It's not just adults whose relationships got strained, often to the breaking point, by the 2016 election. High school senior Carter Moore in Anchorage won a $1000 Let Grow "Think for Yourself" scholarship by examining the death -- and rebirth -- of his friendship with a dear but politically opposite friend, Fred:
The election prompted endless arguments between Fred and me. Gradually, the debates became personal attacks and eventually our friendship reached a dark point.
You see, one of us is a staunch conservative, the other a progressive liberal. This single difference, the political one, seemed to consume us....Words like “bigot” or “snowflake” started to be tossed around regularly. We had been friends for years, and we both knew that the two of us couldn’t be further from either of those things. But stereotypes like that became what we associated with anyone who belonged to the “other side.”
Click here to read the essay, published in The New York Post, and see how they brought their friendship back to life. Hint: It involved a history class project and lots of goofing around.
