AAs Donald Trump prepares for his second term as president, one thing is conspicuously missing (other than Ivanka): the multitude of articles about how to deal with Trump-voting family members over the holidays.

During Trump’s first term, the holidays were a goldmine for posts about how liberals could rid their lives of MAGA members. Now these pieces are still being released, but they seem to be rarer and more spaced out and have a different tone. Instead of focusing on why it’s okay to cut off your Trump-voting family members (although some still take that approach), they mostly emphasize how to get along, find shared values, and enjoy the holidays without politics. The narrative of eight years ago — that Trump voters were irredeemable and should be marginalized — has given way to pleas for understanding and a search for common ground.

There are two ways to read this change. The first is capitulation and normalization: that liberals are doing exactly the same thing as too many business leaders, reporters, and elected officials, treating Trump like any old politician – or, worse, giving in to his demands before he’s even in power. and the historian break Timothy Snyder’s first rule of resisting tyranny (“Do not obey in advance”). In this view, those who are willing to ignore the beliefs and decisions of their Trump relatives – decisions that actually endanger American democracy and very many people around the world – are collaborators with evil.

The second reading is, in my opinion, closer to reality: that the Trump coalition is now more diverse, meaning more Americans are tied to a Trump voter, and that the strategy last time was to shame and shame Trump marginalize voter politics clearly didn’t work and may have only made the problem worse.

Data is still coming in and election polls are notoriously unreliable, but early indications suggest that Trump has made big gains with Latino voters and has also made significant gains with young and black voters; The only voters he didn’t seem to do better with were whites. It was perhaps easier to tell a simple story about racism and sexism in 2016, which in turn made it easier to call for a mass purge of Trump-voting (and by definition racist and sexist) family and friends.

In my opinion, there is no doubt that racism and sexism (and especially sexism) remain the driving forces in the 2024 elections. What’s less clear is whether distancing yourself from loved ones with ugly views or just bad voting habits is an effective antidote.

The liberal public also seems to generally question the 2016 strategy. I have to be honest, I come from a family of liberals and leftists and mix with liberals and leftists, and while there are certainly moderates and conservatives in my circle, to my knowledge I don’t have a single close friend or family member who voted for Trump.

I can’t imagine being married to a man who would vote for someone like Trump, and if I were I would probably get a divorce because why on earth would you stay tied to someone who would vote for a man right, who would like to undress you? Your most basic rights? I would be hard-pressed to be close friends with a person who has either been sufficiently vetted not to understand what Trump is proposing or who is indifferent to his policies of cruelty, his corruption, his immorality, and his plans to make America an even worse place place, agrees.

But being married to someone or being best friends with someone is different than maintaining the kind of warm, but not everyday, deep relationship that can characterize the bonds with relatives who meet around the family table a few times a year , or to neighbors you chat with at the kids’ Little League games.

Part of what seems to motivate Trump voters is a sense of marginalization and rejection: that various groups (liberals, elites, media, women) have, at best, treated them with serial disrespect and, at worst, deemed them deplorable and irredeemable, plain and simple because they are what they are; Trump hasn’t just told them it’s unfair, he’s shown that it actually is likes them and celebrates them and embraces the things they like. Many Trump voters don’t know much about his proposals other than that he promises a better economy and shakes things up, and that sounds interesting and exciting.

If you read a newspaper column about American politics, you are already a much more informed person than many American voters. While this doesn’t speak particularly well to the American electorate, there are many differences between ignorance and evil. Assigning pro-Trump voters to the former rather than the latter has likely helped many liberals tolerate holiday gatherings in ways they didn’t think possible after a shocking election eight years ago.

There are exceptions. It’s hard to argue against a gay man cutting off a cruelly homophobic family member. I wouldn’t go to an extremely misogynistic relative’s house to carve a Thanksgiving turkey. But an ordinary cousin who voted for Trump because he listens to Joe Rogan? This guy may not be my favorite relative, but he may not be terrible or cruel either (and at best, a conversation with him could be a valuable exercise in empathy, curiosity, and humility).

Retreating into ideological corners and expecting all spaces to be safe spaces have not particularly helped the progressive project. It didn’t work either Progressive particularly good. Being challenged, uncomfortable, and sometimes even hurt is part of the work of being a human being in the world, and it is certainly part of the work of an activist or even a person who wants to shape the future according to their better vision. Pushing people out is usually much less effective than pulling them in. And many on the left seem to recognize this fact, albeit belatedly (myself included).

Barring secession, national divorce, or civil war, the hundreds of millions of Americans with different views and experiences must continue to live together. On the days I’ve been the least generous, I wish this wasn’t the case and that voters in blue states could have the freedom to make their own rules and live our best lives. Realistically, however, every American will remain bound by their nationality to millions of others who make terrible and sometimes cruel decisions.

Those in power who commit these atrocities should be excluded and stigmatized. But those who just cast their vote belong to a different category, one that certainly deserves criticism and frustration, but in many cases is also worth trying to understand – or at least share a Christmas ham.