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.
Mayflower material here and I couldn’t agree more. Sam Alito wouldn’t be considered white in the 1950s much less elevated to the SCOTUS. Being catholic used to be a stain.
You are correct, my mistake. Ike would never be accepted by today’s Republican Party, which is why they never mention him; unlike with Lincoln, some old racists remember Ike the desegregationist.
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.
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.
You are one of a few that knows the facts. It seems we have lost our detective qualities that were so much the theme years ago: "The facts, ma'am, just the facts." -- Jack Webb in Dragnet. You correctly cited the value of immigrants to our country insofar as those in agriculture, home healthcare and construction. Many of our MDs and RNs are foreign-born and are or will be targets for Trump's racism.
Good point. Not every immigrant is working an unskilled or blue collar job -- there are plenty of doctors and software techs and so on with green cards or similar. And they're not safe either. It's ethnic cleansing, and it's as indiscriminate and brutal as ethnic cleansing always is.
How many of our Medical Doctors (MDs) are first-generation immigrants? The number is huge. Trump + Spineless Republican Congress has an end-game a la "Mandate for Freedom," (aka Project 2025). It is ethnic cleansing a la Nazis. Same with the use of ICE, Trump's Gestapo. Why in the world would Trump pardon those traitors to the U.S. who stormed the Capitol? Why in the world would he want a billion-dollar fund to reward them, other than to recruit them for another attempt at a coup? Wake up America. This is Fascist Italy or Spain. Our POTUS is Trumpolini or Francisco Trump. Donald is the DIC (dealer-in-chief) or (destroyer-in-chief).
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.
Alabama tried kicking out the migrant farmhands. The strawberries and tomatoes rotted because Americans refused to pick them. Facts are stubborn things. So are bigots.
Gunnar, I agree with you. I think what most people feel is that there are solutions. But being superficial and not doing our due diligence in the process of in-depth VETTING at the border can lead to a town, city, or country being "upset," "disrupted," and taking many turns for the worse. Vetting is necessary in all our lives, but it is done carelessly at the borders. That said, I love the diversity of different cultures, but those cultures coming into "my house" also have to have love for my culture. A melting pot is exactly that. We grow stronger with diversity, but there has to be "affection." All of this takes work on all fronts. Our humanity resided in our human unity.
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.
Reality has a liberal bias. I stick as close to reality as possible and as a result my diagnosis is liberal. It gives me the freedom to follow facts not rigid ideology. Atrocities arise from ossification. Progress comes from open minds
/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.
Guess I have to disagree without any real evidence. It’s somewhat difficult being a liberal/progressive and watching the oligarchs impoverishing workers and enforcing their will on the country. They have control of our country and are stripping the parts (forests, national parks and other resources) for their self enrichment. I can’t really see people who resist the corruption of this government and their supporters standing by watching their party do similar things. This is a deep problem the left faces in accountability to people who committed these atrocities because they will be called the same as the fascists. This hesitancy allowed Trump to remain free to carry out the atrocities of today.
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.
"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".
Radically honest essay. Thank you. I suspect PSYOPs has played a part in leading many people to this trough of perceived self-preservation through willful ignorance (or should I say "ignore"-ance) and rage. I'm guessing these operations are laser-focused on the amygdala. We need to get dead serious about education in our country — make it a national priority — and to adding emotional intelligence and empathy to the curriculum too. Both for our salvation as humans and for the salvation of Mother Earth.
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. 😈
Him and the people who agree with him are not monsters. But they are monster adjacent. If you support a policy then your support, at least partly, makes the policy possible. In every way he can be he's wrong about immigration in the United States in the same way that people in my country are wrong about immigration in my country. They only see skin colour and foreignness, but never ask themselves why these people are here. The answer in most countries is a variety of reasons including that our governments let them in. In my country for example we've been merrily pillaging the medical staff of poorer countries so we neither have to pay our own medical staff a decent wage or train new staff. As day follows night this will come back to bite us. I am not worried about the immigrants: I am worried about the people that they are not treating in their own countries. I know having lived a long time that for the most part our immigrants will be indistinguishable from "us" (British) people in a few years. Because I've been here before. Unfortunately that is not the reason your friend does not like them There is something about their "foreignness" that he viscerally dislikes, and, like all racists, he's very unlikely to tell you what it is. He will reserve that for chats with his fellow racists. So not a monster, but monster adjacent, and the monstrousness that is abroad in your country (but not just your country) is a moral disgrace that will come back to bite you, and people like him will also suffer. Bitter tears to follow.
