Yesterday it hit me like a ton of bricks. I have a friend from intermediate school and high school that decided to end our friendship. I suppose this didn’t happen yesterday. I just noticed that he had unfriended me yesterday and when I reached out he made it official. I wished him well and then we seemed to roll back into the same arguments. I hoped he was at peace. He said he was. He clearly is not. Then again, maybe I’m not either.

Anytime a relationship ends it is a good idea to inventory our own lives. Is there something I did that was wrong? Have I changed in the intervening years? Have I somehow become radicalized and not know it? Have my views become more extreme and driven people away? These are all legitimate questions and I should recount my history so people get a clearer picture.

I have always been keenly interested in politics because my family was always keenly interested in politics. We have always been left of center and I imagine always will be. So, if anyone really changed it wasn’t me. What we have seen since 1980 is that half of our country is moving further to the political extremes and it isn’t us on the left. I suppose some of that is a natural backlash when you have people that were quiet about their desires before now coming out and demanding it out loud. I do get how that seems sudden and it seems arbitrary and contrary to everything we have been. It’s really not. Women have been demanding more rights for decades. People of color have been demanding more rights for decades. People with alternative lifestyles have been demanding more rights for decades. I’m sorry if some people slept through that and missed it.

I think a large part of it is that our parents largely shielded us from the worst of their struggles. We saw an idealized view of life growing up. In some ways it may have been easier back then. I’m sure for some people it was. I can certainly look at my relatives that did not go to college and see how they succeeded when people today struggle under those same circumstances. I’m sure some of these same friends I grew up imagined they would be doing something different by now. I’m sure they imagined life being easier than it became.

In this kind of world it is easier to blame someone else than take personal responsibility. Blaming someone else is what demagogues do best. Today it might be the immigrants, but we have heard the current GOP nominee mention other groups as well. He has called people like me “the enemy within.” We cannot normalize that. We cannot simply brush that off. We cannot simply accept that as the musings of a mad man howling at the moon.

So, while it would be wrong to say that I have not changed at all, it is more fair to say that I haven’t changed all that much. I am speaking out more because the situation calls for it. I am sure some of you have had similar experiences. It’s obvious to me that my friend has changed and not for the better. I refuse to believe that he was always this way because that would mean that I was okay with it at some point. Others have described this current iteration of the conservative movement as a cult and I think that aptly describes what has happened to him. I pray that he wakes up one day and realizes it.