When Your Son Turns MAGA

Several weeks ago, a journalist from the New York Times reached out to me. She came across my Medium story from a couple of years ago where I noted that my oldest son — he was finishing high school at the time — was leaning conservative in his views. Back then, I found this curious considering he’d spent all of his formative years in California, initially in the Bay Area and later in Southern California. Orange County, where we lived, is known to be more conservative, but California is still California — a very Democratic state.

“We are doing a story about conservative children of liberal parents,” she said.

I agreed, and we scheduled a call.

I took the journalist through our story and emphasized several times that overidentifying with political labels — “liberal,” “right,” “pro-Trump” and so on — is something I resist. For most of my adult life, I’ve considered myself a liberal — and I remain such — but the most important thing is that I form my own independent opinions on individual topics. If some of these opinions are different from the values assigned to one party or another, there shouldn’t be shaming or canceling or all this primitive labeling. Not liking Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate doesn’t make you a racist or misogynist. Questioning the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports doesn’t make you phobic-something. Liking J.D. Vance’s memoir doesn’t make you MAGA. And so on. In my experience, most of the shaming in recent years came from the left, and that’s why in the most recent…