Why are my parents losing lifelong friends to politics?

My parents met as congressional staffers on opposite sides of the political aisle. My father worked for an Iowa Democrat; my mother, for a New York Republican. Neither is a Donald Trump supporter, COVID denier, or conspiracy theorist. And yet each was shunned this year by former lifelong friends on the political left.

As Americans head home for the holidays following a divisive election, can we learn how to disagree without disowning each other?.

 registered voters said politics hurt their relationships with friends or family. Yes, the failure of many on the right to acknowledge the Jan. 6 insurrection as an attack on democracy is materially worse than shutting out friends. Nevertheless, democracy loses when we disconnect from those we love.

Simply questioning orthodoxy is now grounds to end friendships. This fall, my mother, frustrated with the left’s unwillingness to support term limits, confided to a childhood friend that she wanted to attend an event for a Republican Senate candidate who supported term limits. Never mind that she hadn’t made up her mind. He said they couldn’t be friends anymore. They haven’t spoken since.

“People who’ve known me forever cut me off,” my mother told me as she texted a meme depicting three stick figures — the left pushing the independent into the outstretched arms of the right. Instead of creating an on-ramp to their views for my mom, her friend closed off the exit.

Nor are those firmly on the left spared contempt from those further to the left. During the 2020 presidential primary, my dad’s best friend branded him and another close friend as “sellouts” for believing that then-candidate Joe Biden had a better chance than Senator Bernie Sanders of beating Trump.

It didn’t matter that my father’s “sellout” friend had spent his career doing union organizing for teachers, while the further-left friend had used the sale of his horse as a tax credit. A 50-year friendship crumbled.

Both my parents reached the same conclusion: Partisan antagonism has created an environment in which even dear friends can’t talk about politics.

Americans can build a multiracial, multicultural democracy without purging those with whom we disagree or could even persuade. One solution, proposed by author Anand Giridharadas in “The Persuaders,” is to “call in.” Black activist.

For example, my college roommate opposed abortion. To me, abortion meant hearing my mom’s stories from teaching at an all-girls high school in a remote village in Congo. Of the 50 girls who started as freshmen, just 13 stood ready to graduate — the rest had dropped out due to early pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and child marriage.

I could have called out my roommate. Instead, I asked: What experiences led you to that view?
My roommate’s mother unknowingly carried a recessive gene for a rare heritable syndrome that limits a child’s mental development. His mother’s first two children, both boys, were born with the syndrome. When his mom learned she was pregnant with a third son (the syndrome is most prevalent among boys), the parents weighed an abortion to spare their child an unfulfilled life. They ultimately decided against it. That child was my roommate.

To me, abortion meant a woman’s right to control her body, well-being, and future. To him, abortion meant a life he would have never lived.

The experience also taught me to allow room to raise new questions based on our values. Did valuing a family that chooses life when ready to create life require an antiabortion view?
If you have a friend with whom you disagree, approach the conversation like a three-course meal: ask a question, identify a value, and if you want to persuade, ask a new question. Open a new path to make sense of their experiences. Defuse tension without diluting values.

Democracy depends on our ability to disagree. To say that listening to our closest friends is not worth it is to concede that democracy itself is not worth it. The alternative is to push those we love most into the political wilderness, where someone else could be waiting with open arms.
Sean Norick Long is a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School and founder of the first. .