Source: New York Times - Archive
By David Litt
Not too long ago, I felt a civic duty to be rude to my wife’s younger brother.
I met Matt Kappler in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license. My early memories of Matt are hazy — I was mostly trying to impress his parents. Still we got along, chatting amiably on holidays and at family events.
Then the pandemic hit, and our preferences began to feel like more than differences in taste. We were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn’t shocked when Matt didn’t get the Covid shot. But I was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self-preservation. It felt like he was tearing up the social contract that, until that point, I’d imagined we shared.
Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact completely. As it was, on the rare and always outdoor occasions when we saw each other, I spoke in disapproving snippets.
“Work’s been good?”
“Mhrmm.”
My frostiness wasn’t personal. It was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?
I wasn’t the only one thinking this. A 2021 essay for USA Today declared, “It’s time to start shunning the ‘vaccine hesitant.’” An L.A. Times piece went further, arguing that to create “teachable moments,” it may be necessary to mock some anti-vaxxers’ deaths.
Shunning as a form of accountability goes back millenniums. In ancient Athens, a citizen deemed a threat to state stability could be “ostracized” — cast out of society for a decade. For much of history, banishment was considered so severe that it substituted for capital punishment. The whole point of Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter was to show she had violated norms — and to discourage others from doing so.
But that was before social media. We live in a world of online fandoms, choose-your-own-adventure information and parasocial relationships. Few people who lost friends over the vaccine changed their minds. They just got new friends. Those exiled from one version of society were quickly welcomed by another — an alternate universe full of grievance peddlers and conspiracy theorists who thrived on stories of victimized conservatives.
There has been a sorting into belief camps, algorithmically and in real life. It dictates whom we match with on dating apps and where we live. We block those we disagree with online, we leave the group chat, we don’t show up for Thanksgiving. Recent data suggests that today, one in five Americans is estranged from a family member over politics. More points of deep disagreement will surely arise: over Trump’s immigration crackdown and use of the military in domestic affairs, over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA mandates, over antisemitism, over a megabill that takes health care from the poor while cutting taxes for the rich.
No one is required to spend time with people they don’t care for. But those of us who feel an obligation to shun strategically need to ask: What has all this banishing accomplished? It’s not just ineffective. It’s counterproductive.
These days, ostracism might just hurt the ostracizer more than the ostracizee.
I wish I could say I learned this through self-reflection and study. What actually happened is that I started surfing. After moving to the Jersey Shore in 2022, I signed up for lessons. Despite my advanced age of 35 and lack of natural talent, I got hooked. Matt was the only other surfer I knew. I put my principled unfriendliness aside.
From the moment we began paddling out together, I could tell my cold-shoulder strategy had backfired. I’d spent the peak of the pandemic in a cultural bubble, and he had done the same. Driving to a break or changing into our wet suits, he’d often express opinions — about the merits of vigilantism, or the health benefits of Mexican stem-cell injections — that I found slightly unhinged.
Where is this coming from? I wondered. The answer was nearly always “Joe Rogan’s podcast.”
I assumed our surf-buddy experiment would either fail spectacularly or bring Matt over to my side. Neither of those things occurred. Instead, the connections we found were tiny and unrelated to politics. We agree that “Shrimply Irresistible” is the perfect so-bad-it’s-good name for a seafood restaurant, and that Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” is a classic. Although I still wouldn’t call myself a Rogan fan, we share an appreciation for his interview with the surf legend Kelly Slater. Matt and I remain very different, yet we’ve reached what is, in today’s America, a radical conclusion: We don’t always approve of each other’s choices, but we like each other.
It helped that in the ocean, our places in the pecking order reversed. Matt’s a very good surfer — one might call him “an elite” — and I am not. According to surfing’s unwritten rules, he had the right to look down on me. But he never did. His generosity of spirit in the water made me rethink my own behavior on land.
Three years after my first surf lesson, Matt and I haven’t really changed each other’s minds on major national issues. But we have changed each other. His fearlessness in consequential surf made me more courageous. His ability to go “over the ledge,” launching himself off breaking lips, helped me curb my overthinking. Ostracizing him wouldn’t have altered his behavior — and it would have made my own life worse.
I suspect that’s true for Matt as well. While I’ve never asked if our friendship made him more open-minded — we’d find that embarrassing — I’m confident the answer is yes. Last year, when I briefly considered running for office, Matt said he’d vote for me. When I asked why, his answer had nothing to do with party or policy. “You’re a regular guy,” he told me. “You walk the dog.”
When I share stories about surfing with my brother-in-law, people often tell me about relationships in their own lives pushed to the brink by politics. Sometimes, they’re proud of ties they’ve severed. More often, they’re hoping for a way forward. How can we pierce bubbles of misinformation? Can friendships fractured in the Trump era be repaired?
My advice is always the same. Our differences are meaningful, but allowing them to mean everything is part of how we ended up here. When we cut off contacts, or let algorithms sort us into warring factions, we forget that not so long ago, we used to have things to talk about that didn’t involve politics. Shunning plays into the hands of demagogues, making it easier for them to divide us and even, in some cases, to incite violence.
There are, of course, some people so committed to odiousness that it defines them. If Stephen Miller wants a surf lesson, I’ll decline. But are most people like that? In an age when banishment backfires, keeping the door open to unlikely friendship isn’t a betrayal of principles — it’s an affirmation of them.
