Don't Unfriend Anyone

Many of my friends have un-friended [former] friends over this ever increasing divide between conservatives and liberals, or, perhaps, 'Trumps' and 'anti-Trumps'. I have not unfriended a single person, nor lost a single friend over this divide, not because I am not concerned over the divergence in points of view or interpretation of facts, but because I fully embrace the idea that it is more complicated than a two-sided arguent. One could argue, "no, it is not more complicated than that; you are either on the right side of history and today, or you are not". We haven't reached that point yet, and I pray that we never will. Right now, we are locked into the kind of gridlock that our founding fathers contemplated in our system of government, i.e. to ensure that only the very best legislation passes, with the caveat that we may not reach the kind of legislative gridlock until after the mid-term elections. In the meantime, while I uniformly disapprove of Trump's behavior, and the implementation of some of his policies, I do not uniformly disapprove of all of this policies. Therefore, I do not uniformly disapprove of anyone's support for Trump. I do wish that people - all people, conservatives and liberals - would be more careful and contemplative in thier thinking and their accounting of the facts, but I also wish that we would hold each other to account in a more embracing way, because I think people tend to calcify into unreasonable positions when they feel like they are being attacked. This is the number one reason I have not unfriended anyone, nor consider any friend a not-friend just based on their political views. My friends need to know that I am their friend, and that I understand their calculus in their political views. They also need to know that I will hold them to account on their thinking and their arguments, not becuase I inherently think they are wrong and I am right, but because I inherently want to know why they think the way they do, and am open to modifying my point of view with theirs, and I expect them to do the same when there is merit. This philosophy, I think, will go much further towards a better 'third option' than this current, two-sided trend will ever do.