I'm sorry about the fracture in Julia's friendship with her lifelong friend. What's different now is that many of us are using support for Trump and what he stands for as a litmus test for whether or not we want to continue our friendships with people, and conversely, those who support him want little to do with us. To say it's a dealbreaker in some cases isn't overstating it. I have a good friend that I used to golf with regularly. He had always voted for Democrats in the past until he broke for Trump in 2016 as a protest against Democrats for a host of reasons. It became clear that it was less a protest about Democrats and more that he had been tuning into OAN, Newmax, and FOX (at least those were the links he was routinely sending me) and they were having an impact on him. He would send me links via text messages but he would never address my concerns/responses about the links. I finally dialed his phone to talk because texting wasn't cutting it. He wouldn't take my call. I tried a few more times over the following weeks before saying fuck it and blocking his number. It was an act of futility to try and reason with him and it was no longer worth my time. I would love to say that I'm hopeful he'll one day come around but I would be fooling myself to hold out hope. We didn't golf together once last year.

Saying someone is radicalized is the sort of descriptor I would normally save for the most disturbed among us. The danger we're in now is that it has become the norm for so many and not something reserved for a small segment of society. They truly have been radicalized and looking at the trend, it's only getting worse. Is our only recourse to hope that the YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media giants de-platform the pushers of propaganda as they come along? It's better than nothing I suppose. I recall hearing how the Information Age would spell doom for authoritarians around the globe as people would learn of the freedoms the rest of us were enjoying and they would want those same freedoms for themselves — rising up against the powers that oppressed them. I never imagined disinformation being our downfall. Somehow I felt we were smarter than that. 

I will always keep a light on for my brother and my sister but for now, I'm feeling like I need to keep my distance. I do feel as though they see me as the enemy first and foremost. It's the elephant in the room.

Kevin g