I am close to 84-years of age and your words right true. I have met people in the Amazon forest, and in the middle of Lake Titicaca. I have sat in an igloo in Gorky Park on Dec 31, 1986 to celebrate a moment of world peace. I have been taught by Nobel Prize laureates and also by interactions with high-school educated people I have met along the way. The diversity of life, human or abiotic, is dazzingly wonderful and heart-warming.
Our world has us consumed by materialism. Instead, we should be ecstatic with encountering every aspect of the wonders of this creation. Wordsworth had it right:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
--William Wordsworth; poem published 1807
I am blessed to have met, and loved so many of different colors, beliefs, and languages. These are the riches in my life. And, as I approach my last days, the belief that if you can say you have one good friend when you die you are lucky, is true. Just like the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), there are FOC (Friends of Convenience). All of us have to kiss many a frog before we find our prince or princess. Such is life.
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 don't agree with you MIke. It is an issue of morality. It is an issue of ethics and of right vs wrong. There is truth, or at least we can get closer to the truth and that truth, that integrity should be something we hold dearer than a blood relationship. If my son were a serious criminal, I would report him. Integrity is what evolves us. "The happiness of integrity resides within the integrity of happiness. The wholeness, oneness, balance, homeostasis or whatever else you may call it is what is sought by all biotic and abiotic life forms." — Stephen B. Strum, MD 9/17/25
This one ripped me up, Mike. I’m not that person, either, who can keep up the pretense. Never have been, never will be. If a person was my real friend, someone I thought I knew inside out… or a family member, I walked away in every instance. Most of those people, however, pestered me into saying things like you’ve written here, so that I became the bad guy, the tRuMp-deranged bitch. So be it. But the few who did not pester me knew perfectly well what had caused our split and they were as relieved as I by separating — a win-win. They made a smart and understandable choice, like your friend. I was not seeking to fight with or lecture them, I just wanted separation. But when others cajoled or needled me, words were available in torrents — many confessional but many contained indictments, too — and the words were said. To my own pain it should be mentioned. Far fewer words, if any, were said in response and separation was achieved, the harder way.
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.
Mayflower material here and I couldn’t agree more. Sam Alito wouldn’t be considered white in the 1950s much less elevated to the SCOTUS. Being catholic used to be a stain.
Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex.
He also called out the Guard to segregate Southern schools
I think you meant desegregate…and he taxed income at up to a rate of 90%. Republicans rarely speak his name.
You are correct, my mistake. Ike would never be accepted by today’s Republican Party, which is why they never mention him; unlike with Lincoln, some old racists remember Ike the desegregationist.
This is a powerful, sad, and radically honest essay. Thank you.
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 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.
He is a racist. That is why he has no defense. How many times did he mention the great replacement theory?
you can't argue with these folks. i've tried. they will literally put their hands over their ears. or threaten to punch you, or worse.
You are one of a few that knows the facts. It seems we have lost our detective qualities that were so much the theme years ago: "The facts, ma'am, just the facts." -- Jack Webb in Dragnet. You correctly cited the value of immigrants to our country insofar as those in agriculture, home healthcare and construction. Many of our MDs and RNs are foreign-born and are or will be targets for Trump's racism.
Good point. Not every immigrant is working an unskilled or blue collar job -- there are plenty of doctors and software techs and so on with green cards or similar. And they're not safe either. It's ethnic cleansing, and it's as indiscriminate and brutal as ethnic cleansing always is.
How many of our Medical Doctors (MDs) are first-generation immigrants? The number is huge. Trump + Spineless Republican Congress has an end-game a la "Mandate for Freedom," (aka Project 2025). It is ethnic cleansing a la Nazis. Same with the use of ICE, Trump's Gestapo. Why in the world would Trump pardon those traitors to the U.S. who stormed the Capitol? Why in the world would he want a billion-dollar fund to reward them, other than to recruit them for another attempt at a coup? Wake up America. This is Fascist Italy or Spain. Our POTUS is Trumpolini or Francisco Trump. Donald is the DIC (dealer-in-chief) or (destroyer-in-chief).
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.
Alabama tried kicking out the migrant farmhands. The strawberries and tomatoes rotted because Americans refused to pick them. Facts are stubborn things. So are bigots.
Gunnar, I agree with you. I think what most people feel is that there are solutions. But being superficial and not doing our due diligence in the process of in-depth VETTING at the border can lead to a town, city, or country being "upset," "disrupted," and taking many turns for the worse. Vetting is necessary in all our lives, but it is done carelessly at the borders. That said, I love the diversity of different cultures, but those cultures coming into "my house" also have to have love for my culture. A melting pot is exactly that. We grow stronger with diversity, but there has to be "affection." All of this takes work on all fronts. Our humanity resided in our human unity.
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.
