Op-Ed: Not your mother's Thanksgiving

On the scale of political views, I hover between “very liberal” and “extremely liberal.” This is not the case for a lot of my friends and family. In fact, my parents often have a hard time understanding how I have ended up so far on the left. It’s an oddity in a state such as North Carolina.

Like many people at Tufts, the night of Election Day was incredibly hard. I called my best friends from high school when I got back to my room at three in the morning, and we spent a great majority of the call in silence. We had no words for what was about to be announced. It’s been two weeks, and the whiteboard on our door still bears the Hillary "H," and we are not the only ones. The girls two doors down have a sign that says, “We are still with her.” Someone across the hall wears his Hillary hat almost everyday with pride. At Tufts, this is okay. Even if people don’t agree with you, they respect your right to your own opinion. But this week, I’m going home — to a place where politics are especially polarizing.

Politics are a tricky thing. They cause families to stop speaking and friends to cut each other out of their lives. It is both incredibly irrational and totally understandable. Political beliefs often line up with personal values, and people do not take kindly to those whose values contradict their own. That is why I try to be very careful when talking about politics with people whose beliefs I do not know. I am also terrified of provoking someone into a fight from which our relationship might never recover. Some people are willing to get into arguments with those they disagree with and are seemingly okay with losing whomever they are fighting. I am not one of those people. I wish that I could be, because my convictions are strong and I have educated myself on each and every one of them, but I would lose too many people. My county might have voted for Hillary Clinton, but my state didn’t, some of my neighbors didn’t, some of my friends didn’t and I am going to have deal with it all.

Going to Tufts has meant that I have been living in a bubble. The entire campus felt like it was in mourning on Nov. 9, when I know so many people at home were cheering. This week, I will be going back to people who cheered when I mourned, and that is going to be hard. There are a lot of people I know who have been nothing but wonderful to me and who also voted for Donald Trump. They may not have voted for him because of his policies, but it will be because of their vote that his policies have a chance to be enacted. Needless to say, I find his policies despicable. It is my opinion that, whether or not he means to, Trump will cause great harm to come to the people of this country. I’m scared of what is going to come from his presidency, and this week I am going home to a lot of people who will not understand that.

When my extended family gathers for the holidays, I can’t remember us ever discussing politics. I do not know what ideology they prescribe to and, frankly, I do not want to find out.

Even without politics, I have never particularly enjoyed the holidays. There are always too many people in a room, too much stress, too many things to get done. This holiday season, there is also going to be too much pent-up anger. I am not looking forward to the surprises in political ideology that will inevitably come.

There is no advice that I can give as to how to deal with relatives or friends who voted for the “enemy,” whichever candidate that is in your opinion. All I know is what has gotten me through being a “bleeding liberal” in the Old North State: You have to respect people’s right to their opinions. It is not fun, but it is the only way that both parties can get through unscathed. If, in the more likely scenario, people aren’t respectful of your opinions, you can always say that politics has no place at the dinner table.

 

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