This is a really difficult post to write. I want to tell you the story of how I lost my best friend.

But before I tell you how I lost him, let me tell you how I found him in the first place.

We have known each other for over 35 years. We met when I was a senior at WPI and he was working at the company where I did my major qualifying project. He later confessed to me that he didn’t like me very much when we first met. He was a bit of prickly curmudgeon and I was an enthusiastic college student who was looking forward to graduating in May and joining the real world after 4 years of hard work. But somehow, we connected in spite of our differences.

In the early days, there was a lot about him that I found appealing. He was smart, funny, and, since he was older than me and married, had a more sophisticated sense of the world than I did. We also both loved music and New England sports, especially the Patriots. We were both into technology: computers (especially Apple products), home theater, and software development. He was witty and sarcastic and politically aware, although our politics were very different. We tended not to debate politics, primarily because he was much better informed than me and would crush me in a debate so I avoided getting into it with him. Maybe this was my first mistake in our relationship.

Over the years, he and his wife became my wife’s and my best friends. We spent multiple evenings at each others houses. We went to sporting events and concerts together. When they rented a cottage on the Maine shore, they invited us to join them for the weekend and we spent days walking the beach, eating out, and sightseeing in Portland. As my kids were born and grew up, they thought of him and his wife like another aunt and uncle. They were with us for birthdays, summer cookouts, and dance recitals. We knew each other’s families. We comforted them when their son was in a life threatening automobile accident and they held our hands as we mourned our daughter Amanda’s death. They were there for us.

But over the years, something began to change my best friend. While his politics always leaned to the right, I always thought of him as someone who had compassion for others. He was what I would call a “Reagan Conservative” – very much to the right of center but possessing traditional conservative values.

He was never what I would call a “flexible” guy but I began to see more and more rigidity in his outlook on things. He never admitted he was wrong about anything and everything was either black or white in his view of the world.

When I think of my friend, two things stick out: he deeply respected institutions and was a person of principles and high personal integrity, almost to a fault. More than once, I saw him stick by positions when they deeply hurt people who were closest to him. He would rather do that than compromise in order to keep the peace or be willing to admit that his position might be wrong. When push came to shove, he put principles before people. He saw his willingness to hold steadfastly to his beliefs as a strength. I began to see it as a fundamental flaw in his character.

When he started listening to conservative talk shows hosted by people like Rush Limbaugh and Howie Carr, I began to wonder what was happening. He said that he admired Ann Coulter and Ayn Rand. I didn’t understand – these people are so angry and outraged by people who are different than they are.

And then, Donald Trump happened.

My best friend told me that he was “behind Trump, 100%”. He liked that Trump “wasn’t politically correct and said what was on his mind”.

It didn’t matter to him when Trump talked about grabbing women by the pussy. It didn’t matter when Trump talked about banning people from entering our country based solely on their religion. It didn’t matter when Trump made fun of a disabled person. None of it mattered – he was behind Trump 100%.

The beginning of the end was when Charlottesville happened. I was outraged that neo-Nazis and white supremacists were marching in the streets carrying torches and yelling “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil”. I posted about this extensively on Facebook and he commented on one of my posts, calling it “fake news”.

He was angry that people were calling for Confederate statues to be taken down. He said this was part of our history and that we should just deal with it. He did not understand how people of color could find these statues deeply offensive. Or maybe he understood but he didn’t care. While I understood his point, I told him that the people marching in support of the keeping the statues were racists because they were literally putting Confederate generals – men who fought to keep slavery legal – on a pedestal and that this was deeply offensive to people of color whose ancestors were slaves. He was insulted that I called the marchers racist and said if they were racist, he was racist too because he supported keeping the statues in place.

When he then continued to argue with me by saying that the Civil War was fought over states’ rights, I lost it. I could not believe that my intelligent best friend was pulling long debunked theories like this out in support of his position. Sure, the war involved issues about states’ rights – including the RIGHT TO KEEP SLAVES! What had happened to him?

After this incident, he was very cold and avoided me. I reached out a few times, offering to get together for coffee, but he ignored my overtures. We got together with our wives one time after that, around Christmas, and we were both cordial but I could tell that things had changed, most likely for good.

While I was returning from a business trip to California in April, I got an e-mail from him telling me that he no longer wanted me in his life because of the way I was treating him. While I never said anything that I felt was offensive about him directly, I made many, many strongly worded postings on Facebook and Twitter about conservatives generally and groups like the NRA specifically and he associates himself so closely with these groups and their positions that he felt that I was insulting him personally. In retrospect, maybe I was insulting him indirectly, but it wasn’t my intention to insult him – all I wanted was for him to deeply examine his conscience and see that the positions he held on many topics were deeply offensive to me and many others, including my wife and kids, in the desperate hope that he might change. Looking back, I was foolish and naive.

The most ironic part of this entire thing was when he told me that the entire situation was my fault. He was always a big proponent of personal accountability and yet took absolutely no responsibility for his role in the situation. He said, “This is 100% caused by you and the way you choose to express yourself. I can and have tolerated our differences, there was never a problem, but I will NOT tolerate being called nasty names or be grouped together by some arbitrary definition that you make.” Unfortunately, introspection and the willingness to change his opinion were never his strong suits.

For the record, I never called him nasty names or grouped him into any group. He did that all on his own because he associates so strongly with conservative groups like the NRA. He said that if I didn’t respect the NRA, I didn’t respect him. Somehow, he had become unable to see himself outside the rigid confines of a group with which he associated himself. He had lost the ability to disagree with the leadership and say something like “While I am a member of this group, their position on these issues doesn’t reflect my values.”

He would ask me, “If you have so little respect for my opinions, why do want to associate with me?” In retrospect, he was right – I had lost respect for him a long time ago but, due to our long friendship, I was not willing to admit it to myself. He had more courage than me and decided to pull the plug on our relationship. I probably never would have done it – I would have just continued to ignore the elephant in the room, clinging desperately to the hope that maybe my friend would come back.

He is no longer the person I chose as my best friend all those many years ago. His morality and mine are now very different. He no longer shows empathy or compassion for others. He has become very angry and bitter and has little joy in his life in spite of many blessings.

Worst of all, he has chosen to align himself with people who think that it is OK to separate children from their parents and put them in cages just because their parents crossed into our country illegally. He has chosen to align himself with a man who has a proven track record of denigrating women, and lying to our country dozens of times per day. I could go on and on but I think you get the point.

The man who decided to kick me out of my life that April day was no longer the man I knew. He had changed into someone I no longer recognized.

I don’t know where my best friend went but, if you find him, please send him back. There is a man who looks like him, has the same name as him, and sounds like him when he talks, but it is not him.

Sadly, my best friend will never be found – he is dead and I mourn his loss every day.