Since the election, I’ve heard plenty of stories of Trump opponents disassociating themselves from Trump supporters. My wife, along with many of my friends, been unfriending their Trump-backing acquaintances on social media. People have been abandoning Twitter. (I refuse to call it X.) They’ve been moving to Threads and now Bluesky. Thanksgiving gatherings are being canceled. Some are going as far as divorcing their Trump-voting husbands (before the Republicans can ban no-fault divorce).

I don’t blame people for abandoning a toxic social media platform and disengaging from the MAGA supporters in their lives. People have the right to protect their peace. And this isn’t a disagreement about politics, but a split over morality. How can someone call me a friend when they voted for someone who wants to see me killed?

But I can’t help but feel we walked into a trap. 

The first step of a genocide is to isolate the targeted group from the rest of society. That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s. First, Jews were denied jobs where they interacted with the rest of German society. Then, they were banned from public transportation. Then, they were shoved into ghettos. And when they were completely out of sight from the rest of Germany, the Nazis could do whatever they wanted to them without public knowledge and protest.

Today, we’re isolating ourselves by choice. We’re shutting ourselves into our own digital ghettos. When we stop interacting with people who are different from us, we stop seeing them as human. And when we stop seeing each other as human, terrible things happen.

Plenty of people profit from us being at each other’s throats. Corporate conglomerates, because when we’re fighting among ourselves, we don’t see how they’re screwing us over. Vladimir Putin, because the breakup of the United States would be his revenge for the breakup of the Soviet Union. (And you have to look at the last time the United States split up to see how devastating that would be.) Demagogues and religious cult leaders, because when they isolate their followers and block them from any competing views of reality, they can exert absolute control over them. And sociopathic billionaire trolls like Elon Musk, because they get their kicks out of watching “little people” suffer, the same way they trained a magnifying glass on ants when they were children. 

So, I haven’t unfriended Trump supporters, and I haven’t deleted my account on Twitter. I refuse to walk into the digital ghetto. And I refuse to dehumanize anyone, even those who dehumanize me. Because when this is all over, we must find a way to live with each other. We will have to heal together from the wounds Trump and his incompetent cohorts will do to our nation and our world. Trump’s actions will punish his supporters more than our ostracism. And when they realize what a mistake they made by voting for him again, they will need an off-ramp and a path towards reconciliation. 

I’ve always sought to include characters who are different from me in my stories. This includes people whose views are different from mine. I want to learn what happened in their lives that brought them to those conclusions. I wouldn’t be a good author if I depended on broad assumptions and lazy stereotypes. I don’t have to agree, but I need to understand. And I can’t demand others see my humanity if I don’t see the humanity in them.

That’s what I did in Christina’s Portrait. I have a character who hates Trump because she blames him for her mother’s death during the COVID pandemic, and she must get help from someone who voted for him in 2016 and 2020. While Christina’s Portrait covers many controversial topics, this depiction of two people overcoming their differences to work together may be the most subversive of all.

I realize offering a message of unity is pointless right now. Too many powerful people have torn our society apart, and the tear is now too great to mend. All we can do is acknowledge that we’ve been trapped in our digital ghettos, and how, and by whom. And once we escape, we need to seek those who escaped from the other side so we can tear down those ghetto walls and rebuild our world.