I didn’t wake up today planning to step into a political minefield (that’s a lie – most of my days are political minefields, some at my choosing), but social media has a way of handing you the detonator whether you ask for it or not.
A longtime friend recently replied to something I wrote with a heartfelt, emotionally raw comment that left me staring at my screen, not sure whether to respond or recommend therapy. She’s a self-identified Republican who said she no longer feels claimed by the party. She’s traveling abroad, apparently doing informal polling with Canadians who, according to her, are universally disgusted by Trump. And she’s sad. Not about policy. Not about legislation. Sad because she feels politically homeless… and, as she put it, because I “apparently support Trump.”
Let me make something very clear: I didn’t mention Trump. At all.
But somehow, that’s where the conversation went, again. Because we are no longer a country that discusses ideas. We’re a country that assigns characters in a melodrama. You’re either with the hero or the villain. There’s no room for complexity. No room for nuance. Just vibes, tribalism, and moral panic.
I asked for a conversation about policy. What do you stand for? What do you oppose? What should we do about the actual issues that affect people’s lives? And instead, I got a soliloquy about how someone’s decades-long Republican identity had been shattered like a dropped snow globe because of one person. It was deeply personal. But it wasn’t political.
And that’s the problem.
We’ve become addicted to personality politics. We’ve let our political affiliations become proxies for our self-worth, our social circles, our very identities. Trump didn’t just hijack a party; he hijacked the psyches of half the country, and the resistance to him hijacked the other half. The media know this, and they milk it for every click. Policy bores people. Personalities get attention.
And we’re all complicit.
Look, I’m not defending Trump. I’m not here to assign halos or horns. I’m saying we need to stop confusing how we feel about politicians with what we actually believe should happen in this country. You can hate a man’s character and still have a rational discussion about immigration reform, tax policy, or the balance of executive power. But instead, we’re all screaming at shadows, trying to figure out who’s on “our team,” and excommunicating anyone who doesn’t pass the purity test.
When I write about politics, I try to focus on ideas. But look, I’m guilty, I sometimes get tribal, too. So you should call me on that. Respectfully, please, but with conviction, nonetheless. I don’t want to be shoved into a silo or team jersey. I want to know what kind of country you’re fighting for, not which cult of personality you’ve signed up for this election cycle.
But that’s a hard ask in a media ecosystem that survives on outrage and identity. Social media, cable news, podcasts, sometimes this damn website—they thrive on personality. They package every issue around a person because they know that’s what sells. And it works. We fall for it, again and again, because it’s easier to get mad at a name than to read a policy paper.
So no, I’m not “with” anyone. I’m not endorsing your hero or your villain. I’m trying—against the gravitational pull of our click-bait culture—to talk about what matters. The stuff beneath the drama. The substance, not the soap opera.
But maybe that’s too much to ask.
