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The political divide in the United States has been growing steadily over the last few years, to the point where it’s shattering longtime friendships and even tearing apart families.

Kevin Williams is a popular musician, based out of North San Diego County, who has played in local clubs and bars for more than 20 years. His son Reagan Williams is a musician as well, a twenty-one-year-old guitar whiz who fronts his own blues band. But over the last couple of years, the gigs that used to come so easily have become increasingly hard to find. Both father and son now mostly play from the back of a flatbed truck that they drive around to popular local gathering spots, places such as Turnarounds, a makeshift beachfront parking lot off the Coast Highway in Carlsbad. You might think the pandemic is to blame, thanks to the toll it took on live gatherings of all sorts. But the elder Williams would disagree. “At the height of the pandemic,” he attests, “we played more shows on the trailer than any other musician was performing.” But, he says, his efforts earned him “not one single recognition from anyone in the local music community.”

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The senior Williams attributes this to just one thing: his vocal support of former President Donald Trump, support which frequently takes the form of Facebook posts — posts that he says have cost him innumerable friends on the social media platform. “I’ve been a musician in liberal circles my whole adult life,” he says, “but now that I’ve been very vocal, politically, over the last two years, it’s impossible to get gigs. It’s mind-blowing. The blues community rejects my son wholeheartedly, and the lady who runs the blues society has literally called me a racist. A racist? I used to smoke weed on the same bong with my black roommate, and my son’s godmother — who, if me and my wife Summer had died before Reagan turned eighteen, would have inherited everything to take care of him — is black. So for me to be called a racist...” He trails off, bemused.

As for Facebook, Williams says he’s spent “thirty to ninety days at a time in Facebook jail for telling the truth, for saying things like, ‘Andrew Cuomo grabs women.’” He says the suspensions have come because a former friend keeps reporting him. So why not just unfriend him and avoid the hassle? “I would never cancel anybody over politics,” Williams says. “This is a guy in my neighborhood who’s hired me twice to play gigs for parties in his yard. Now he says I’m bullying him on Facebook and reports me. But that’s fine. I couldn’t care less.”

Divided we fall?

The political divide in the United States has been growing steadily over the last few years, to the point where it’s shattering longtime friendships and even tearing apart families. Donald Trump, the border crisis, Roe vs. Wade, the storming of the Capitol — pick a side on any of these, and don’t you dare socialize with anyone who disagrees with you. A New York Times-Siena College poll, released in October 2022, found that nearly one in five registered voters said politics had hurt their relationships with friends or family. Back in 2020, a Pew Research survey found that the majority of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden voters said they had “just a few or no friends who support the other candidate.” That same year, a study from the Public Religion Research Institute found that eight out of every ten Republicans believe the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists, while eight out of every ten Democrats believe the Republican Party has been taken over by racists.

David Tweedy is a clinical psychologist with Senior Medical Associates of Carlsbad. He advises that family members and friends on opposite ends of the political spectrum simply avoid discussing politics “and focus on other common interests instead. If it comes up, they can reinforce the ground rules of having no political conversations,” Tweedy says. “I try to inspire people to focus on being their best self, to limit their alcohol consumption, and play games to help people re-engage with each other in a fun and safe way.” The main thing, says Tweedy, “is for you to keep emotional control and not be triggered by others’ insensitive comments. If you feel that you are losing control, don’t get upset — take a walk, do something that distracts the discussion, or kindly suggest that this is not a good time or place for this topic. If the offender refuses to relent, take several slow breaths and think about the things that you admire about that person — and simply don’t respond. If you find yourself being triggered by certain statements or unsolicited opinions, it becomes your challenge to overcome. It’s personal now, which is great, as you have more control over your own reactions than you do over others.”

Hypnotist for Trump

Several San Diegans interviewed for this story shared experiences similar to the shunning and shaming that Kevin Williams experienced. Some were happy to go public, while others asked not to be identified by name, fearing that by recounting their experiences, they would risk further ostracization. Among the former is Marshall Sylver, one of San Diego’s better-known public figures. After launching his career — first as a magician and then as “the greatest hypnotist of all time,” an act which got him on David Letterman six times — he wound up headlining in Las Vegas and touring the world, teaching business and personal development. He now divides his time between Las Vegas and a beach house in Carlsbad.

Sylver is an outspoken conservative who has no qualms about expressing his views in person — at presentations and on social media sites such as Facebook. “While I don’t identify as either a Democrat or a Republican, I certainly do identify as very conservative,” he says. “I believe in border walls. I believe in questioning elections when they are worthy of questioning. I believe in individual rights as to what does or does not go into our bodies. And I believe Donald Trump was the greatest thing that ever happened to this country. I personally shared the stage with him 30 times, so I have insights into the man that average people do not. And I think the reason there is so much opposition to Donald Trump has nothing to do with the Democratic or Republican parties, and everything to do with disrupting corrupt politics as usual.”

