will lose all his conservative friends. And 80% of humans will choose their friends in that case.
It's just true. I'm not saying this to be cynical. Coastal elites with liberal arts degrees are not representative.
It's not a matter of morality. Most well-adjusted adults will always choose friends and family over politics. That's a good thing, mostly. It's the social fabric that minimizes violence.
I have one single conservative friend. He is actually a second tier TV personality on Fox Business. He calls me his favorite liberal/communist. (I am a social democrat). I am sure 95% of his friends are conservative and mostly MAGA. I call him my favorite fascist. He is funny, articulate and charismatic and Irish American Catholic. We get into unending text exchanges on politics and philosophy and agree on almost nothing. “Why?” you may ask. Somehow I think we are both able to clarify our ideas and challenge the other. Neither of us backs down. He is probably more polite than I, who can be ruthless. But he understands I am attacking his ideas not him. I want to represent something of a conscience for him. I rarely succeed but I want him to be aware of the consequences of his thinking. He prays for me. I pray that he may see the grifting going on at the highest level (Qatari planes, selling early access to Truth Social tweets for $100,000 a month, mass pardoning of wealthy convicts etc) is unprecedented. He responds about how bad Swallwell has been, or brings up Hunter’s laptop (again!) I do think some of my views get through but he is unable to stray far from his cultist views (yes my judgment). It can be hard to have a meaningful discussion with a friend on politics when you agree on everything. With someone who stays around for years who opposes my viewpoints it only helps make my resolve stronger and my perspectives clearer. Is his MAGA resolve also stronger through our almost daily interactions? Maybe but that is the risk I take.
Too many so-called (self-proclaimed) “good men” admitting the evil and DOING NOTHING. Sad, but there are always more cowards than those willing to challenge and change their convictions. Any man who can say “I can’t watch it but somebody must do that evil to children in my name” is unworthy of his Y chromosome. 🤬 That nameless “conservative” bubba probably thinks he’s doing what Jesus would do … and he’ll vote for evil again like a good sheeple. 🙄 But he’s not man enough to let you make him feel bad? Awww. Let him go cry in his cyber tonka toy. 😈
Hi Mike,
I completely agree with your comment about our prosocial, tribal nature, and the difficulty of standing in belief-isolation from those closest to you. What's notable to me, per your comment, is the false dichotomy he feels stuck in--your friendship or "them". It's not that border security is a concern for only conservatives. All the notable attributes of a democracy--housing, food, health, safety--are pertinent to everyone. What's preventing dialogue I think is what you said about identity, which leads to 'my people versus your people' in his mind.
He has more conservative friends than liberal ones and that matters enormously. I believe his wife is very conservative. So the moment he agrees with me, his marriage is in trouble. People hold beliefs to "fit in" more than genuine belief. Hence why it's often so easy for people to change religions to marry into religious families, etc. People are like this with politics, too.
Your friend is right and you put entirely to much much time, effort and emphasis into it. Everyone today has an opinion they feel the need to force down the throat of others. We're now living in a society of massive control freaks The lethal injections solidified that. The one question I always ask people is:
WHAT IF YOU'RE WRONG?
About everything, about every single thing in your life. Why does no one ever contemplate let alone consider that? They might actually be wrong, about everything?
For the record I don't vote never have nor ever will. We live in a completely lawless society devoid of any and all truth. It's non-existent. Everything you see and here and think you know, is a lie. Good luck trying to find the truth, because it now ceases to exist. Subterfuge is omnipresent.
Life is short, we're now on the precipice of nuclear war or at least tactical nuclear war. Enjoy your life, your family and friends. The rest is all copy - to quote Nora Ephron.
What was my friend right about, exactly? Just want to be clear I'm tracking.
You took it to far, you put entirely to much emphasis on everything. Let it go. There are seven billion people on this planet all of which have different opinions It was obvious your forced yours on his.
Politics is all about deliberately pitting people against each other. Some day people will eventually wake up and realize there are more of us then there are of them, join forces in solidarity and fight back. WHY the deliberately pit you against each other. Their greatest fear is a revolution.
Not only do you pay for your TV but then go and parrot everything they brainwashed you into believing! Talk about free advertisement. I read the weekend edition of the WSJ this week and swore I was reading a fictional book. It was truly amazing.
