This never occurred to me, that we might just change the subject.
That is Anne Applebaum’s suggestion. Why change the subject? Because we will never change the minds of Trumpers, there are too many of them to jail or deport, too few to secede, too scattered to form a geographical base. They will be here, among us, for the duration, and we need to learn to live with them and they need to learn to live with us. Talking politics won’t get us there.
She cites studies of other conflict zones riven by fratricidal divisions, e.g Northern Ireland. I’m not going to convince a Trumper that Jesus did not found America just as he is not going to convince me that Jesus did. The way to reduce conflict is to engage in communal activities like building a baseball field for the kids or serving food out to homeless people or volunteering at hospitals. She asserts that it is hard to pepper spray or kill a person you’ve just spent time with on a project that is uplifting to you both.
Maybe.