My friend describes themselves as apolitical and thinks I shouldn’t allow how somebody votes to have any impact on our relationship. How do I explain that they are in a privileged position to be able to think that way and how people vote does matter to me and my life?
Eleanor says: I’m always curious where people draw the line on this. You hear your friend’s idea rehearsed in all sorts of circles, from politics or bad personal conduct to attitudes on race and gender: “We can set that aside” or “They’ve never been a bad friend to me.”
In fairness, most of us have a loved one with whom we just agree to disagree. But equally, all of us have something that would be a dealbreaker. There are extremes of conduct or belief that we just won’t permit. So when someone says they don’t let these topics affect their relationships, I always think that’s a little self-deceptive: presumably they don’t really mean that. There is something out there they wouldn’t associate with. What they mean is that little rises to that level.
And that might be the right decision! It would be weird and bad to only associate with people who agreed with us. But one does eventually have to take responsibility for the editorial decisions one has made in one’s life. Hard cases confront most of us: friends who use certain slurs, family who cast certain votes, very different attitudes to violence. To pretend to recuse oneself from making a judgment in these moments is to dodge the responsibility of thinking. Besides, as you point out, even that pretence is political.
It might be interesting to see what challenges you’d encounter from your friend if you could get them to see they’ve already made a decision instead of exempting themselves from one. They might have interesting things to say about why they have made the call they have.
Perhaps they value a kind of liberal toleration: they might think the fact they believe something doesn’t give them the authority to enforce it interpersonally. They might think of politics as quasi-aesthetic – “just a matter of opinion”, said with upturned palms and the tone of wrapping up a phone call. They might think nobody really knows enough to have views on these things, themselves included: it might be a kind of humility. You could get into some really friendship-enriching (and just plain interesting) conversations about this, but they’ll all start with shifting the question from “Should we make political judgments?” to “Why have we made such different ones?”
One way into that shift might be to point out that finding this stuff boring depends on the presumption that it’s all low stakes – when for lots of people, that isn’t true. Or you could ask them what kinds of things would colour their relationships. What sorts of conduct would make them like someone less? If all the answers are to do with how a person treats them, that’s an interesting discovery; why is that what matters most? Do they think that everyone else should have that attitude too?
As with all political exchanges, the mission can’t just be to get them to see things your way. Discussion may eventually hit the bedrock where all you can say to each other is “I think my thing is true” and “Well, I think my thing is true”. At that stage nobody’s claim to the truth will get any special purchase in the argument. But at least once you’ve classed this as a political disagreement, your friend should be compelled to stick to their guns by loving you just the same.