Politics is all a LIE! It's theater, you have a better chance of changing the weather by farting then changing anything by voting.
I don't vote never do now ever will but you now have the greatest lie in the history of this Country occupying the WH. The man is undeniably, indisputably and inarguably learning disabled and people actually believe his existence. His entire life is a lie as solidified by the 34 felony counts for forgery. If you walked into a ER and he was your doctor how fast would you run out of the hospital, yet they believe all of it.
Then you have Joe Biden - and people believed that too. The man was not fit to serve office back in 2018 but people still fall for all of this.
I assure you that politics is very real — as corrupt as it may be.
thought of you Mike when I read this:
https://scheerpost.com/2026/08/19/the-benefit-of-not-reading/
not even close, it's all theater, a deliberate dog and pony show which is why forest gump trump was deliberately installed, the greatest distraction in the history of politics and boy has it paid off.
finding the truth is now all but impossible
You say "someday people will eventually wake up." I say that day is past due and the earth can no longer wait for the sleepy heads to awaken. I am going to war with the woke.
You're right Pam. The cell phones were a deliberate and intentional distraction and dumbing down of society. The day is quickly approaching where they ask, what the hell happened, when they turn on the faucet and nothing comes out. People are so oblivious to what's really going on in the world it's frightening. I have never recalled this magnitude of stupidity in my entire life. It's like a bad dream dream and truly there for the taking.
There is a time in each of our lives when clarity becomes painfully obvious. I suppose we begin our lives, many of us, idealizing how the world should be, and then the harsh reality of "that which is" steps in. It is like a Harry Potter movie using phrases like "he who shall not be named." Much of what we believed in we now see as oxymorons. Words of great importance now are seen as hypocritical, glib, and frankly, as bullshit.
The exact words from Mike's friend are below.... I would like to critique this and show my comments in brackets.
Mike, you are a friend. But I cannot continue this [sic] debates with you anymore. You are a talented man and writer. But I am a conservative. I know you think my support for mass deportation is authoritarian. I think it’s protective of my country.
[How absurd for anyone to say that "mass deportation is protective of my country." This is an open declaration, a confession so to speak, of deeply rooted racism. This is the sort of individual who would betray his Jewish neighbor in Nazi Germany. And this individual conflates what Trump is doing, somehow, with protection of the U.S. If you examine EVERYTHING that Trump and the Republican Congress, and the conservative members of SCOTUS have done then you will see that 90% of it falls into the following:
1. It has been and continues to be DESTRUCTIVE to the integrity of the U.S. and all Americans.
2. It is something that Putin, Kim, Xi Jinping and every dictator on Earth smiles at. Thank you comrade Trump.
3. It puts money and ego into the Trump et al organization.
4. It fulfills the Mandate for Leadership, (aka Project 2025)]
It’s ugly watching little kids get rounded up. I can’t watch it. But enforcing the law has always had ugliness.
[This, your friend, is one sick mother-fucker. He knows shit about our immigrant population. What Trump and the Republican Congress have done by allocating billions to DHS and ICE has turned a democracy with a plowshare. There is no assessment of an individual's criminality. People of color are rounded up without due process. Habeas corpus is violated. Freedom of speech is tossed into the trash. But your "friend" calls this enforcing the law. Enforcing the law would have put Trump in jail for most of the indictments against him. Trump's violation of the emoluments clause goes flagrantly unchallenged. American citizens like Good and Pretti are shot to death by ICE. They have been murdered by Trump et al. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have worked here for decades and are peaceful members of our community are summarily imprisoned and/or deported. How many administrations of democrats or republicans are guilty for not passing laws that provide for a pathway to citizenship for these unauthorized individuals? Yes, Biden, in my opinion made some bad mistakes about immigration. But this is true of both parties. The KEY word here is proper vetting at the border + focusing on where the heaviest illegal crossings occur. The solution is NOT to stop those with green cards from becoming citizens, nor shutting down the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) category from those fleeing a country but rather to do VETTING properly, like how we should have vetted Trump when he first ran for office. We did not do this an we allowed a criminal to become POTUS. Now we are seeing that crook rob the US taxpayer of billions.]
