Cut Off or Reach Out?

November 8, 2026: Cut Off or Reach Out?
Forgiveness and Accountability in a Divided Nation

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Part 1: Where We Are

Political scientists who track democracy around the world now place the United States among the countries in decline. In March 2026, the V-Dem Institute downgraded the US from a "liberal democracy" to an "electoral democracy" for the first time in more than 50 years, dropped its ranking from 20th to 51st of 179 countries, and called the speed of the decline unprecedented in modern history. (NPR via KAXE, La Voce di New York) Bright Line Watch's surveys of hundreds of US political scientists rate American democracy lower than at any point since the project began in 2017. (Bright Line Watch)

We have been deeply divided before. In the 1850s, partisan and sectional hatred ended in civil war, and afterward the country "reunited" by abandoning Reconstruction and the rights of freed Black Americans. Political violence and polarization also ran high in the 1890s and the 1960s. Each period eventually eased, though rarely on its own, and not always justly. Abroad, the 1930s showed how quickly democracies can fall when elected leaders dismantle them from within.

Democratic Backsliding Abroad

Today, democracies rarely die in coups. More often, elected leaders win power and then capture the courts, the media, and the election rules while keeping the outward forms of democracy, a pattern political scientists call "competitive authoritarianism." Hungary, Poland, and Turkey have all been through it recently, and their oppositions offer some hard-won lessons. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die, explain the pattern below.

• Daniel Ziblatt on How Democracies Die (John Adams Institute)

Hungary: "I Will Also Be Your Prime Minister"

Viktor Orbán ruled Hungary for 16 years, rewriting the constitution, capturing the media and courts, and becoming a model for parts of the American right. Scholars describe the result as a competitive authoritarian state. (Hanelt & Vincze)

On April 12, 2026, he lost in a landslide to Péter Magyar, a former Fidesz insider who broke with the party in 2024. Magyar's Tisza party won about 53% of the vote and a two-thirds majority, on record turnout of nearly 78%. (Al Jazeera)

Magyar's approach maps closely onto our question. In his victory speech he promised Fidesz supporters he would be their prime minister too, and asked his own voters to begin reconciliation "not with the guilty," but by extending a hand to every Hungarian. (Victory speech) At the same time, his government has created an asset-recovery office and detained two former Orbán ministers on corruption charges, which Fidesz calls political revenge. (Euronews)

• Thousands celebrate in Hungary as Péter Magyar ends Viktor Orbán's 16-year rule

• Visegrad Blog: Hungary's post-Orbán reckoning

Poland: The Thick Line, and the Hard Road Back

Poland has faced our question twice. In 1989, its first non-communist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, declared a "thick line" between the communist past and the democratic future, a policy many Poles came to see as forgiveness. Lustration (screening officials for collaboration with the communist secret police) came later, and it became a recurring political weapon. (Elcano Royal Institute)

From 2015 to 2023, the Law and Justice (PiS) government captured the Constitutional Tribunal, the judicial council, and public broadcasting. When Donald Tusk's coalition won in 2023, it faced a dilemma: can you undo a capture of the rule of law without bending the law yourself? Tusk took over public media by bypassing the PiS-appointed media council, and admitted that restoring democracy may sometimes require actions that "do not fully comply with the law." (Notes from Poland) By late 2024, more Poles thought the rule of law had worsened under Tusk than improved (Notes from Poland), and in 2025 voters elected the PiS-backed Karol Nawrocki as president, who has vetoed much of the reform agenda.

• Fixing a Broken Democracy: Lessons from Poland

• Untreated Wounds: The Quest to Restore the Rule of Law in Poland

Turkey: Purges and "Radical Love"

Turkey shows both ends of our question. After the failed 2016 coup attempt, President Erdoğan's government ruled by emergency decree and dismissed or suspended more than 150,000 judges, teachers, police, and civil servants. Critics say the purge went far beyond the plotters and helped Erdoğan consolidate power. (Middle East Eye)

The opposition tried the opposite. In 2019, Istanbul mayoral candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu ran on a strategy called "radical love": instead of belittling Erdoğan's voters, he campaigned in religious, pro-government neighborhoods, listened to their concerns, and refused to answer hate with hate. He won, had the result annulled, then won the rerun by a much larger margin. (Journal of Democracy) He won again in 2024, and in 2025 he was jailed on charges his supporters call political, sparking Turkey's largest protests in over a decade.

• How 'radical love' won in Turkey (Christian Science Monitor)

• Turkish opposition turns to 'radical love' to battle Erdoğan (Euronews)

Venezuela and Colombia: When Resistance Backfires

Political scientist Laura Gamboa compared how oppositions responded to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Álvaro Uribe in Colombia. Venezuela's opposition turned to a coup attempt, strikes, and boycotts, which gave Chávez a justification to purge opponents and consolidate power. Colombia's opposition stuck to institutional and moderate tactics, and eventually blocked Uribe's bid for a third term. (Notre Dame)

• Lawfare Daily: Resisting Democratic Backsliding (podcast with Laura Gamboa)

The pattern across these cases: Oppositions that won people back targeted leaders and corruption through lawful processes while reaching out to ordinary supporters. Purges, shortcuts, and contempt for the other side's voters tended to backfire or set up the next cycle of retaliation.

