Today is the 4th Father’s Day I’ve gone without speaking to my dad.
It happened in 2022. Following the leaked Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe V. Wade, a friend and I drove from Michigan to D.C. to join in protests. I knew better than to tell my dad I was going, but made a post about the trip on Facebook. He’d been blocked on that platform for years after too many embarrassing instances of him engaging in political debates with my friends in the comments. But my grandparents (themselves MAGA) asked my dad about the post, and so he called me.
At first, he was supportive. “You have a right to protest,” he told me, “just don’t go rioting.” The news of the leak was still fresh, and the FOX News pundits had only just began to spin it. Over the next day, the right wing talking points filled my dad’s phone and sounded off all evening on the living room TV. By then, he’d began texting them to me.
What followed was not the first political argument we’d had. Since Trump descended the escalator in 2016, my father and I’s political views had moved further and further apart — he went from a two time Obama voter to all in on MAGA, I became a volunteer for Bernie Sanders’s campaign in Flint, Michigan.
In all fairness, some of the tension was our own natures. From my father, I inherited stubbornness, passion, and firm roots in my morals. In addition, I picked up his nasty temper. The latter, I’ve spent years working on bettering myself and managing. He did not, and eventually became the one person capable of igniting that fuse by losing his temper himself.
That’s the thing about political discourse — the second it gets heated, you will get no where. As I mentioned, my grandparents (my father’s parents) are both MAGA. If anything, they delight in political discourse with me. My grandpa in particular lights up when we debate. There’s a level of respect there, a mutual understanding that at the end of the day, no matter how vast our disagreements, we are family.
In 2016, much was the same with my dad — though always teetering on the edge of an argument. But as time went on and our discussions continued, we didn’t come closer to any understandings. We never found that elusive “middle ground.” We both just got angrier.
By the time we were fighting about whether or not I had a right to choose, I was shocked to be having the argument. As far right as my dad had veered, he had always been self-proclaimed pro-choice. At the same time, I recognized we had reached a breaking point. I told him we should end this discussion.
He did, for a few hours, before sending me a FOX news article “proving” abortion would not become illegal in Michigan. It was a misread of the article, which in itself mentioned the 1931 abortion ban still on the books in the state.
In all fairness, I could have refrained from pointing that out. I didn’t. We both snapped. Michigan had a ballot initiative, Reproductive Freedom for All, to legalize abortion in the state. My dad began parroting misinformation that it was some leftist attempt to legalize abortion up to birth — and pay for it with his tax dollars. No matter how much evidence I presented him to the contrary (including the full text of the amendment itself) he had more trust in FOX News than his own daughter.
How do you bridge that? How do you surpass knowing that your father will believe strangers on TV and social media over his own flesh and blood? In four years, I haven’t come up with an answer. So in four years, we have not spoken.
Before this, I’d always come around eventually. I’d suck up my pride, swing by the house with a six-pack, and we’d make our peace. At this point I was (and am) sick of always being the one to apologize. I decided early on in the silence that if my father wants a relationship with me, he’ll need to be the one to make an effort. It’s been four years.
Some people are better at separating politics from the personal lives. For me, doing so has only become harder. After that final argument with my dad, I took a job with the Reproductive Freedom for All campaign, which passed that November and protected abortion access in Michigan. I went on to start a career in social media, first focusing on local Michigan politics, then eventually national — I even moved to Washington D.C.. I’ve met dozens of elected officials, attended hundreds of political events, and taken part in community organizing efforts around the country. It’s my life now. It’s work I am deeply proud of and grateful to be able to do full time. My proudest achievements in life, should I share them with my dad, would enrage him.
How do you bridge that?
What’s happened to my family is not unique. Last year, I posted publicly about the relationship (or lack thereof) with my dad for the first time and received thousands of comments and messages from people who had similarly cut off members of their family over political differences.
At its core, the breakdown of our families is the most visible representation of the breakdown in America itself. For decades, right and left have moved further apart. Loyalties have shifted from our constitution to political parties. Working across the aisle became a sin rather than a virtue. The media, on both sides, demonizes political opponents as radical, anti-American, immoral, and even evil. All of that trickles down. It seeps into our culture, and from our culture into our lives and our families.
Maybe all this is why I feel so comfortable in right wing spaces and MAGA rallies — I move in these places with ease. I strike up debate with my political opponents with confidence. In the vast majority of these, the conversations I have don’t reflect the arguments I had with my father. More often, they reflect my grandparents — intrigued, curious, eager to talk to someone outside their echo chamber.
I’ve said before, what shocks me most are all the times we find ourselves agreeing. A pair of middle aged blonde women in bedazzled USA cowboy hats told me how important it is we fund FEMA. A man in a t-shirt sporting an AI generated image of Trump with an assault rifle told me its time for America to implement universal healthcare.
As reflected American politics are in my relationship with my dad, its the outlier. The extremes in the media do exist — but they’re far more rare than presented. The reality is something messier, more nuanced. That’s not to say there isn’t a vast amount of damage to be repaired (both in our personal lives and as a nation). By all measures, the division appears to be worsening rather than improving. But even now, four years later, I haven’t given up hope its mendable.
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