I am sick of you making me feel like a bad person for just wanting to protect my country. hich comes form [sic] love. Have a good life Mike. You’re a different person now. You’ve become very left-wing. I agree Trump is a mistake. But the mistake was elected a corrupt man. The policy is correct. We need to have a country. That means a border. We shouldn’t have let 20 million people in, in the first place. Now they have to be rounded up. The mistake was made in the past. Not today. Now conservatives have to be hated for doing the dirty work liberals forced us into. You’re blocked now. I can’t do this.
[Your supposed friend is blind. He who knows not And knows not that he knows not Is a Fool
Shun him. He may not be a bad person but he is blind. Trump is far more than a mistake. Trump combined with the spineless Republican Congress, and throw in the Trump sycophants on the Supreme Court bench, and you have the ingredients for the destruction of democracy and the rule of law. The words of this horribly misguided person fit Kipling's poem "If" perfectly. "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you." Most of us see what has transpired in our country. We see the threat to world peace, as well as peace at home. We see not simply a loss in the balance of powers but the loss in balance in what MLK would call "things that matter." "Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter." — Martin Luther King
All the great personages in history would shutter at what has happened in the Error (sic) of Trump. Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, and thousands of other great minds going back to Plato and Plotinus.
Under Trump the Traitor we are witness to America: the death of a nation? This once glorious melting pot of a country with its incredible diversity has now been turned upside down in the name of racism, greed, and a lust for power.
If your friend, or others, want the full picture of immigration and the crisis we face, then take a look at:
https://www.amazon.com/Immigration-Crisis-Depth-Analysis/dp/B0H736QXZ2/ref=sr_1_2?crid=320IBHO91SAL5&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xLmGpkd0iUAfoWwIoxSJxbGX-tWe2FFCvhGlgkczf73rtl_6fmmBMovBl5v_rFRFRN_0Cht_SBa4a24OLZDQiJZzODmSSeqjSnsZFN-PpE96NXKpaOpzsnBMwR-UBjDtVHYa2f9ZAD_DEirz7irF6A.EhLW38IzQoygmZ-Cf1G44GNiyDxbXngqg5zOza8tgCE&dib_tag=se&keywords=stephen+strum&qid=1787154169&sprefix=%2Caps%2C199&sr=8-2
Maybe, although I doubt it, if your "friend" really cared about truth, he would read and learn the facts about the immigration crisis in the U.S. and how the American public has been duped with false information, and a flagrant lack of due diligence to do what could have been beneficial to every American, and strengthen America, not bring it to its knees.
Most of us probably have those friends. Mine goes back to childhood. We grew up together, then raised kids together. We came together at gatherings. We never talked politics.
Now I wonder, was she always like that. Did she believe those things and the algorithm just brought them out? Or, was she "converted" by the algorithm?
In either case, it has led to a change in relationship where communication happens much less frequently, and ends for months at a time.
Some may think that your good friend who became MAGA is somehow less MAGA because you didn't see it before, whether it was there or not. I don't know.
The algorithms (and before those, Talk Radio and FoxNews) make people believe things that are not true. By repetition, social familiarity & gatherings, etc. Which then leads to a [faux] identity and a feeling that to give up the beliefs & views will be social suicide. And so it was! But the lies became more intolerable to me than the prospect of loneliness, and closely following that was the way in which my rightwing friends reacted whenever I expressed doubts or raised questions (albeit very timidly at first). I gradually realized they were doing exactly what I’d been doing for far too long, which was looking away, dismissing, justifying, and just plain swallowing steaming hot bullshit with a zombie smile on my face.
How did they respond to your doubts? I wonder because my friend and I haven't been able to get past the knee jerk response of defending our sides.
Mostly stunned silence or refusal to engage, then immediately seeking refuge in numbers by talking about me behind my back… like, “what is happening to her?” In the case of my mother, she’d confront my husband and when he reaffirmed my positions and doubts (often more sternly and coherently than me), she would blame ME for leading him astray. This makes me laugh now but when she was still alive it sent me into a rage.
Sounds right, unfortunately. I don’t think it matters just how eloquently you can express your reasons, there is too much emotion, and at times, tribalism built into it.