I Used To Like You Until...

When was the last time you decided who someone was from a single label—job, party, post, or joke—and never gave them another chance? In I Used To Like You Until..., Kat Timpf argues that this reflex is costing you real relationships, smarter thinking, and even some of your freedom. She contends that binary thinking—sorting everyone into Team Red or Team Blue, Good or Evil—has replaced curiosity and principles. It makes us easier to manipulate, more likely to fear each other, and less likely to hold powerful people to account. But it also shrinks our lives. The antidote: choose people over teams, principles over partisanship, and conversation over cancellation.

The Thesis in One Human Moment

Timpf opens with a story that undercuts her own certainty. At a tour stop in Montgomery, she sees a young, tattooed, clearly queer woman and assumes: this person must hate me (she works at Fox). After the crowd thins, the woman asks a quiet question: “You’ve dated a girl before, right?” The moment reverses every lazy reading of the scene. It becomes the book’s thesis in miniature: people are messier, kinder, and more surprising than their “one thing” would suggest. When you swap assumptions for questions, connection becomes possible—even in rooms where you’re sure it isn’t.

How the Binary Breaks Your Brain—and Your World

The book shows how political sorting has gone beyond policy into identity. We no longer say, “I disagree”; we say, “You’re evil.” A 2018 Axios poll showed nearly half of Republicans and Democrats call the other side “ignorant” or “spiteful,” and around a quarter label the other side “evil.” That moralization supercharges outrage (see Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind) and makes it feel virtuous to never listen. It also gives politicians a powerful lever. If they can convince you the other side is a threat to your kids, your country, and your soul, you’ll defend them at all costs—and you’ll ignore their failures.

Where This Shows Up (and Why It Matters)

Across the book, Timpf threads personal stories with public examples to show how tribal thinking corrodes judgment. She details working at Fox News while arguing for drug legalization on air; sparring with Greg Gutfeld on policing; getting miscast by the Left as a right-wing hard-liner because of her job title and by the Right as a “secret liberal” when she criticizes Trump. The point isn’t “both-sides-ism.” It’s that principles should outlast parties. She’s pro–free speech even when campus anti-Semitism tests resolve; antiwar regardless of whether the cheerleaders are Right or Left; skeptical of surveillance whether it’s called the Patriot Act or a TikTok “ban.” (Compare Jacob Sullum’s work on drug policy consistency.)

Why does this matter to you? Because outrage has opportunity costs. It steals time you could spend on friendships that don’t match your “column,” and it grants cover to insiders who expect you to fling memes while they collect checks. In war (see the Afghanistan Papers), in speech (Section 230), in tech (RESTRICT Act), in culture fights (drag bans; “Don’t Say Gay” vs. Michigan hate-speech expansion), the pattern is the same: fear simplifies, power expands, and your rights shrink.

What You’ll Learn in This Summary

- How to live “politically nonbinary” without losing your mind (or your friends), and why people across the spectrum often collaborate better than party loyalists.
- How politicians, media, and even brands monetize your anger (Aldean, Bud Light/Mulvaney) and why outrage can be free advertising.
- Why free speech protections like Section 230 matter most when they’re least popular, and how “for the children” rhetoric greenlights bad laws.
- How the military-industrial complex relies on bipartisan amnesia—and what veterans like her husband saw on the ground in Afghanistan.
- Why grace and humility (from a Navy SEAL’s relapse to her own Accutane spiral) are essential antidotes to performative moralism.
- How to discuss gender, drag, and biology without surrendering either reality or rights—and why “assigned at birth” language wars obscure more than they clarify.
- Why calling things by their right names (taxes, “armed robbery”) exposes hypocrisies across parties and sharpens your judgment (Orwell 101).

Why It’s Urgent

Polarization isn’t just annoying. It downgrades policy (we punish “the other team” instead of solving problems), deincentivizes accountability (whataboutism is career insurance), and diminishes your life (fewer friendships, less awe, more fear). Timpf’s invitation is simple and subversive: keep your principles, ditch the purity tests, and talk to people like they’re people. The rest of this summary unpacks how.

Timpf describes herself as a small-l libertarian who works at Fox News, dates across the spectrum, and shares a bed (literally, once) with a gay democratic socialist friend who now produces at MSNBC. The point isn’t shock value; it’s proof that labels can’t hold a full person. When you stop leading with a jersey, you discover more common ground—especially a shared suspicion that the system rewards teams over principles.

Principles Over Parties

On Gutfeld!, she often breaks frame: antiwar when conservatives are hawkish; pro–free speech when progressives want new restrictions; pro–drug legalization while discussing a Columbia professor who used heroin. Fox invited her to give the expected “this is outrageous” take; she argued policy instead. In another segment, she called to abolish the ATF for focusing on taxation and regulation over violent crime—a consistent libertarian critique. Her employer didn’t censor her; viewers and pundits outside the building projected a monolith onto her badge.

