You Don't Need to Make Nice with Trump Voters This Holiday Season
Gabrielle Blair of Design Mom on how to handle your post-election anger
There are a few voices I keep thinking of in these terrible weeks after the election.
One is Gabrielle Blair’s, who I started following when I came across her posts excoriating Trump supporters.
Blair’s blog, Design Mom, has been challenging ideas about being a mother, a writer, and a designer, for almost two decades.
She has also taken a very public, very outraged, stand about this year’s election results.
“Being friendly and patiently listening to people justify the reasons they voted for someone to take away your rights will not heal the country,” she wrote.
“Indulging the fear-mongering lies they cling to, and trying to help them feel understood, is exactly how we got here in the first place.”
Blair was a particularly powerful voice for me, because, unlike many of the women I know and I follow, who tend to be liberal Jews of the coastal variety, Blair is originally from Utah and is a practicing Mormon. Blair speaks from a position of knowing intimately many people with whom she might deeply disagree. But she has the bravery — and the authority — to speak out.
Another example: She’s just written a new, devastating essay that digs deeply into the reaction of the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.
As with her Instagram posts, Blair is having a direct argument, and she does not back down:
This is the death you think is normalizing murders? What about the deaths of all the people who had claims denied by their healthcare insurance? Insurance those families paid a lot of money for! If a nurse intentionally denied a patient life-saving care, that nurse could be charged and tried for murder. But if a CEO and his employees deny a patient life-saving care then you think that’s not murder? Fuck you.
I originally reached out to talk to her about her new book, written with her husband Ben Blair: The Kids Are Alright: Parenting with Confidence in an Uncertain World.
(I read it while sitting side-by-side with my husband, who was reading Blair’s first book, Ejaculate Responsibly. Both are great stocking-stuffers/first night of Hanukkah/also-no-holiday-needed gifts!)
Blair and I spoke just before Thanksgiving — about politics, parenting, and being a grown-up in a complicated and unsettling time.
The conversation was rich, so I’ve divided it into two parts: first about politics, and then, about creating a family culture where everyone in your household can thrive.
But before we dive in…
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I’m interested in the connection between the way you're responding publicly to the results of this election, and the values that you're describing in your new book, in terms of how you've committed to your family and family culture.
And we’ll talk about the book, but I wanted to start with this thing you've said after the election: It's not our job to make people who hate us comfortable.
We don't need to invite people who voted to do us harm into our homes and into our personal lives. What is your thinking now — as it relates to holding Trump voters accountable — and what does that look like for you personally?
I still feel very angry, much more angry than I remember feeling in 2016.
I do harp on about accountability, and I think it's something we don't do very well in our country, and it causes problems, in my opinion. Had Donald Trump ever been held accountable for anything he's done wrong, I think we might see some different actions from him, but he just simply has not been held accountable.
We know he's a criminal – this isn't a thing we need to argue about – he's never had to face any consequences because of his criminal actions. That's certainly how the media treats him.
He's created this new Department of… what?
The so-called “Department of Government Efficiency.”
It's ridiculous in every respect. I'm watching the news about this, and it doesn't exist. It has no legal power. But people are treating it like it has power. And if we're treating it like it has power, then it has power.
So all of that ties into this accountability.
Yes, accountability is important. I think it's important in our relationships, and not just for Donald Trump. If you want different actions or different outcomes, accountability is how we get there.
Blanket forgiveness all the time, as beautiful as it feels, and as much as we want it for ourselves, is just like, “I don't want to be accountable. Just forgive me. I was doing my best.”
That doesn't actually change our actions.
What’s actually going to change our behaviors? Accountability can.
I'll use seat belts as an example. When I was 16, I got my license. Seat belt laws were just kind of coming in across every every state, and I remember thinking they were ridiculous. It seemed like extra rules, and cars didn't seem that unsafe to my little teenage brain.
Then I was with some cool teenagers that were down in my town for spring break, and we all wanted to go joyriding. They would not even start the car until we all put our seat belts on. I had this instant shift like, “Oh, wow. Okay, so seat belts are cool.”
It was definitely a peer pressure situation. It changed the way I thought about seat belts.
But, also, think about when a grandkid says, “Grandpa, you have to wear your seatbelt.” "Grandpa goes, “Okay. I'll wear my seatbelt.”
So we are holding each other accountable.
Then there are legal repercussions: I'm going to wear my seatbelt because if I get pulled over for some other thing, now I'm going to have an extra ticket on top of that.
