Because You Would Have To Look Me In The Eye To End Our Friendship

I finally realized the answer to a question that has dogged me since 2016. The best way for me to comment on that answer, in lieu of a real (short) discussion with any trump-supporting friends, is through video. The only disclaimer is that if any of this offends you, please realize that your offense is not more important than my inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Edited Transcript]
Hey everybody. I’m going to try something a little bit different today and I’m giving myself five minutes or less to do it.

One of the recurring questions I’ve had over the last year, maybe even longer, is why won’t anybody who supports the trump administration or donald trump himself, why don’t they identify themselves to me? I’m speaking in terms of friends on my (Facebook) timeline or my Twitter feed. Identify yourself to me and justify any of the things that you have seen going on?

I’ve gotten deafening silence every time I’ve asked that question. And I feel like it’s very easy to dismiss what I write when I write a blog post or Facebook post, and people who actually do support him can just brush it off and just not [sic] ignore it or look at pictures of cute kittens or something like that. But I want to engage.

(My partner) Greg has said we need to have a discussion, and I would like to have that discussion. It won’t go well or easily, but I can respect people who will look me in the eye and tell me why they support somebody who wants to discriminate against me or have me die. I will respect you. I won’t like you. We will never speak again. But at least I can respect you.

I don’t respect people who cannot look me in the eye and say I support him even though he wants to take away your health care, because that has been very very important to me for this past year and even at just as a man who is approaching 60.

If you can’t justify why you support a man who says that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization or an organization of hate when there are states I don’t want to go to the work because I may die. And my partner worries I may die at the hands of the police. But you can’t justify that to me? I have no respect.

Or even as a gay man, if you want to have my rights stripped away because of your support for this President and his appointments of people on the courts who will rule in favor of religious freedoms? I’ve gone through that with (CA) Prop 8. As an adult I had my rights stripped away by a majority vote. You can try to justify that to me; God bless you it’s not going to end well.

So all of this to say that I understand why somebody hasn’t stood up and represented their point of view as a Republican and their support for this man and this administration. Because you would have to look me in the eye. While we have this discussion, you’d have to look me in the eye and justify to me why you want to support somebody who wants to hurt me.

And I can tell you, if you are a friend of mine I’ve never supported a candidate wishes you physical harm. But you do if you support trump. If that’s how you are, fine. Own it. We won’t be friends. We will be co-workers, or we’ll be cordial acquaintances. I won’t spit on you or anything like that. But we won’t be friends.
And don’t call yourself a friend of mine if you can support him and not look me in the eye while doing so.

That’s it I’m out.