My mother, a two-time Trump voter in Florida, has moved closer to us in a safely blue state. While I don’t know what her vote was in the 2024 presidential election, it wouldn’t have affected the outcome. I strongly oppose Trump, as do my wife and her family, who live nearby. I’m troubled by my mother’s support of someone I consider morally abhorrent and dangerous, especially when she voted in a former swing state.
With the result of the 2024 election, my wife and her family are directing their understandable fury at my mother. My wife’s sister said, ‘‘If she voted for Trump again, I’m completely done with her.’’ I expect that the next time they interact it will not be pretty. But my mother is a member of our family, and an invaluable caregiver to our children. She’s pleasant and kind in daily life and moved far from her home primarily for us and her grandkids. And she is my mother, after all.
I’m torn. My wife and her family expect me to brook no compromise and to speak out on an issue that feels existential to them (as it does to me), but because I know that her vote here doesn’t make a difference, I have trouble feeling motivated to admonish her for her past and possibly present support of Trump. At the very least, they don’t think I should expect them to be anything other than completely unfiltered with my mother.
I appreciate the sacrifices my mother has made to be near our family and our children, and our kids love their grandma. And she is the woman who raised me. But my wife and her family will be channeling their anger at one of the few Trump voters they personally know. And my mother expects me to intervene and speak up for her or to encourage my wife’s family to be more civil. She sees her vote as a ‘‘personal choice’’ and doesn’t seem to believe that she should be criticized for it.
Ethically, is it wrong for me to hold my tongue or to try to negotiate the peace even though I agree with the substance of my wife’s family’s position? If I try to protect my mother from vitriol, would I be betraying myself, or my wife and her family, in order to preserve harmony and child deva? Or would I be justified in suggesting that we all lay down our arms, given that her vote no longer affects the national outcome? If I try to completely opt out of having a role in this conflict, am I doing a disservice to all parties involved? What do we owe to ourselves and the respective warring sides in a situation such as this? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
This is a sad but not unusual story. Political scientists have identified a form of animus they sometimes call partyism, which they try to measure in various ways. They can ask respondents whether people of the other political party have positive traits (generosity, say, or honesty), or bad ones (selfishness, untrustworthiness); they can ask what people think about being friends with supporters of the other party or about their children marrying across the partisan divide. Since at least 2000, the research suggests, people’s positive feelings about their own party have stayed roughly constant; the big drop, which has intensified since 2016, is in positive feelings toward the other side. In an era when few Americans are still bothered by interracial marriage, recent surveys find that a large percentage of people who identify as Democrats or Republicans want their children to marry within the party. And the trend isn’t just found in this country: Partyism swamps other sources of intergroup hostility in Britain, Belgium and Spain, too.