There is going to be a repercussion. There is going to be a consequence. Our behavior changed because there were consequences, and because there was accountability. That's how it works.
I'm wondering if you felt there were consequences for you, or if you were concerned about consequences, in taking such a public stand on Trump’s re-election, and the people who voted for him?
For sure, there's consequences. Professionally, there's always consequences for anything like this. I can watch my follower count. I get emails, I get messages, I get angry comments, right? There will be people who don't want to come to my conference, even sponsors that may feel like this is too bold of a stand. Things like that.
So that may have some material impact for you.
Oh, it's very real, and this isn't the first time I’ve faced that kind of thing.
But I am someone that has a lot of safety nets. My husband's not going to leave me. My kids aren't going to reject me. My community isn't going to reject me.
There are repercussions as far as my personal life and relationships. We have some visitors coming, and I hadn't talked to them in a long time, and didn't know how they voted, and I was nervous.
I actually asked their daughter, who I have been in closer contact with, “Just out of curiosity, did your parents, by chance, vote for Donald Trump?”
She said, “No, definitely not.”
And I was like, “Oh, thank you. Because I don't want them here if they did.”
And I would have had to say, “Guys, I don't think you want to be here. I'm gonna just be angry at you.”
Like, why do you want to come to my house?
It's real anger.
Oh, it’s real anger. I'm not just being a bad sport. I'm angry. I physically can't respect you anymore. I don't trust you. I don't want to be around you.
But there's been a little relief too. Like my mom, who's been a lifelong Republican until the Republican party went insane. This is a lifelong identity for her, and it's hard to have this big change. She's turning 80 this year.
She sent an email after the election, just talking about how she couldn't believe people had voted for this horrible man. And it was such a relief. She's in a very red part of the country. I'm sure so many people around her voted for Trump. It would be easy for her to hear the same news stories that they're hearing, and it would be easy for her, and probably easier for her, to just go with the flow of what's happening in her community. And she didn't. I was so happy about that. I'm so proud of her.
A lot of people have parents that voted for Trump, and if all you ever hear is Fox News or Newsmax or Joe Rogan or whoever else, you're living in this different reality than everyone else.
I try to feel compassion for that. But I had an easier time doing that in 2016. It's harder for me now.
For them to say, “Yeah, no, I'm pretending I don't know or I'm ignoring his criminal activity. Or, yeah, I think he's not associated with Project 2025.”
I'm like, dude, like, I could feel for you before, but now you're making an active choice. It's active ignorance.
It’s very willful.
Willful is a great word for it. So I have a harder time being patient, and feeling understanding. Why is it always the left that's supposed to be understanding? Why aren't they ever required to do anything?
Now that we're headed into the holidays and we're bringing people together, are there particular values that you're bringing into this holiday season, as it relates to your kids or your family?
I mean, honestly, I'm probably going to be more self-centered. Like, how am I going to survive? How can I get through this without being super angry at everyone all the time?
Well, if you don't have your own oxygen mask on, you can’t show up for anyone, right?
Right. I'm going to be more likely to help everyone else get to a better mindset if I'm okay. I really have been thinking about creativity and saying, “Let me make something beautiful that I can look at and be proud of and feel good about.” That's where my instinct is right now.
It makes sense that you would focus on how to take care of yourself in this particularly challenging time, because that really does make everything else possible.
And your children see that you're doing that. You're at the hosts of your house, and we have more adult children now, but even when they're little, if mom's grumpy and dad's grumpy, it is not going to be fun for anybody.
So like, figure out your own shit.
That was the alternate name of the new book, right?
Yeah, so you don't put it on the kids. No one's perfect, and we can't help it sometimes, and it happens. Then you’ve got to apologize and regroup and start over.
I want to feel like I've taken back control of my anger. So for me, I think it will help if I do something creative. Creativity can look a lot of different ways. For me, I think it's going to be about making something pretty great.
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This is powerful. I am so angry about what is happening.... trump voters bear the responsibility for every destructive act of the next administration.... i am afraid it is going to be worse than we can even imagine..... thank you for speaking out for the real silent majority. No trump voters at my table. No appeasement. No consent.
“Being friendly and patiently listening to people justify the reasons they voted for someone to take away your rights will not heal the country.” Black people know this. We been knowing this since 2016. I co-sign this piece in its entirety. Thanks for writing!