If your reaction to the midterms is 'there's more to life than politics', you're blinded by your own privilege

The polls hadn’t even closed in the US midterm elections yesterday when a number of people took to social media to claim that not everything has to be about politics.

Australian Claire Lehmon tweeted: “To all my American friends: I hope you get the outcome you’re hoping for today! But if not, remember that there are many things in life that are better than politics, such as art, beauty, nature, music, sex, food, exercise, friends, lovers, your kids, your connection with others”. But what was presumably intended as an innocuous, well-meaning message was interpreted by some as a sign of privilege on Lehmon’s part. As Twitter user Anthony Oliveira pointed out: “must be nice to be heterosexual and not have your art and sex and love politicised”.

In the United States, Colton Winters, a supporter of the Democratic Party’s Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, tweeted a photo of himself embracing a friend in a “Make America Great Again” t-shirt, with the caption: “At the end of the day, always remember that friendship is more important than politics”. The sentiment here, it seems, is that politics is something you engage with at the polling station, but soon return to everyday life and cast to the back of your mind.

These supposedly feel-good messages echo comments made by actor Hugh Jackman last week when he defended his friendship with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who recently attended his 50^th birthday celebrations. “I’ve known those guys for 15 years,” Jackman told Variety in a press interview at the premiere of political drama The Front Runner, adding: “We don’t talk politics at birthday parties”.

As Jackman is Australian and therefore ineligible to vote in US elections, one might assume that he chooses to steer clear of the topic of politics entirely — but he supported Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 and urged Americans to participate in the midterms. However, his tight-lipped stance on his friendship with Ivanka (who is far more than just your average Republican voter) sounded a little anaemic compared to the passionate remarks made in support of the environment, gay rights and women’s issues by his co-star Sara Paxton and director Jason Reitman at the same premiere.

“The personal is political” is a slogan originally used by second-wave feminists in the 1960s, to express their belief that the lived experiences of women are inseparable from systemic gender inequality. The same can be said of any marginalised group in Trump’s America, where the lives and bodies of women, black people, Native Americans, LGBT+ people, disabled people are politicised on a daily basis. In other words, everything is political – and if you haven’t noticed that, then you are living in a bubble of privilege.

Let’s say you’re a left-leaning voter, and you have a friend on the far-right end of the spectrum, who supports the Trump administration’s medical erasure of trans people or continued imprisonment of immigrant children. They are telling you in no uncertain terms what they think of those groups and what their wider world view is. But it’s easier to maintain a friendship with somebody who holds those prejudices when you are not yourself affected by them.

I’m not saying friendships or family relationships across political divides are impossible. It’s just that in 2018, when the ideological chasm between America’s two main political parties is so vast, it’s hard to see how Trump’s racist, xenophobic, misogynist rhetoric (not to mention the far-right groups it emboldens) can be discussed as if it simply constitutes lively dinner conversation.

The policies that this administration is rolling out have very real consequences for millions of Americans. When you fail to challenge friends and family on the part they are playing in the oppression of those people, when you avoid those conversations because they are awkward, you risk becoming complicit in that oppression.

It’s not enough for people to vote progressively on one day and think they’ve done their part. If you care about marginalised groups, then you have to look outside your bubble to see how the votes of your right-leaning loved ones are actively causing harm, and start having some difficult conversations. Because ignoring politics is a luxury that many people don’t have.