Part 2: What It's Doing to Us

The political crisis is also a personal one. In a national survey, roughly 4 in 10 Americans said politics causes them stress, 1 in 5 had lost sleep over it, and 1 in 5 said political differences had damaged a valued friendship. That survey was taken in 2017, and the divide has only deepened since. (University of Nebraska)

Why We Misjudge the Other Side: Media Bubbles and the Perception Gap

It's hard to extend grace to people we imagine as monsters, and our media diets make that easy to do. Partisans on both sides think about 55% of the other side hold extreme views; the real figure is about 30%.

The Perception Gap

More in Common's 2019 Perception Gap study found that the more news people consumed, the more distorted their picture of the other party. Democrats with postgraduate degrees were three times as inaccurate about Republicans as those who hadn't finished high school, and readers of outlets like Slate, HuffPost, and Daily Kos misjudged conservatives almost as badly as Rush Limbaugh's listeners misjudged liberals. (Greater Good)

Americans also guessed that 38% of Republicans earn over $250,000 a year (the real figure is 2%) and that 32% of Democrats are LGBT (it's 6%). (Ahler & Sood)

Outrage Is What Spreads

In an analysis of 2.7 million social media posts, each word about the opposing party raised the odds of a post being shared by 67%. Our feeds show us the other side's worst 5%. (Rathje, Van Bavel & van der Linden) Interestingly, simply reducing like-minded content on Facebook didn't reduce polarization (NYU CSMaP), but paying Fox News viewers to watch CNN for a month did moderate their views (Yale News).

• Outrage Overload podcast: social media and attention

Not All Alarm Is an Illusion

The research cuts both ways. A 2024 megastudy found that correcting misperceptions and showing sympathetic people on the other side reduced partisan hostility (Kellogg), but other researchers find those effects small and fleeting (Dias et al.). And some widely held views on the right, like denial of the 2020 election results, really are troubling. The challenge is to be accurate about the typical voter and clear-eyed about the movement's leaders.

Boundaries Without Cutoffs

Family therapists call the key skill "differentiation": staying emotionally connected while holding your own position. People fail at it by fusing (appeasing, demanding agreement) or by cutting off. Cutting off rarely resolves the tension; it tends to carry it into other relationships. (Bowen family systems theory)

• A boundary governs my own behavior: "If slurs come up, I'll leave the table."

• An ultimatum tries to control theirs: "Renounce Trump or we're done."

• A cutoff ends the relationship.

Both sides struggle here, in different directions. About 23% of very liberal Americans say they've cut off a family member over politics, versus 9% of very conservative Americans. (American Survey Center) The more moral weight people put on an issue, on either side, the more distance they want from those who disagree. (Skitka) Meanwhile, Republicans who are personally "fused" with Trump experience criticism of him as an attack on themselves. (Yale News)

It matters who is being asked to stay at the table. For LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and people of color, the "political disagreement" may be about their own safety and dignity. Boundaries that protect safety are different in kind from boundaries that protect comfort.

• Study examines what makes adult children cut ties with parents (Joshua Coleman's research)

• Books: Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Anger; Joshua Coleman, Rules of Estrangement; Karl Pillemer, Fault Lines

Changing Minds Through Relationship

Daryl Davis, a Black blues musician, befriended members of the Ku Klux Klan, and dozens eventually gave him their robes. Megan Phelps-Roper left the Westboro Baptist Church after patient conversations on Twitter with people she'd been taught were enemies. Derek Black left white nationalism through weekly Shabbat dinners with a Jewish classmate, a story told in Eli Saslow's Rising Out of Hatred.

The research backs this up. Excluded people become more open to extreme groups (Hales, Williams & Pfundmair), while non-judgmental conversations built on personal stories durably reduce prejudice. Arguments alone didn't. (Kalla & Broockman)

Leaving MAGA: How People Find Their Way Out

People rarely leave a movement because they lost an argument. Interviews with former white supremacists find that leaving is slow, relapse-prone, and a lot like recovering from an addiction. What makes it possible is having somewhere to land: relationships outside the movement that are still there when the doubts set in. (RTI: Addicted to Hate)

Rich Logis and Leaving MAGA

Rich Logis was a MAGA pundit and podcaster who left the movement in 2022. Remorseful about the harm he'd helped cause, he founded Leaving MAGA, a nonprofit that helps people exit the movement and reconcile with estranged friends and family. He emphasizes identity and belonging, and that people need to be able to leave without being humiliated. In the video below, he talks with the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative about reaching across the divide.

