I recently severed the remaining social media contact I had with friends and family who still support Donald Trump. I think the murder, yeah, just my opinion, of Renee Good in Minneapolis was my breaking point. There are arguments on both sides regarding the incident, but what local or state law enforcement officer would have shot a woman in the face, then two to three more times, before uttering, “fucking bitch” in a similar situation? Under the direction of Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, ICE is terrorizing US communities for political coercion and control under the guise of “immigration enforcement.” It’s curious that they haven’t deployed ICE to red states like Texas, even though the Lone Star State has a much higher population of undocumented immigrants than the blue states where ICE has swarmed.

Back in 2020, I wrote “My Trump-supporting friends and family,” to understand how they could support a career con-man. In the years since, I culled those connections down to a few, and now they’re all gone. At least those I know of. It’s sure to be awkward if and when I see any of them in person, but I have lost all remaining respect for people who still support this idiotic, racist narcissist.

Still, I’m curious how they can still support the man. Greed, racism, and ignorance all come to mind, but based on my own in-person interaction with them, I still consider many of these people “good people.” Some of them were raised on or developed conservative values like limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and social tradition, or “moral order,” usually rooted in Judeo-Christian ethics. Given those values, how can they possibly believe Donald Trump stands for any of them now?

Yesterday, I listened to a podcast episode of the Ezra Klein Show with Yuval Levin, Director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a prominent conservative/neoconservative think tank founded in 1938. He’s also the author of several books on policy and political theory, including “American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again.”

Toward the end of the interview, Klein asked Levin about the difference between traditional conservatives and those of today. i.e. MAGA. Levin’s response nailed it:

“Now, I would say more than conservative, one way to think about the difference is about whether your politics begins from what you care about most, what you love, or whether it begins from what you fear and what you hate. To me, as a young person, conservatism was appealing and as remained appealing because it’s fundamentally rooted and begins from what we love in the world.”

…

“And so it seems to me that it’s incumbent upon older people on the right like myself to make the case to younger people on the right. That ultimately we win by advancing what we love in the world and by persuading the country, by persuading other Americans that they should love it too. And that understanding ourselves as being at war with our own society is not a recipe for an effective politics or a good life.”

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and given the vitriol on both sides politically in the US, I think it’s a constructive question to ask ourselves, “whether your politics begins from what you care about most, what you love, or whether it begins from what you fear and what you hate.” Perhaps more importantly, can we step back from that hate?