When I got out of the Army, I had big plans: Go back to college on the GI Bill, finish a degree in political science, and start working in political journalism. But like many plans and intentions, life did what it did and changed them. My wife was pregnant with our first child, and suddenly my silly daydreams about becoming a writer following in the footsteps of Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Woodward seemed not only unimportant, but not even worth considering.
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Going to school full time and working as a security guard at night was barely enough to pay the rent, and with a new baby at home, it just couldn’t cover everything else. I needed a real paycheck, health insurance, and savings. I need to feel safe.
In 2007, I got a job at a large company that had nothing to do with writing, but it paid well, had great benefits, and gave us some breathing room. I don’t have a college degree, but the leadership skills I learned and honed in the infantry opened doors for me and allowed me to live a comfortable life. As an added bonus, I got to work with some really great people and made friends there who I still talk to regularly even though I no longer work for the company. Zach is one of them.
Zach and I hit it off immediately. We have similar backgrounds. We both served in the military and were deployed to Iraq around the same time. We both have young families, similar musical tastes and the same dry sense of humor. This makes the job, if not fun, at least not painful.
One place where we don’t always agree is politics. While our views both lean libertarian, my views are more influenced by personal liberty and civil liberties, while his views are more to the right. He opposed government regulation even when it came to safety and workers’ rights.
Over beers, Zach and I debated endlessly about the line between freedom and the collective public interest of laws designed to protect workers. He believes these issues should be resolved in court rather than through government intervention. I would ask him instead whether he really thinks workers have a fair chance in court against a large corporation if workers can’t afford good lawyers and a company can hire as many high-powered lawyers as they can.
We discussed the problems I saw in pure libertarian political philosophy, and I would give examples like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Sometimes I thought I was making progress. Sometimes he does. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. We are friends.
When I was growing up in Texas in the 1980s and 1990s, this divide felt normal. People either avoid politics altogether or see it as something that can be argued about without damaging relationships. Neighbors of Democrats would invite Republicans next door to play cards, talk politics, and joke with each other. No one is offended, no one is likely to change anyone else’s mind, and the night ends with a friendly farewell and a promise to do it all again next weekend. There wasn’t a lot of hatred or vitriol between the people around me. That day was not like today.
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I always told myself that I would not let politics interfere with friendships, even as political divisions deepened and social media amplified echo chambers that segregated people into distinct groups. In 2016 this became even more difficult.
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Zucker has been on the Trump train from the beginning. I’m not. I admit I wasn’t as shocked as some of my other friends by Trump’s rise to power, but I still think he’s a dangerous potential strongman, not qualified by temperament or experience. I respect John McCain even though I disagree with him politically. When Trump, a draft-dodger from a wealthy family, mocked McCain’s military service and prison sentence in June 2015, I immediately dismissed him as a rude, petty clown. I suspect others across the country — especially my fellow veterans — feel the same way. I was wrong.
Zach and I have discussed many times the appeal of outsiders to Washington. I usually end these conversations by saying that it can be dangerous if reckless people get elected – maybe slow, boring governance is actually better. Zach disagrees. He wants everything to be shaken…even if something is broken.
Although I have become increasingly wary of Trump—his corruption, his rhetoric, and his lust for power—I remain committed to my commitment to not letting politics interfere with personal relationships. Zach and I remained friends, but the arguments became more heated. I have to work on controlling my anger. I told myself he just didn’t see what was going on because if he saw it and accepted it, that was something I couldn’t accept and I wasn’t ready to face it.
Fast forward to January 6, 2021. Zach and I were at work when news broke of the insurrection at the Capitol. The chaotic scene was played on the TV in the conference room. Most of us watched in horror. While Zach wasn’t exactly celebrating, he didn’t seem appropriately disturbed either. I cannot understand how a veteran who took an oath to the Constitution as much as I did could watch police officers being attacked and people threatening to hang the Vice President and not see this as a disaster.
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Zach and I remain friendly, mostly because we still work together. We talk in the office and sometimes have a beer after get off work, but that’s not the same anymore. After January 6th, things changed, at least for me, and I can’t pretend they didn’t.