She also praises people like Ice Cube for refusing purity rituals. In 2020, Cube worked with the Trump team on a plan for Black jobs while maintaining he’d “never endorse” Trump. Both tribes punished him for prioritizing outcomes over optics. (Compare to Van Jones’s bipartisan prison reform work.)

Why Team Brain Is So Tempting

Once you join a side, you no longer have to think. The playbook tells you what to say on guns, climate, speech, surveillance, and who to like. It’s psychologically soothing and socially rewarded. She calls out “simps”—people who gush over politicians online as if they’ll earn a DM back. One-liners like “Hope she sees this, bro” capture how parasocial politics turns citizens into unpaid PR interns. (See Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized for institutional reinforcement mechanisms.)

The Perception Gap

Data backs the misread. Studies show Democrats and Republicans wildly overestimate how extreme the other side is and misperceive the demographics of the other (e.g., Dems guess 44% of Republicans earn over $250k; it’s ~2%). Social media amplifies moral outrage and makes opponents feel monstrous. People also lie about their beliefs to avoid backlash (Populace found double-digit gaps between private and public opinions across groups). The binary isn’t just wrong; it’s distorting.

The Payoff

On tour (nearly 40 cities), Timpf kept finding the same thing you will if you try this: people want to talk about “people vs. the system” more than “Left vs. Right.” A Lyft driver in St. Louis, a Cincinnati hairstylist—strangers agree that power benefits from our fights. In your own life, politically nonbinary isn’t a performance; it’s a practice that expands your friendships, sharpens your principles, and lowers your blood pressure.

If you’ve ever felt whiplash from a “culture war” story that suddenly swallows the news cycle, you’ve seen how outrage is manufactured, monetized, and mapped onto teams. Timpf walks through case studies—Jason Aldean’s song, Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney, even climate—to show how controversy sells, how parties brand issues like consumer products, and how your attention is harvested.

Aldean at Buffalo Wild Wings

Timpf joked on Gutfeld! that Jason Aldean “looks like every dude ever… at a Buffalo Wild Wings,” adding she thinks the new-country sound is generic and that accusing the song of being “pro-lynching” was absurd. She also lamented that saying “this song sucks” now reads as a political statement. The reaction proved her point. She got flooded with fury; Aldean got his first #1 hit—outrage as free ad spend. Politicians dutifully weighed in. The teams took their corners. No one gained insight into music; everyone gained dopamine.

Bud Light’s Accidental Experiment

A single sponsored post with Mulvaney turned a beer can into a referendum on national identity. Conservatives boycotted; the company tried to placate both sides and lost tens of billions in value. Timpf’s best line slices through the sanctimony: if alcohol doesn’t want to cause fights, it should try not being alcohol. Beyond the laughs is a sobering point: political identity can override price and utility. (MSU research shows people accept lower wages and pay more to match their political tribe.)

Branding the Planet

Climate once featured bipartisan agreement; now it’s branded Left (planet) vs. Right (economy). Timpf cites Richard Tol’s work: limiting warming to 1.5°C imposes costs that can outweigh near-term GDP benefits; ignoring externalities also imposes costs. Two things can be true: we want clean air and prosperity. But the branded binary makes that sentence heresy. (Compare to Michael Shellenberger and Kerry Emanuel’s calls for pragmatic middle paths.)

Your Counterplay

Before you share: ask who gets paid if I’m mad? Consider whether you’re being pointed at a person to ignore a problem (e.g., the same week Aldean/Mulvaney topped feeds, Fitch downgraded U.S. credit citing polarization). Starve bad incentives by rewarding explanations over dunks—even if it means fewer likes.

Timpf is a First Amendment absolutist in the classic sense: the cure for bad speech is more speech, not empowered censors. She argues this precisely when it’s toughest—defending Section 230, warning against TikTok bans disguised as “national security,” and critiquing state laws (Left and Right) that criminalize speech under vague banners like “harm.”

Section 230: The Internet’s Load-Bearing Wall

She explains 230’s sentence-long shield—platforms aren’t treated as speakers for user posts—“created the internet.” Both sides want to gut it: the Left to fight “hate speech,” the Right to punish moderation “bias.” Kill 230 and platforms will over-censor to avoid lawsuits, especially criticism of powerful people. Her Gutfeld! monologue reframed it well: if Scarface were edited by a daytime anchor, you’d get ten minutes about dogs.

The TikTok/RESTRICT Pattern

She warned her own audience about the RESTRICT Act and later the 2024 TikTok “ban or divest” law: vague delegations of power, Fifth Amendment takings concerns, and First Amendment risks to millions of American users. “For the kids” and “national security” are elastic phrases; they’ve stretched to justify the Patriot Act, too. You don’t have to like TikTok to defend speech rights.