By David Litt
Not too long ago, I felt a civic duty to be rude to my wife’s younger brother.
I met Matt Kappler in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license. My early memories of Matt are hazy — I was mostly trying to impress his parents. Still we got along, chatting amiably on holidays and at family events.
Then the pandemic hit, and our preferences began to feel like more than differences in taste. We were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn’t shocked when Matt didn’t get the Covid shot. But I was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self-preservation. It felt like he was tearing up the social contract that, until that point, I’d imagined we shared.
Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact completely. As it was, on the rare and always outdoor occasions when we saw each other, I spoke in disapproving snippets.
“Work’s been good?”
“Mhrmm.”
My frostiness wasn’t personal. It was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?
I wasn’t the only one thinking this. A 2021 essay for USA Today declared, “It’s time to start shunning the ‘vaccine hesitant.’” An L.A. Times piece went further, arguing that to create “teachable moments,” it may be necessary to mock some anti-vaxxers’ deaths.
Shunning as a form of accountability goes back millenniums. In ancient Athens, a citizen deemed a threat to state stability could be “ostracized” — cast out of society for a decade. For much of history, banishment was considered so severe that it substituted for capital punishment. The whole point of Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter was to show she had violated norms — and to discourage others from doing so.
But that was before social media. We live in a world of online fandoms, choose-your-own-adventure information and parasocial relationships. Few people who lost friends over the vaccine changed their minds. They just got new friends. Those exiled from one version of society were quickly welcomed by another — an alternate universe full of grievance peddlers and conspiracy theorists who thrived on stories of victimized conservatives.
There has been a sorting into belief camps, algorithmically and in real life. It dictates whom we match with on dating apps and where we live. We block those we disagree with online, we leave the group chat, we don’t show up for Thanksgiving. Recent data suggests that today, one in five Americans is estranged from a family member over politics. More points of deep disagreement will surely arise: over Trump’s immigration crackdown and use of the military in domestic affairs, over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA mandates, over antisemitism, over a megabill that takes health care from the poor while cutting taxes for the rich.
No one is required to spend time with people they don’t care for. But those of us who feel an obligation to shun strategically need to ask: What has all this banishing accomplished? It’s not just ineffective. It’s counterproductive.
These days, ostracism might just hurt the ostracizer more than the ostracizee.
I wish I could say I learned this through self-reflection and study. What actually happened is that I started surfing. After moving to the Jersey Shore in 2022, I signed up for lessons. Despite my advanced age of 35 and lack of natural talent, I got hooked. Matt was the only other surfer I knew. I put my principled unfriendliness aside.
From the moment we began paddling out together, I could tell my cold-shoulder strategy had backfired. I’d spent the peak of the pandemic in a cultural bubble, and he had done the same. Driving to a break or changing into our wet suits, he’d often express opinions — about the merits of vigilantism, or the health benefits of Mexican stem-cell injections — that I found slightly unhinged.
Where is this coming from? I wondered. The answer was nearly always “Joe Rogan’s podcast.”
I assumed our surf-buddy experiment would either fail spectacularly or bring Matt over to my side. Neither of those things occurred. Instead, the connections we found were tiny and unrelated to politics. We agree that “Shrimply Irresistible” is the perfect so-bad-it’s-good name for a seafood restaurant, and that Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” is a classic. Although I still wouldn’t call myself a Rogan fan, we share an appreciation for his interview with the surf legend Kelly Slater. Matt and I remain very different, yet we’ve reached what is, in today’s America, a radical conclusion: We don’t always approve of each other’s choices, but we like each other.
It helped that in the ocean, our places in the pecking order reversed. Matt’s a very good surfer — one might call him “an elite” — and I am not. According to surfing’s unwritten rules, he had the right to look down on me. But he never did. His generosity of spirit in the water made me rethink my own behavior on land.
Three years after my first surf lesson, Matt and I haven’t really changed each other’s minds on major national issues. But we have changed each other. His fearlessness in consequential surf made me more courageous. His ability to go “over the ledge,” launching himself off breaking lips, helped me curb my overthinking. Ostracizing him wouldn’t have altered his behavior — and it would have made my own life worse.
I suspect that’s true for Matt as well. While I’ve never asked if our friendship made him more open-minded — we’d find that embarrassing — I’m confident the answer is yes. Last year, when I briefly considered running for office, Matt said he’d vote for me. When I asked why, his answer had nothing to do with party or policy. “You’re a regular guy,” he told me. “You walk the dog.”
When I share stories about surfing with my brother-in-law, people often tell me about relationships in their own lives pushed to the brink by politics. Sometimes, they’re proud of ties they’ve severed. More often, they’re hoping for a way forward. How can we pierce bubbles of misinformation? Can friendships fractured in the Trump era be repaired?
My advice is always the same. Our differences are meaningful, but allowing them to mean everything is part of how we ended up here. When we cut off contacts, or let algorithms sort us into warring factions, we forget that not so long ago, we used to have things to talk about that didn’t involve politics. Shunning plays into the hands of demagogues, making it easier for them to divide us and even, in some cases, to incite violence.
There are, of course, some people so committed to odiousness that it defines them. If Stephen Miller wants a surf lesson, I’ll decline. But are most people like that? In an age when banishment backfires, keeping the door open to unlikely friendship isn’t a betrayal of principles — it’s an affirmation of them.
