Political divide splits relationships and Thanksgiving

WASHINGTON: Matthew Horn, a software engineer from Boulder, Colorado, cancelled Christmas plans with his family in Texas. Nancy Sundin, a social worker in Spokane, Washington, has called off Thanksgiving with her mother and brother. Ruth Dorancy, a software designer in Chicago, decided to move her wedding so that her fiance’s grandmother and aunt, strong Trump supporters from Florida, could not attend.

The election is over, but the repercussions in people’s lives may be just beginning as families across the US contemplate uncomfortable holidays — or decide to bypass them — and relationships between friends, relatives and spouses are tested across the political divide.

Democrats have dug in their heels, and in some cases are refusing to sit across the table from relatives who voted for President-elect Donald Trump, a man they say stands for things they abhor. Many who voted for Trump say it is the liberals who are to blame for discord, unfairly tarring them with the odious label of “racist” just because they voted for someone else.

“It’s all one big giant contradiction in my eyes,” said Laura Smith, 30, a small-business owner in Massachusetts who was attacked on Facebook by a relative for voting for Trump. “She’s saying to spread the love,” Smith said. “But then you’re throwing this feeling of hate toward me, your own family member.”

Many Democrats harbour their own feelings of being under siege.

“It felt like a rejection of everyone who looks like me,” said Dorancy, 29, a naturalised American who immigrated from Ghana about a decade ago. “It was a message to me that ‘You are not equal in our eyes. You do not deserve a place in our country.’”

So she and her fiance looked at their guest list and decided to hold their wedding in Italy, a distance too far for the relatives to travel. “I just don’t want them around me on the most important day of my life,” she said.

Some relationships remain intact.

Kate Kingery, a Republican in Denver who sells sporting goods, has kept good relations with her Democratic friends, despite their despondence over the election. One is coming to spend a few days in the mountains with her this week. Kingery, who grew up on a farm in rural Minnesota, said she sympathised with her Democratic friends’ worries.

“I understand people’s fears, I really do,” she said. She would not say whom she had voted for. She added: “I really don’t think it’s going to be that bad. I don’t think they are going to change gay rights, women’s rights or other people’s rights.”

These are important, if painful, conversations, but the reality of American life is that they are happening ever more rarely. Over the past several decades, the US has become increasingly segregated by class, with college-educated people marrying, living and socialising apart from less-educated Americans. The result has been that Americans have lost touch with one another, sociologists say, and helps explain why each side is so baffled by the other.

Colin Woodard, the author of “American Nations,” a history of cultural divides in the United States, says that “we are seeing a profound disagreement about what kind of America we should be creating.” Some believe society should be organised with an emphasis on individual rights, he said, while others feel the focus should be on maintaining the common good, which requires checks on individuals. Many feel the multiculturalism so prized by liberals has made their communities harder to understand and identify with.

Patricia Adams, 69, an artist and retired nurse in Spokane, Washington, said she had voted for Trump in hopes that he would protect “our heritage.” She fondly recalls singing patriotic songs as a child in school and saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

“It was a different kind of world that we were raised in,” she said. “I know young people need to have this world now, but it’s hard. When you get old and you are looking at your will, things become more important. You hate to see your basics, your Constitution, not given the attention it deserves.”

She compared the current national argument to the one over the Vietnam War that divided Americans along generation and class lines.

“This is very reminiscent of the Vietnam time,” she said. “They want freedom. They want flowers in their hair. They want all of this, but they don’t understand what they are giving up.”

As for racism and Trump, she said, “I don’t think there’s any proof of that.” She added: “I will say that, in his generation, those old guys, most of them kind of lean towards ...” and then she paused. “It was a white world.”

Her daughter, Sundin, the social worker who voted for Clinton, said the election had left her feeling alienated from her family and her country. She said her liberal arts education and her life as a social worker, which began in 1998, had taught her tolerance and the value of being flexible, something she has passed on to her children.

She said she had recently asked her mother to stop talking to her children about politics, after an episode in which she said her mother was discussing Trump’s immigration ideas.

“I just need her to not have those conversations in front of my kids,” she said.