SOFT ON TRUMP? YOU MAY BE UNFRIENDED
BY now we’ve all heard how the contentious election, and the surprising result, has frayed friendships — especially on social media. Hillary Clinton supporters, angry and dismayed at the result, have chopped Trump-loving friends off their friend lists. But the culling seems to be progressing beyond just active Trump supporters. Now, some people who are insufficiently anti-Trump, even if they didn’t vote for him, are getting the boot.
Dorian Davis, an adjunct professor of media in Washington, DC, has noticed a slide in his friend count because, he suspects, he’s not “critical enough of Trump.”
“If you post anything even remotely critical of Clinton’s campaign, or of this new movement to dump the Electoral College, or point out even one single thing Trump’s done that you like, you get accused in the comment section of aiding and abetting the next Hitler, and before you know it, you’re down a Facebook friend or two,” Davis said.
This, when he openly supported Gary Johnson. “I post about politics all the time, but I’ve never experienced the rate of attrition I have as a result of Trump posts this year,” he added.
Bruce Carroll, a gay conservative activist, says he watched “a gay friend on Facebook systematically unfriend people who weren’t vocally anti-Trump.” It didn’t matter if you voted for the guy or not; now is the time to virtue signal from the rooftops, and if you’re not doing it, you’re out.
K, who prefers to remain anonymous, says she didn’t vote for Trump but lost a longtime friend after making a joke about anti-Trump hysteria in another friend’s comment section.
It’s out of control, and the insanity doesn’t end at cutting off friends for failing to warn that the sky is falling. So many pieces in the media recently proudly showcase people openly losing their minds over the election.
New York magazine wrote about women spontaneously cutting off their hair, allegedly as a response to the election. It was filled with quotes like, “The election results felt like an attack on minorities, women, and marginalized people in general. Having long hair was my attempt to fit into society, so after the election, I felt a need to exert my ‘uniqueness’ and not tie my femininity to the length of my hair.”
The Washington Post had a piece from a woman who lost all will to date post-election. The column is titled “Trump’s election stole my desire to look for a partner.” What takes her story from sad to crazy is that she had met someone great and was dating him, only to cut him off because the election so badly damaged her psyche.
It’s all way too much. Firms are canceling holiday parties, daughters are raging at their Trump-voter parents in public and people are inventing fake hate crimes to send some message no one understands. Trump voters in the Electoral College are even getting death threats.
The outrage is at peak level — and we haven’t even had an inauguration yet.
I was vocally anti-Trump from the moment he descended the escalator, and I wrote against his candidacy frequently. But even for me, the current anti-Trump fever pitch is unsustainable, and it’s time to dial it back.
If you’ve reached the point where you’re cutting off friends who are merely taking a wait-and-see attitude about our next president, even when they didn’t themselves support him, or cutting off your hair to make a point, you’re taking your anguish over the election too far.
A common retort during the election to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan was “America is already great.” If that’s true, then we can survive any president, even if it’s one you so deeply didn’t want.
Our system is set up to shake off a term or two of even the worst presidents, and we don’t even know yet what kind of president Donald Trump will be. Fight against his policies, when he actually showcases them, but don’t lose your friends, or your mind, in the process.