On being friends despite political differences

I’m hearing this from Trump voters: “Can’t we be friends? Politics is just politics. We can agree to disagree, right?”

Well, okay, maybe we can. My friends and I are people who can count on each other when things are hard. So maybe I can count on you to be with me when I

• drive 200 miles to take a raped 14-year-old from an abortion-ban state to a clinic in a state that protects women’s bodies

• talk through, with my married gay friends, what documents they’ll need to protect each other and their kids if their marriage is annulled.

• sit beside the hospital bed of a rabbi who got beaten up because he wore his yarmulke on the street

• stand at the grave of a trans teen who couldn’t take the bullying anymore

• cross a subway car to step between a Muslim woman and a group of bros grabbing at her headscarf

• hold hands on the human chain around our neighbors’ home to protect them from being deported

• take out your phone and record the police murder of yet another unarmed Black teen

If I can, then we can be friends, even though, if these things become necessary, it will be the candidate you voted for who’ll make them so.

But I’m thinking I can’t. I’m thinking right now you’re saying, “Calm down, it won’t come to that.” When it does, it’ll be thing by thing, and there’ll be a reason each one happened, and in your mind it won’t be the torrent of hate Trump will unleash.

If that’s what you’re thinking, no, we can’t be friends, because you don’t want friendship. You want me to extend you grace. You want me to look into your eyes and see past the choice you made to the human within, a person like me who has hopes and fears. Well, I’m looking and I see you. I see a person who allowed their hopes and fears to elect a felon, a rapist, a xenophobe, a homophobe; a man who’ll trample all over the rights — and hopes and fears — of other people.

When you chose him, you chose your friends. I’ll still be civil. I won’t close the door in your face or spit on your shoes. But I will go full mama bear, I promise you, when your friends come for mine.