The Right to Remain Silent

By Abe Greenwald

Thursday, February 26, 2026

 

There’s been a lot of data published in recent years about Americans increasingly breaking off social relationships because of political differences. That’s a sad reality of our over-politicized and polarized culture. A new Pew study, however, gets at a different but related trend. A majority of Americans have stopped talking politics with at least someone. From the poll: “A rising share of Americans (56%) say they have stopped talking to someone about political or election news, whether in person or online, because of something they said. This is up from 45% who said the same in 2024.”

 

I’m sure many will disagree, but this strikes me as a good sign.

 

Instead of severing friendships with people who don’t share your politics, just talk to them about other things. Remember other things?

 

It would be nice, in fact, if the whole country took a big step back from recreational punditry and activism. The development that Pew reports is hopefully a move in that direction.

 

To willingly stop talking about politics with someone, you have to reduce your investment in being right or changing minds. Unless you’re a professional ideologue or an elected official, that’s healthy. For years, too many people have been willing to die on too many hills.

 

It could, of course, be the case that Americans are eliding political conversations with certain people because they fear being judged or ostracized for their opinions. But I’m encouraged by the reasons that those polled gave for abandoning political discussion with particular individuals. “Nearly equal shares of U.S. adults say concern about making things uncomfortable (58%), a lack of knowledge about the news (57%) or a lack of interest in talking about the news (57%) has kept them from discussing it with others.”

 

Let’s hear it for all three reasons. The first indicates an acknowledgement of social considerations. The second shows a degree of modesty about one’s knowledge. And the third, perhaps most important, reflects the long-buried secret that there’s more to life—and even sometimes more interesting things to discuss—than politics.

 

We’ve all encountered those Americans who want to talk about nothing but the latest political outrage. They’ve become obsessed with the notion that political awareness and debate are now a matter of life and death. Sometimes they claim that what they’re worked up over has transcended the political realm altogether: “This is bigger than politics,” they say, and then they blabber on about politics.

 

It’s revealing that such people are overwhelmingly on the opposite side of the political spectrum from whomever is serving as president at the time. In other words, they’re not driven by a fascination with ideas or policies but rather by their animus for who’s in power. And when their candidate gets into the White House, they become the ones who don’t want to be bothered by feverish political obsessives in the minority.

 

We’ve survived Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden, and we’re surviving Trump once again. Maybe it’s beginning to dawn on at least some Americans, both right and left, that there is no final political battle to be won and that constantly living as if there is can be exhausting.