Reality has a liberal bias. I stick as close to reality as possible and as a result my diagnosis is liberal. It gives me the freedom to follow facts not rigid ideology. Atrocities arise from ossification. Progress comes from open minds
Co sign
Fair enough. Enlightened and un apologetic to add.
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.
Guess I have to disagree without any real evidence. It’s somewhat difficult being a liberal/progressive and watching the oligarchs impoverishing workers and enforcing their will on the country. They have control of our country and are stripping the parts (forests, national parks and other resources) for their self enrichment. I can’t really see people who resist the corruption of this government and their supporters standing by watching their party do similar things. This is a deep problem the left faces in accountability to people who committed these atrocities because they will be called the same as the fascists. This hesitancy allowed Trump to remain free to carry out the atrocities of today.
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.
You cannot turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. Been there, tried that so many times. All I can do is quote from an anonymous poem:
He who knows not
And knows not that he knows not
Is a Fool
Shun 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".
Yep.
Radically honest essay. Thank you. I suspect PSYOPs has played a part in leading many people to this trough of perceived self-preservation through willful ignorance (or should I say "ignore"-ance) and rage. I'm guessing these operations are laser-focused on the amygdala. We need to get dead serious about education in our country — make it a national priority — and to adding emotional intelligence and empathy to the curriculum too. Both for our salvation as humans and for the salvation of Mother Earth.
Don't know you, but love you. If I resonated more with what you said, I would burst into flames.
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. 😈
Him and the people who agree with him are not monsters. But they are monster adjacent. If you support a policy then your support, at least partly, makes the policy possible. In every way he can be he's wrong about immigration in the United States in the same way that people in my country are wrong about immigration in my country. They only see skin colour and foreignness, but never ask themselves why these people are here. The answer in most countries is a variety of reasons including that our governments let them in. In my country for example we've been merrily pillaging the medical staff of poorer countries so we neither have to pay our own medical staff a decent wage or train new staff. As day follows night this will come back to bite us. I am not worried about the immigrants: I am worried about the people that they are not treating in their own countries. I know having lived a long time that for the most part our immigrants will be indistinguishable from "us" (British) people in a few years. Because I've been here before. Unfortunately that is not the reason your friend does not like them There is something about their "foreignness" that he viscerally dislikes, and, like all racists, he's very unlikely to tell you what it is. He will reserve that for chats with his fellow racists. So not a monster, but monster adjacent, and the monstrousness that is abroad in your country (but not just your country) is a moral disgrace that will come back to bite you, and people like him will also suffer. Bitter tears to follow.
I am close to 84-years of age and your words right true. I have met people in the Amazon forest, and in the middle of Lake Titicaca. I have sat in an igloo in Gorky Park on Dec 31, 1986 to celebrate a moment of world peace. I have been taught by Nobel Prize laureates and also by interactions with high-school educated people I have met along the way. The diversity of life, human or abiotic, is dazzingly wonderful and heart-warming.
Our world has us consumed by materialism. Instead, we should be ecstatic with encountering every aspect of the wonders of this creation. Wordsworth had it right:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
--William Wordsworth; poem published 1807
I am blessed to have met, and loved so many of different colors, beliefs, and languages. These are the riches in my life. And, as I approach my last days, the belief that if you can say you have one good friend when you die you are lucky, is true. Just like the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), there are FOC (Friends of Convenience). All of us have to kiss many a frog before we find our prince or princess. Such is life.
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 don't agree with you MIke. It is an issue of morality. It is an issue of ethics and of right vs wrong. There is truth, or at least we can get closer to the truth and that truth, that integrity should be something we hold dearer than a blood relationship. If my son were a serious criminal, I would report him. Integrity is what evolves us. "The happiness of integrity resides within the integrity of happiness. The wholeness, oneness, balance, homeostasis or whatever else you may call it is what is sought by all biotic and abiotic life forms." — Stephen B. Strum, MD 9/17/25
This one ripped me up, Mike. I’m not that person, either, who can keep up the pretense. Never have been, never will be. If a person was my real friend, someone I thought I knew inside out… or a family member, I walked away in every instance. Most of those people, however, pestered me into saying things like you’ve written here, so that I became the bad guy, the tRuMp-deranged bitch. So be it. But the few who did not pester me knew perfectly well what had caused our split and they were as relieved as I by separating — a win-win. They made a smart and understandable choice, like your friend. I was not seeking to fight with or lecture them, I just wanted separation. But when others cajoled or needled me, words were available in torrents — many confessional but many contained indictments, too — and the words were said. To my own pain it should be mentioned. Far fewer words, if any, were said in response and separation was achieved, the harder way.
Thank you for this. I can imagine how rough this was for you, because I've lost family members over Trumpism.