Rick Stephens lost a good friend and father of his god-daughter due to his political beliefs.

Sylver’s views led to a rift in his family. “I come from a large family — I have ten siblings — and our family, during these strongly political times, has been substantially divided. There are people in my family who won’t talk to me. I’m completely open to talking to anybody in my family. I love them, and I wish them very well. But I also know the challenges. For whatever reason, they have come to a conclusion different from what I hold, and they don’t want to be near me.” It’s sad, he says. “There was a time when people could have different points of view and still like each other. But whether it’s big tech or the mainstream media or just devolving social graces, it just seems that people are all about ‘Either my way or the highway’ — and I think that’s bad for everyone. And at least in my personal experience, right-leaning and conservative types tend to be more polite and quiet about their opinions, and often won’t say anything, while left-leaning, liberal types have — in my experience — been louder, more vocal and more violent.”

Sylver says that in addition to the rift within his own family, he’s lost dozens of friends over the last few years, both in real life and on Facebook. How does that make him feel? “Let me put it this way,” he says. “Years ago, when I quit doing drugs, I lost every friend I had because I realized we had nothing in common. And when I refuse to be quiet about my belief in our great country and what it means to the future of my children, it’s a very similar situation. People sift themselves out. I’ve been attacked plenty of times by people because I’m willing to have an opinion, and there’s no doubt that I’ve lost substantial sales by taking a stand. But at the end of the day, if we don’t stand for what we believe in, then what’s the point? I like the fact that I have an opinion about how many genders there are, about what should and should not be taught in public schools, and about respecting law enforcement and holding them accountable, simultaneously.”

In 2020, he recalls, three days of Black Live Matters protests were planned for Carlsbad village. “The organizer, a young white woman, decided it would be held right in the heart of Carlsbad, and this was at a time when we were all still reeling, attempting to recover from the first covid-19 lockdown. I called her up and said, ‘Do you realize every business in town is going to have to board up their windows?’ And when I said, ‘Couldn’t you hold it outside of the village?’ — to protect these businesses that had just gone through a lockdown — I got massively attacked. They said I was a racist. I said, ‘I’m not a racist at all. I’m just against the fact that you’re effectively shutting down every business in our village, regardless of what they believe in, and that impacts everyone in a negative way, because it inhibits commerce.”

MAGA gay

Mark Patton — not his real name — is a gay Republican who lives in East County. When Donald Trump first announced his intention to run for president, Patton talked up his candidacy on Nextdoor. “Immediately, liberals started attacking me, and then I would end up getting canceled,” he says, “meaning they [Nextdoor] would kick me off for five or however many days.”

After the 2016 election, Patton continued to be vilified for his political views — which he was not shy about sharing. He’s worn Trump T-shirts out in public, even for the annual Gay Pride parade, and he flies a Trump flag outside his home. “There’s a friend of mine who lives down the street from me, and he’s liberal,” he says. “And he says his friends were appalled by my flag, and when he told them I was gay, they really had a cow about it.” His vocal support of Donald Trump and the Republican party, he says, has led to his being shunned within the gay community, and the abrupt loss of several longtime friends. “I play on a softball league,” he says, “and there were some who wouldn’t play with me because I am a Republican, a MAGA supporter. People didn’t like me and didn’t want to be friends with me, because they thought I was too Republican. No one said anything to me directly, but I know they went behind my back and didn’t want me to go on tournaments with them. They’d try to find someone else if they could. To this day, I don’t really practice with them. I’m still on the team, but I am less interactive with them because of this.”

Patton says he also has been shunned on gay social media websites such as Grindr and Growlr. “I get really attacked when I’m on there. On one site, I did a profile — I just wanted to see what would happen — so all I put was ‘Trump 2020,’ and the vulgarity of [the responses]... I didn’t say anything to anybody, but the attacks came from all the gay liberals: ‘FU.’ ‘You’re a joke.’ ‘Hope you rot in hell.’ I could go on and on. They never pulled the profile, but people would not talk to me. I personally feel our gay community discriminates against gay Republicans. I think they are the worst out of all the people who discriminate; if they find out you’re a Trump supporter, they don’t want to have anything to do with you. They will attack you.”

What hurts most, Patton says, is that several longtime friends no longer want anything to do with him. One in particular was a good buddy “who I’ve known for twelve years,” he says. “We’d talk most every day, and hung out all the time — going to movies, Padres games, just regular stuff. I knew his friends didn’t like me to hang out with them, because every time they brought up politics, I would immediately chime in. I wouldn’t hold back. But now, we don’t even really talk at all anymore.”

