Toxic Political Relationships

Imagine if your best friend told you their significant other was verbally abusive, emotionally manipulative, and a pathological liar but this time their significant other ‘promised it would be different.’ This time, they promised things would really change. You as their best friend would hopefully tell them that their significant other is full of it and that your friend needs to run away from that relationship.

Now imagine your best friend comes to you and says, “Vote for Trump! He’s gonna build a wall and Mexico is gonna pay for it!” or, “Vote for Sanders! He’s going to implement single payer health care!”

Someone not in the same political camp would probably tell their friend those candidates are lying to them. Someone who shares the same political allegiances would probably rally around the candidate with their friend and blame everybody else when they never deliver on their promises.

For some reason, we can spot toxic relationships when other people are in them, but we are oblivious when we are in one.

Twitter is full of Democrats laughing at Trump for not keeping his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall. But in a recent Democratic debate, after John Delaney said that we need “real solutions, not impossible promises,” Elisabeth Warren tore into him saying, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.” 

Warren received thunderous applause from the Democratic audience, and Democrats on Twitter are busy singing her praises for arguing that politicians should keep lying and manipulating with impossible promises.

Rather than supporting politicians seeking power on the coattails of impossible promises (or worse yet, politicians like Warren who defend politicians making impossible promises), voters should be leaving toxic political relationships in the dust.

Insist on the same things in your politicians that you would tell your best friend to expect in a relationship – honesty, transparency, and sincerity.

If that means you’re facing a break up with your favorite politician, then grab a gallon of ice cream, your favorite sit com, and suck it up.