We had little in common, but when a friend of a friend sat with me while I was drunk at a Quinceñera, we somehow clicked, and he became a best friend for the next four years. Socially, High School was tumultuous, to say the least, and he was a constant. We went on frequent Chipotle dates, where he generously bought me burritos for the two of us to vent over. On my birthday, he gave me socks with cats on them, and when I was down, he’d cheer me up with kind words and gifs of corgis waddling down stairs. The warmth and levity of this friendship during our Senior year overshadowed the new TRUMP 2016 sticker on his laptop, which I initially tossed aside as a joke. However much I chose to ignore this, the pieces put themselves together for me, and I learned that this was not ironic. I turned a blind eye to his “Make America Great Again” talk, but when he snap chatted me from the Primary voting booth, I felt queasy. I’m a liberal and he’s a Republican, but I figured that as a mature adult, I’d set aside our differences given the loyalty of our friendship.

Things were going normally after graduation, though I found it increasingly frustrating that his reasons for supporting Trump were ignorant, lacking logic, and fueled by a hate for Hillary. His social medias boasted slogans like “Hillary for Prison!,” “Lock Her Up,” “Trump that bitch,” and “#BuildThatWall.” Clinton has been absolved, and rallying slander towards her is not only totally inappropriate--especially regarding a former first lady, secretary of state, and current senator--but also rooted in sexism. Additionally, any support for erecting a 15 million dollar wall on the border is absolutely ridiculous for obvious reasons and perpetuates the discrimination against immigrants that fuels Donald Trump’s campaign. Irked, I swept these matters aside. That is, until I involved myself in his brother’s twitter rampage against Black Lives Matter (BLM), in which he also denied that a court of law had exonerated Hillary Clinton. Unable to remain silent, I immediately spoke up when his brother tweeted that Dr. Martin Luther King would “roll over in his grave” at how “disgraceful” BLM is, among other disrespectful comments regarding the then-recent death of Alton Sterling. I came at him for acting as if the murders of innocent black American's by police could be justified, and he fought back. Of course, my friend quickly got on my case for going at his brother on social media. I had no apologies because I was so frustrated by the ignorance and the privilege displayed by the both of them. The more he defended and sided with his brother, the clearer it became to me that I had no interest in remaining friends with this boy. His best guy-friend from his travel team texted me about the situation in the midst of my upset and proceeded to text me THE most racist, derogatory, and violent paragraph I’ve ever read, regarding his views on black people. It looked like something you’d overhear passing a klansman in 1950, not something you’d read in 2016. I was so disgusted I cried in anger and texted him to f**k off with shaking hands. I quickly sent my friend screenshots of what he said, which was met with alarming indifference. The associative guilt and his complacency was the deciding factor for me to unapologetically sever ties.

“Are you seriously going to end our friendship over politics?”

“Yeah. It’s not over politics, it’s over human lives,” I explained.

Beyond the racism deeply rooted in Trump’s campaign, which my friend perpetuated through his and his brothers’ activity online, his complacency in instances of hate speech affirmed that he wasn’t worth associating with. My friend blasted me with guilt for being “petty”, and for a while, I felt like I was. He pulled the “I was there for you when nobody else was” card, and manipulated me into feeling immense guilt. I got over it in under an hour, and felt like I’d cleansed myself by disassociating.

Online, I’ve unfollowed family to avoid the content nausea, and unfriended a classmate for his association with a facebook group littered with racist, islamophobic, and sexist images. With social media, it’s easy to discern who supports him and why, as well as spot people like my once-friend, who’ve absorbed his rhetoric in an alarming way. Nothing about removing yourself from these people is petty when they don't view all humans equally, and put themselves first.