Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 243

You guys,

“If I voted for Trump, would you still be my friend?” 

The question hung in the air over the phone, me in North Carolina, one of my closest friends in California. Five seconds ticked by. 

“It’s insane to me that you haven’t answered yet,” I said.

“Hold on,” Sasha said. “I’m thinking. I’m just trying to get my thoughts together.” 

Weeks before the election she sent a text asking if I was voting for Kamala. I did not appreciate her asking me and I told her so. “If I say yes, what, you’ll congratulate me? Tell me you’re proud? And if I say no, will you shame me? Try to convince me otherwise? I should not have to defend my vote. I’m voting for Kamala, and I’m telling you because I don’t feel like being on the receiving end of what I prefer to say, which is that it’s none of your business. I hate politics. I have friends on both sides. None of my Republican friends are asking who I’m voting for.” 

Sasha apologized. She shouldn’t have asked that way, she said. She would never shame me—that was not her intention. I thanked her for apologizing and told her it was okay. And it was okay. Sasha has always been passionate about her beliefs, and I have always admired her for it. 

Then the election happened. She called me and spoke as if the country had just been set on fire. I spoke as if it hadn’t. 

After we hung up I called my mom. “I owe you an apology,” I said. I laughed as I said it, I guess because saying sorry is always hard, and saying sorry to a family member is the hardest. In the 2016 election I demanded to know who my mom voted for. “You can’t possibly vote for Trump,” I had said. She never told me who she voted for. I don’t know why I thought she would. Growing up, my parents always voted and they never told me, for any election, who they voted for. They said, “When you’re old enough, it’s your right to vote for who you want, and you don’t have to tell anybody.” 

The next day Sasha sent me an onslaught of paragraph-long texts. She’s Jewish—she feared for her life and her kids’ lives. And by the way, she wasn’t just asking me who I voted for; she was calling strangers in Nevada doing phone banking for the past six weeks. “There are literal Nazis that Trump has declared he will put into his cabinet,” she wrote. She sent a video to explain. It was a TikTok of a young white woman with blonde hair, in her home, speaking to camera, holding an infant. The woman explained fascism. Compared Trump to Hitler. This was where we were headed. 

I told her I was sorry she was scared and I was sorry she was hurting. Was she upset with me? And was she saying that, actually, it was okay to ask me who I voted for? 

“I’m saying our conversation yesterday left me deeply unsettled and pretty upset.” 

“What does that even mean?” I responded, and had to back space “the fuck” that I had originally written in. “I don’t agree with everything you say so… I’m the enemy?” 

“Not at all,” she said. “We should stop texting about this—but that’s not what I mean.”

We finally spoke on the phone four days later. She cried. I apologized for dismissing her feelings. We love each other. I’ve known her for ten years. I could not fathom politics getting in the way of our friendship. By the end of the call we had started to talk about other things and I felt us fall back into that comfortable, loving, supportive place of friendship. 

“I would still be friends with you if you voted for Trump,” she said with conviction now. “I love you, I love Sam, I love your kids.” 

We hung up the phone and I felt better. Later that night she sent multiple links to explain some impending policy. I opened the first video—it was biased. All the articles she sent were facts mixed with opinion, with the opinions written as fact. I did my own search and came to a different conclusion. But I did not feel safe sharing this with her. I wished we could disagree. I wished that by disagreeing she didn’t see me as ignorant or dumb or evil. 

Sasha stays up-to-date on all the goings-on in the country and the world. She knows about judges and the Supreme Court and I know nothing. My quick research would never stand a chance in a debate with her. She would always have more knowledge. She would always be more informed. I found myself playing out conversations-turned-arguments with Sasha. What she might say, how I’d respond. This went on for a week. 

Finally I called my best friend, Kylie. She had always been extremely liberal—I once was, too. I didn’t want to ruin two friendships but I needed to talk about this with someone other than Sam, who said, “Friends shouldn’t make you feel this way.”

Kylie understood where Sasha was right now—she was once there, too, unable to listen to anyone speak positively about Trump. She also understood where I was right now, and agreed that she felt differently than she used to. 

After we hung up the phone she sent me multiple links. The first was an interview with Trump by her favorite comedian, Theo Von. I listened and then texted her my favorite part, when Trump bragged about how great the economy was when he was president and Theo said, “Oh yea, my cousin bought a boat during that.” 

Kylie wrote back, “Lololol. He’s the best.”  

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Until next week,

Charlie