One of the things I tell my kids all the time is that it is okay, and normal, to hold conflicting emotions about the same person or event. To love someone, and be deeply angry with them at the same time. To grieve for someone, and feel relief that they are no longer suffering. To hate someone, and yet be horrified when something awful happens to them.

I say this because it’s important to understand that you can believe there are too many illegal immigrants in this country, support meaningful action at the border, support deportation of those who are here illegally, and still be horrified and angry about how our country is treating immigrants, and especially legal immigrants. You can be despise Hamas, deplore October 7, be deeply committed to Israel, and still believe that the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza is a moral crisis, and that speech about this moral crisis should be protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. You can support the Trump administration, and be appalled by the carelessness with which our highest ranking military and intelligence leaders handled classified information that could have endangered our troops.

The Trump administration, Fox News, and others on the right generally pretend that the administration’s actions are black and white, and that complex and nuanced responses are illegitimate—you must choose a side and either support everything that side does in furtherance of a goal you support, or be an enemy of the state. That is how democracies fall. Once you accept, for instance, that immigration goals cannot be achieved without violating the due process and free speech rights of immigrants—including green card holders, student visa holders and asylum seekers—then you remain silent as rights fundamental to our society are stripped away. Whereas, if you can say, “I support curtailing illegal immigration, but I am appalled at the way a group of Venezuelan men were stripped of their rights and freedom in defiance of a court order and without anything even loosely resembling due process”—if you are on the side of the law even when the administration tells you it conflicts with their goals, which you support—then maybe we will be able to hold on to our democracy a bit longer.

Sometimes I think that American politics is a lot like football: once you’ve picked a team, it’s hard to change loyalties. But even football fans react in complex ways to what happens on and off the field. They feel empathy for injured players. They shout at the coaches about bad plays. They are angry when their side breaks the rules. They analyze and tease apart the plays and the coaching decisions. They know how to criticize their own team and that is part of their loyalty. And they recognize the fundamental humanity of the players, coaches and fans on the other teams. Indeed, without the other team, it isn’t a sport at all.

This is the time to recognize that if politics is a team sport, so is democracy. We can be on different political teams and be collectively on Team Democracy. And that requires learning how to shout at our own teams.