• Rich Logis on MS NOW: Why He Walked Away From MAGA

• I Used to Be MAGA, I Regret It. Ask Me Anything

• Quillette Podcast #231: Leaving MAGA

• He Was a MAGA Pundit, Now He Helps People Leave the Movement

The Personal Payoff: Why These Practices Are Good for Us, Too

The same practices that rebuild a divided society also tend to make the people who practice them healthier and happier.

• Staying connected protects your health. A review of 148 studies covering more than 300,000 people found that those with stronger social relationships had 50% greater odds of survival over the study periods, an effect comparable to well-established risk factors like smoking. (Holt-Lunstad et al., PLoS Medicine)

• Contact across the divide eases our own anxiety. Intergroup contact reduces prejudice mainly by lowering anxiety about the other group and increasing empathy, so the person reaching out benefits too. (Pettigrew & Tropp)

• Shared civic projects are good for us. A meta-analysis of older adults found that those who volunteered had about 24% lower mortality risk, even after accounting for health and other factors. (Okun, Yeung & Brown)

Forgiveness and Well-Being

Forgiveness (letting go of resentment and the wish for revenge) reliably benefits the person who forgives. Reconciliation (restoring the relationship) is a separate decision, and it helps only when it's safe and met with respect or amends.

• Forgiveness can be learned. A 2024 randomized trial of 4,598 adults in five countries found that a 2-3 hour REACH forgiveness workbook reduced depression and anxiety and improved flourishing. (Ho et al., Harvard Human Flourishing Program)

• Grudges trigger a stress response. Rehearsing a grudge raised heart rate and blood pressure in the lab; imagining forgiveness calmed them. (Witvliet et al.)

• The "doormat effect." In a five-year study of newlyweds, forgiving raised self-respect when partners made amends, but eroded it when they didn't. (Luchies et al.)

• Community healing can cost individuals. Sierra Leone's reconciliation forums increased forgiveness and trust in villages, but also increased depression, anxiety, and PTSD among participants. (Chicago Policy Review)

• REACH Forgiveness free workbooks (Everett Worthington)

• Hidden Brain: The Power of Mercy

Discussion Questions

Some questions to help get the conversation going!

Where We Are

• Are we living through democratic backsliding? How does what's happening in the US compare with Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, or with earlier eras of deep division in our own history? What, if anything, makes our situation different?

• Where is the line between accountability and revenge? Hungary's new government is prosecuting Orbán-era ministers while promising to be the prime minister of Fidesz voters too. Poland's government bent legal procedures to undo the capture of its courts and media. What would fair accountability look like in the US, and for whom?

• What can we learn from İmamoğlu's "radical love" campaign in Istanbul? Is reaching out to the other side's voters a winning political strategy, a moral obligation, or naive? What would "radical love" look like at our own Thanksgiving tables?

What It's Doing to Us

• Is there a difference between forgiving someone who was fooled and someone who embraced it enthusiastically? Does ignorance make forgiveness easier, or more necessary? What about those who knew exactly what they were doing?

• Have you limited or ended contact with someone over politics, or has someone done that to you? What led to that decision? Looking back, did it change them, protect you, or both?

• When you picture "a typical Trump voter," where does that image come from? People you know, or what you see in the media? How might the Perception Gap shape our willingness to reach out?

• What's the difference between a boundary, an ultimatum, and a cutoff? Which comes more naturally to you: going silent to keep the peace, or pulling away? Do you feel pressure from your own community about who you should or shouldn't stay close to?

• Who carries the cost of "staying in relationship"? Is it fair to ask people whose safety or identity is under attack to keep the door open?

• If a friend or relative left MAGA tomorrow, what would they lose, and what would they find? Could our congregation be a place where someone leaving the movement could land? What would make that easier or harder?

Finding Our Way Back

• South Africa traded amnesty for full truth-telling. Could anything like that work here? Who should be offered a path back, and who should not? What would we need to hear from people before we'd believe them?

• What does the Christian tradition teach us about forgiving people who supported harm? Jesus told Peter to forgive "seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:22) and prayed for those who "know not what they do" (Luke 23:34), yet Luke also says to forgive a brother "if he repent" (Luke 17:3), and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed for resisting the Nazis, warned against "cheap grace" that asks nothing of anyone. Must forgiveness be earned, or is it a gift? Many of the MAGA supporters in our lives share this tradition. Could it be common ground for reaching them?

• What is the difference between forgiveness, reconciliation, and accountability? Can you have one without the others? Have you ever forgiven someone without reconciling with them?

• Which of history's best practices could you try in your own life? Staying connected, telling the truth, building ties across the divide, working on shared projects: which feels most possible this month, and which feels hardest?

• Our Universalist ancestors believed no one is beyond redemption. Do we? What does affirming the inherent worth of every person ask of us when some people deny the worth of others?