Just don’t engage

One North County man does what he can to avoid political discussions with a very close family member, but sometimes finds it can’t be avoided – much to his frustration. “I’m very middle of the road, and this person is a far-right conspiracy theorist,” he says. “They got brainwashed, because they think everything outside of these conspiracy theories is fake news. In this realm of podcast people they love, they are the only ones telling the truth, and this person is stuck in that.” It’s gotten to the point, he says, “where we can’t really talk about anything other than very narrow topics. We talk about food, we talk about family, and that’s about it.” This close relative, he says, was never political until about three years ago, “when Trump just kind of pulled them in: ‘He’s a great man; he’s trying to make America great again.’ I asked, ‘When was America great? When white men owned slaves? During Reagan? I can rip that apart as well. He gave us a lot of problems.’”

Another San Diegan, we’ll call him Alan Ross, is a closet Republican. He works at a manufacturing business and moonlights as a musician in two bands. His political stripes, he says, remain hidden. “I never make any political comments online,” he says. “I really don’t want to be outed as voting for Donald Trump, but I did. I voted for him because he’s for small business, and what he did while in office helped my business. But the uptick, after he was elected, of people who don’t want to be your friend anymore if you voted for him, is just crazy. It seems like if you’re a Democrat you can go ahead and say whatever you want — I noticed this on Facebook — and you have a whole legion of people who will back you up. But any Republican who says anything, they grab onto that person. I have friends who have told me, ‘This person is dead to me now,’ just because he’s a Republican. I saw, pretty early on, that people were losing friends, so I just shut down. I haven’t lost any friends, because I don’t go looking for trouble. I have a great friend, I love him, but I can’t say anything to him online about his anti-Trump rants, because he would immediately attack me and our friendship would be over. It’s really sad to me, because I think friendships should come way before politics. So I just don’t engage.”

That’s it, I’m done

Rick Stephens, however, takes issue with Ross’ assertion that it’s the liberals who are canceling the conservatives. A former San Diegan, Stephens is black and very, very liberal. He recently retired as a director at a New York City sports broadcaster, a job he got after moving back to his native New Jersey in the ‘80s. He still has a large cadre of friends in San Diego, but their number shrunk by one just a few months ago, after a disturbing phone conversation with an old surfing buddy who now lives in East County. The two met 40 years ago when they were both working at a San Diego car dealership. They became fast friends. Both were in their twenties, both were the sons of military families — Stephens’ dad was a Marine, while his buddy’s pop was in the Navy — and they had lots of common interests. They were even roommates, for a spell. “We were just like the best of friends,” Stephens says. “We lived in the same apartment together, and after I moved back East we stayed in touch. When his daughter was baptized, I was co-godfather, along with a lieutenant commander in the Navy.”

Stephens and his friend saw each other whenever Stephens returned to San Diego for a visit, and frequently spoke on the phone. But after the November 2016 election of Donald Trump as president, Stephens says, he noticed a pronounced change in his longtime friend. “He was a surf rat, a beach bum, just like me, but after Trump got elected, I realized he went far right. We were talking about it, and he would make this case about how much he hates Nancy Pelosi and how great Trump was. We got into a disagreement about the whole politics of Trump, and then he made a comment about me having a low IQ because I was too stupid to realize that Trump is the greatest thing in the world. I said, ‘Fuck you man,’ and hung up.”

The two didn’t talk for a year and a half. Stephens missed his old friend, but was chagrined every time he thought back to that conversation. Eventually the lieutenant commander with whom Stephens shared godfather duties brokered a peace. “He intervened and said, ‘You guys gotta talk. This is not good. You’ve been friends too long and shouldn’t argue over politics.’ So he got us back together, we talked, and we agreed to not talk about politics.” When Stephens’ friend got into some trouble with the law, and asked his old buddy to write him a character reference, he did. “Even after all the crap he had said to me, I agreed. I wrote that we were longtime friends, and that he was a man of character — even though I was lying at that point, because I knew he was a Trumpster. I did all that for him.”

Still, something sour remained. “Fast forward to the insurrection. When Trump was out of office. I asked him, ‘So what do you think about what he did, and the whole way everything went down? –What do you think of Donald Trump now?’ And he said he was still a supporter. I said, ‘But the guy, like, he tried to overthrow the government, dude, what part of this don’t you believe?’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s all left-wing news, you can’t believe any of it.’ I said, ‘Obviously, you watch Fox News,’ and he said, ‘Right.’ And I said, ‘So all the other channels say one thing, but you will go along with Fox News, which is an arm of the Republican party?’ And he said yes. Well, to make a long story short, we went back and forth, and finally he said to me, ‘Rick, you know what? I gotta tell you, you’re a stupid fucking nigger.’ Jesus Christ! I said, ‘Really, dude? That’s where you went?’ And that’s the last time we spoke.”

Stephens gets emotional while recounting the incident. “It’s like, this is a guy I lived with. He was my best friend, I was godfather to his child...we were besties, you know? I knew his parents; I would go over and have Thanksgiving dinner with them. And for him to go there and call me a nigger…. That’s it, I’m done.”