Zach doesn’t like Joe Biden. He wasn’t my first choice either, but I voted for him because I saw the alternative as an existential threat to the republic. Policy suddenly became secondary to the question of whether the system itself would survive, and once I understood that, certain decisions became less complex for me.
In 2024, nothing has changed. Another imperfect Democratic candidate. Another choice that seems clear to me. I voted for Kamala Harris without hesitation. She may not be my first choice in a competitive primary, but by then, insisting on a perfect candidate is an outdated luxury we can no longer afford.
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You may disagree with Harris on policy, resent the Democratic Party’s many failures, and dislike its focus on certain issues. None of this tops what I’ve seen Trump promise: revenge, retribution, targeting of perceived enemies, attacks on press freedom, open contempt for judges and courts, mass deportations without due process, seemingly straight out of my struggle Poisoning the blood of the nation. There are countless reasons to vote against Trump, but we all know what happened.
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We can argue why he won again. Economics is important. The Democratic defeat matters. In my opinion, after everything we know, everything we’ve seen, and everything he’s promised to do, none of that is enough to explain the continued support for Trump.
At that point, Zach and I stopped working together and I stopped drinking. No beer after get off work. We text occasionally and chat from time to time, but it’s not like before. I stopped responding when it became clear that he was still trying to somehow justify what Trump did.
ICE raids then escalated. Two American citizens were killed in broad daylight as masked, unaccountable agents rampaged through American cities, violating due process, arresting people without warrants, profiling individuals based on skin color and language. We were told not to believe what we saw with our own eyes, and the government assured us that no one would be held accountable.
Zach still texts me occasionally like nothing has changed. Ignoring him wasn’t enough for me anymore.
I finally called him back one day and asked him if he supported what was going on. He hedged. He said he didn’t like people getting hurt, but quickly fell back on the same rhetoric we’ve heard from the government: People should not ignore police orders. People should not take to the streets to protest. Film crew interfered with their work. If you reject the order, everything that happens next is your responsibility.
I asked him how he could support state repression of people exercising their First Amendment rights and still call himself a liberal. He has no answer. Sometimes silence tells you all you need to know. I kept pushing and we talked for another 10 minutes or so, but the rest of the conversation wasn’t important.
The important thing is that in the end, I explained to him why he needed to go ahead and lose my number.
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I firmly believe that it’s healthy to be friends with people with whom you disagree politically, but that’s not politics anymore. This is about morals and ethics, and anyone who is still defending what is happening right now does not share my values.
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Over the past few years, I’ve heard many versions of the same story from others. Friends who finally stopped returning my calls. Brothers and sisters who no longer talk about politics, or sometimes don’t talk about politics at all. People still love their parents, but they can no longer pretend to understand. A racist uncle who gets blocked on social media. Skipped Thanksgiving dinner. None of this is easy. Being away from the people you care about is rarely like that. But time and time again, the conclusion sounds the same: At some point, staying in the relationship requires forgiving things they can no longer forgive.
It doesn’t matter. Not that you need my permission. There’s a reason why doors swing both ways – sometimes they need to be closed. No matter how close we have been to someone, we never have to compromise our ethics or make excuses for beliefs that cause real harm. Even if they are a family. We don’t have to remain friends with everyone we meet.
Watching Zach slide from casual liberalism to what looks a lot like actual support for fascism made me understand something. I don’t need those people in my life.
Now that we all have access to enough information, ignorance is no longer a valid defense. If you can see what’s going on with the Constitution, see our friends and neighbors lose their lives, or see their rights trampled upon in plain sight, and still support the people responsible for it all, that’s recognition.
Looking back, I think I held on too long. I told myself that I could change other people’s beliefs, mostly because I knew that if I didn’t, I would eventually have to make the decision to leave for good. At some point, it becomes untenable to continue to have friendly relations with people who publicly defend practices that violate our core principles and basic human rights. Impossible. I probably should have cut some people out of my life earlier.
Better late than never, I guess.
Some names have been changed to protect privacy.
Nick Allison is a writer living in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in HuffPost Personal, CounterPunch, Fulcrum, Part of Chaos, and more. Follow him at Bluesky @nickallison80.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared in the February 2026 issue of The Huffington Post.
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