“Irreparable moral divide.” Now, today. The Nazis, well we were competing against them in the Olympics in 1936. So it took a while. Then they started invading other countries, WWII, they lost, they did the Holocaust. Many people died, Germans as well. The point being at the end of it all, we did more or less have to take a lot of the people back. People that had some sort of support for what the Nazis were doing. The worst ones, though. Someone that just voted for Hitler and served in the German Army, no, we still dealt with them. At some point you have to be willing to do rehab if you have a lot of people.
So the “irreparable moral divide.” We still need to remember that these are all people. Unless your contention is that we’re two different species now. That the people on the other side of the fence are not really people at all. That is the stuff of egging on to war. A lot of people die in wars one way or another. Be careful what you wish for. “Irreparable.” There’s no way they could even become human again, apparently. Interesting.
That people want to take this down to the housewife level, right now, this very moment… I’ve pointed out the dangers in that.
I agree that rehabilitating is necessary: these are still people, and while they might be doing (or building up to doing) awful things, a racist Trump-voting Republican is, at the end of the day, a person.
On the other hand, “we can’t just exterminate them,” while true and important, tends to drive people to the opposite: “what are you going to do? Just let them be racist / destroy longstanding cultural institutions / challenge important cultural values (such as education).” That’s a problem, because as we’ve seen over the last forty years, one-sided bipartisanship and appeasement only emboldens.
So how do you heal the divide / rehabilitate / paper over the cracks without just giving in and tolerating (enabling, emboldening) the intolerable and unacceptable?
The only answer I can see is some real leadership in both political and cultural spheres to suck some energy out of the angry cranks at the extremes, and to give us something to strive for, together, but I just don’t see anyone really capable of that, and when someone does come along (Greta Thunberg springs to mind, though she’s not American), she is vilified and attacked from those extremes to such a degree that any ability to lead is tainted.
Sure they’re people. And I agree we should work to bring everyone together, where possible. But it’s one thing to work with a Trump supporter, or have on-laws who voted for him. A marriage is (for many) a very special and intimate relationship. (and it’s a voluntary relationship. I don’t choose my co-workers, my neighbors, or my in-laws, but I do get a say in who my spouse is) I know that personally, I could not “share my life” with someone on the other side of this divide. That’s not what I’m looking for in a marriage. Naturally, we don’t have to agree on everything, but I’m not going to stay married to someone who could ever vote for Trump.
My husband is a Trump supporter, a Republican, and a Baptist. I am the polar opposite of all those things. We don’t talk about politics or religion. We have two TVs in two separate rooms.
My husband is a former Marine, and I believe he would take a bullet for me. He is a gentleman, he’s smart (about non-political things), and he’s funny. He got pulled into the Trump orbit along with so many other Republicans. Don’t ask me how.
On the plus side, he does believe that COVID is killing people. We have had all our shots and usually wear a mask when we go in stores. He’s not a racist. He used to say some questionable things about Jews, but since my best friend is Jewish, and he has met her and seen that she’s a nice person, he moved on from that.
I don’t have any advice, aside from “Leave ideology aside. Forget anger. Talk honestly if you have a chance.” Good luck.
Not the same thing as marriage, but my mother has been going deep into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories of late. To be sure, she always had a bit of that in her for decades, but it’s become far worse of late. I am not sure what to do about it. Up until recently, I had tolerated it under the rationale of “it’s not that bad” and “at her elderly age, it’s not possible to budge her out of it anymore”. But now that she’s making huge decisions about money, and Covid vaccines, it’s gotten to the point where her hoax/fraud/delusion thinking can have serious practical consequences for her and the rest of the family. In other words, it’s become too serious to be tolerated.
WTF? Anyone who supported those things would also be people to cut out of your life. Obviously. Are you under the impression that people in the Union married people in the Confederacy? That Americans married Nazis or people who supported Japan in WWII?
There are lines beyond which a moral person cannot just look the other way. There are times when you have to say “No, we can’t just agree to disagree.”
Close personal relationships (of which marriage is the closest) have to be built on trust. And morality is a part of trust. I have to be able to trust that you will not do certain evil things that harm me. And if you support someone who has done those same harmful things to others, then I can’t trust you to not do them to me.
It’s not like we advocate killing these people. In fact, one of the things we wish to prevent is a war—you know, what happened in those other cases you mentioned. But there’s a large gap between that and having to be best friends and marry them.
You can advocate talking with these people without advocating we have to let them into our most intimate and most vulnerable spaces.
The OP is free to stay married if he thinks he can handle it. If he thinks he can come to some acceptable arrangement, great. If he thinks she still loves him and would be willing to compromise, that’s awesome! That’s a possible way to get through, even.
But he is under no obligation to remain married to her if he does not think this is possible. If he believes it would hurt too much, or that she’s no longer the woman he fell in love with (or even perhaps never was), he’s not obligated to ignore all that.
OP is disabled. His wife is helping take care of him. I hate to say it, but he’s probably going to have to agree to disagree with her on this topic, if he wants to maintain his quality of life.