Summary
With Donald Trump’s 2024 election win, young Gen Z voters like Kate, Holly, and Rachel are grappling with deepening divides with their Trump-supporting parents.
For many, these conflicts go beyond policy disagreements, touching on core values and morality. Parents once focused on fiscal conservatism have, in some cases, embraced conspiracy theories, creating painful rifts.
Studies suggest political divisions are increasingly seen as moral judgments, fostering a “mega-identity” where political views signify personal decency.
For these young adults, maintaining family connections amidst such ideological fractures has become challenging.
Your problem is that you believe their actions aren’t supposed to be justified. But that’s the wrong approach. “Every action has consequences” is just bullshit on its own. The web of reaction is as old as the universe and us picking which action deserve a certain reaction is nothing more than personal whim.
We’re flawed beings, all of us. I can’t be right for every situation, but neither can you. And the difference between us is that I want to try and treat each individual as an individual. You may see this as excusing an abuser, I see it as fighting against abuse.
I won’t protect everyone and i can’t protect everyone, but just like any other kind of death row decision, it has to be earned. Each degree of punishment has to be fair. The chance for redemption has to be given. Punishment should be for the purpose of rehabilitation. And if we can’t do it at an individual level, how can we expect it to be done for a better society.
Being just is hard work. And if you can’t do it, why expect it of others?
It’s not that I don’t believe their actions are supposed to be justified - I don’t believe that they are justifiable. They can try to justify them all they want, but that doesn’t make them just, right, or reasonable when they support a man who has spent 8 years telling everybody exactly who he is and what he intends to do. It means that they either support him in his bigotry and intention to destroy American democracy, or at the very least, they find it acceptable enough to ignore it. The calls for state sanctioned violence against minorities aren’t a bridge too far for these people. Nor are his calls for terrorism against minorities from his supporters.
I have a saying: There are conservatives, and there are Republicans, and these are not the same thing. I have watched Republicans since 9/11. I saw how the attacks on Jews tripled in the 24 hours after the towers fell, how the attacks on black people doubled, and how Muslim parents asked their kids if they wanted to change their names to something more American so they wouldn’t get attacked at school. I have tried to reason with Republicans since I was 14 and had to hide my sexuality and pretend to fit in with cis straight white people. I saw how my former coworker voted for Trump the first time and became a staunch Democrat after seeing what he did. I watched as the racist jokes kids made on 4chan became their actual beliefs. I heard over and over again on live TV Republicans complain about how they were being censored when people reacted poorly to their publicly broadcasted hatred and bigotry.
Refusing to talk to people isn’t censorship or a “death row decision,” as you put it. It’s the conclusion to decades of attempting to reason with these people. It’s accepting the fact that they have shown that when the chips are down, they won’t have your back and may even turn you over to SS themselves. This is about survival now. Cutting the people who voted the fascists in out of your life is harm reduction. When the new administration is openly calling for the genocide of people like you, wagging your finger at the people who voted him in as you’re carted off to the camps isn’t going to cut it.
There are people who can be saved, the young people especially, but Trump is a cult, and one thing about dealing with cultists is that after a certain point, 99% of them will double down rather than accept that they’re wrong. Because to admit that they’re wrong is to admit that everything they’ve done up to this point - everything that they’ve believed - wasn’t justified.
So you can go ahead and wax poetic about the injustice of not talking to the men with rifles all you want. It sure as hell looks like self-defense from the other end of the gun here.