No, I Will Not Be Friends With Republicans

I don’t care about your reasoning for voting for Trump.

So many times, I have been told by parents and older relatives who have friends with differing political beliefs to their more center-left or moderate ones that “politics shouldn’t ruin friendships” or that “it doesn’t make sense to give up good people for one wrong belief.” I initially thought the same thing, to be honest, when the 2016 election hit. I was just starting college, and when one of my friends told me he was actually a Trump supporter, I felt hesitant to completely call off what could be a great friendship. Expectedly, though, he turned out to be a literally horrid and amoral individual, and I also didn’t realize a crucial fact at the time due to my own privilege in being politically inactive:

Politics are inextricable from morals.

For many people who have the privilege of “putting politics aside,” it’s easy to say that disagreements in opinion shouldn’t change friendships. In that regard, they’re absolutely right: disagreement shouldn’t preclude a loving and long-lasting friendship. I have friends who absolutely hate my music taste and I hate theirs. Some of my friends watch TV shows or love to study and do things that I would literally put after “watching paint dry” on the list of things I enjoy. However, what these people don’t understand is that political belief is not just something that can be compared to a hobby or interest that you don’t enjoy. Interests tend to have limited to no moral implication, like reading or riding a bike. Politics, on the other hand, is a direct expression of your moral compass.

Photo by Jordan Madrid on Unsplash

Now, I’m aware that if a friendship is ruined, the culprit is not some nebulous entity that is “politics.” As we’ve seen develop throughout the span of Trump’s presidency, the covert and not-so-covert supremacist structures and ideologies that have been enabled by the president and his administration created a more conducive environment to racists being very open about their beliefs. When people voted for Trump, whether consciously or unconsciously, they sponsored open racism, rollbacks on LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, and so much more injustice that should be on its way out.