As we enter the holiday season, most of us look forward to spending time with family and friends. The holidays are a time for laughter and joy, even for healing and forgiveness. Unless, of course, you voted for Donald Trump. It seems that Trump Derangement Syndrome isn’t just alive and well but is thriving in certain sectors of our society. If Dr. Amanda J. Calhoun has her way, your liberal friends and family will avoid you this holiday season, ostensibly to protect their own mental health. Because Trump voters are bad. Too bad she seems to have forgotten that you don’t have to talk politics at the dinner table. Too bad she has forgotten that you can politely say you don’t want to discuss politics and that most folks will honor your request. Gee, I wonder if she had the same advice for those who didn’t support Biden four years ago. (Hint: that’s a rhetorical question because we all know she didn’t.)

Dr. Calhoun is chief resident of the child psychiatry program at Yale. Her “cause” is clear: racism. Unfortunately, she doesn’t see how her own actions fall fully into the realm of prejudice. Or maybe she does and she just doesn’t care. Beyond her comments about avoiding anyone who voted for Trump during the holidays, she has proudly proclaimed how her husband isn’t allowed to have white friends unless and until she has met them and given her approval. (Mind you, her husband is white.)

Though Calhoun is married to a white man, she is openly hesitant toward Caucasians and gatekeeps her husband’s white acquaintances. In a 2022 X thread, she said she and her husband “left our hometown” because “white neighbors would meet my husband and I together, and then straight up ignore me when I greeted them if I was alone.” As a result, Calhoun wrote, she requires her husband’s white acquaintances to meet her first before befriending them.

“My husband dropped a lot of white friends and acquaintances. He doesn’t befriend white folks now unless they meet me first and respect me.”

If a woman wrote about her husband putting such requirements on her friendships, the internet would be in an uproar, calling him abusive and urging her to leave him. But this mental health professional apparently doesn’t see anything wrong with it.

Going back to her comments about it being okay not to be around folks who voted “against you”, Calhoun goes on to say it’s okay to tell them why you won’t be with them. What I wonder is if she means that you then hang up/walk out/whatever without any discussion. After all, to actually talk about why you’re uncomfortable around them would mean having an exchange of ideas and that other person obviously has evil ideas that are bad for you.

So much for trying to work out differences, find out why someone took an action they did, or possibly even learning you might be wrong about something. Ideology over everything for the win, right?

Of course, the ladies (and I use that term loosely) of The View had to get into the discussion as well. After all, for most of them, they’ve never met an anti-Trump argument they didn’t fully embrace. Sunny Hostin fully embraced Calhoun’s comments. Whoopie noted she wouldn’t put an LGBTQ+ child into an uncomfortable position. But there were a few calls for sanity. Ana Navarro noted that her husband has five children. Most of them and their spouses voted for Trump even though the two of them voted Harris. Her husband, who sounds like he has his head on straight, said he wasn’t going to let politics “split up” their family.

Alyssa Farah Griffin took it even further. “I’m all for healthy boundaries, but tend to think mashed potatoes are the great equalizer, like, you don’t want to spend Thanksgiving by yourself because you can’t set politics aside. . . “I find that every day in every job I worked in and social circles I run in, I’ve been around people with different politics and it’s never gotten in the way of having friendships. It simply hasn’t. I wouldn’t have had any friends.”

For those who are considering following Calhoun’s advice as we continue into the holiday season, consider the following. Would you feel the same way if Kamala Harris won the election and someone in the health professions told those who supported Trump or any other candidate it was all right not to attend holiday functions where they would have to mingle with Harris supporters? After all, there are folks who had concerns about what might happen to our country if Harris won. Or would she have simply said to avoid talking politics?

Consider the comments beginning at the 45 second mark of the following video, again referencing Calhoun’s comments:

“You don’t have to agree on everything.”

Who knew? Wow, you can have disagreements on politics, religion, pretty much anything and still take part in holiday celebrations.

How? Remember the adage that you don’t talk politics and religion, especially not at the dinner table. Remember you can tell someone you don’t want to discuss something. Remember as well that you can change the topic or even walk away if they don’t take the hint. But you don’t have to cut yourself off from folks just because you don’t agree about who won an election.

For now, we’ll have to wait to hear what else Calhoun might have to say because Yale apparently didn’t like the way her comments went viral. Gee, I wonder why?

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