When “Protect the Children” Protects Bad Law

She shows how “Think of the children!” sells speech and tech restrictions (a bipartisan favorite since Tipper Gore’s PMRC). If a bill’s pitch leans on kids, read the fine print. Vague terms like “harm,” “intimidation,” or “age-inappropriate” become policy crowbars. Michigan’s 2023 hate-crime expansion, Florida’s “Stop WOKE” constraints, and Tennessee’s drag ban all illustrate the danger: subjectivity plus state power equals chilled expression.

Why This Matters to You

Free speech is least popular when it most needs defending. You don’t preserve the right by trusting “your side” to wield it; you preserve it by limiting everyone’s ability to curtail dissent. (See FIRE’s work and Nadine Strossen’s Hate: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship.)

When parties swap scripts on war, principles are exposed. Timpf’s anchor is personal: her husband Cam is a West Point grad and former Army Ranger who fought in Afghanistan. His ground-truth view, combined with the Afghanistan Papers and the Kabul withdrawal debacle, makes a sober case: bipartisan elites sell rosy narratives; rank-and-file and civilians pay in bodies and trillions.

From Rosy Briefs to a Suicide Bombing

Cam told her closing Bagram was a lethal error and predicted a mass-casualty attack at Kabul airport; two weeks later, a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. service members. The State Department’s 2023 report acknowledged many of the same failures—then paired them with evasions. No one at the top pays meaningful costs; the “self-licking ice cream cone” continues (the military’s own phrase for its circular justifications).

The Bipartisan Memory Hole

Barbara Lee was the lone vote against the open-ended 2001 AUMF; she got death threats. Years later, mainstream media booked only one guest out of 267 who opposed invading Iraq in the two weeks before the war. Today, skepticism of Ukraine policy can get you smeared as a Putin puppet, even when critiques target transparency and objectives (as in the Pentagon document leaks). Chris Hedges’s summary fits: every war comes wrapped in moral language—freedom, human rights—and ends in disillusion.

Follow the Money

Quincy Institute research shows 80%+ of recent four-star retirees go to work in the arms industry. That is the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. It thrives on amnesia and team loyalty: if your side sells a war, you defend it; if the other side does, you forget your values to oppose it. Timpf’s stance is consistent: demand aims, metrics, and sunset clauses—no matter who’s in charge.

Practice those questions and you’ll notice when moral panics about opponents are deployed to extend budgets, surveillance, or deployments. (Compare to Andrew Bacevich on perpetual war.)

“Support the troops” is easy until a troop stumbles in public. Timpf describes the arrest of her friend Rob O’Neill (the former Navy SEAL credited with killing bin Laden). She doesn’t excuse bad behavior; she asks for context and compassion—PTSD, alcohol, and the ugly work we outsource to a tiny fraction of citizens. Then she widens the lens: grace is a better default for everyone, not just veterans, in a culture that often confuses punishment with virtue.

The Messiness of Mental Health

Timpf shares her own low point: Accutane drove her into a severe depression, culminating in a humiliating meltdown over a teleprompter. Viewers assumed arrogance (“you think you’re too good for the show”); in reality, she could barely stand being alive. That gap—between how someone looks online and what’s true—is why your snark can land like a brick on a chest already struggling to breathe.

Awe as Antidote

On safari in Africa, surrounded by elephants and indifferent death, she felt small—and better for it. Research shows awe reduces self-focus and increases generosity. In a feed that tells you that your “take” is the world’s hinge, reminders of insignificance can reset your posture from judge to human. (Paul Piff’s studies on awe; Dacher Keltner’s work on the power of wonder.)

From Slogans to Support

If you say “mental health matters,” it has to matter when it’s messy: when a friend relapses; when a stranger melts down; when a headline splashes “worst moment” in 48-point type. Psychiatrist reports of “cancelation OCD” show how public pillorying breeds private compulsions. If there’s no path to redemption, why would anyone seek one?

Timpf loves drag—so much that a raucous night at Pieces in NYC helped her finally leave an abusive relationship. That affection makes her an imperfect avatar for anyone’s culture-war script. She defends drag as art and expression, resists laws with vague “harm” standards, uses people’s chosen pronouns as a matter of ordinary kindness, and still insists on biological reality (and female costs) without apology.

Art Isn’t Grooming

She’s blunt: saying drag is “just lip-syncing” ignores the athleticism, costume design, character work, and crowd command involved. The Tennessee drag ban’s wording—“male or female impersonators,” “harmful to minors,” “could be viewed”—would allow selective enforcement anywhere a child could be. A Trump-appointed judge struck it down as unconstitutional. Good. You shouldn’t hand government the power to decide which costumes are crimes.

Kindness Without Compulsion

She uses preferred pronouns; she rejects compelled-speech laws. Courtesy scales; coercion backfires. And precision matters: erasing “biological sex” with phrases like “sex assigned at birth” confuses categories. Gender identity and biological sex aren’t the same—pretending they are erases trans people and women alike. Meanwhile, biology is sexist: UTIs, yeast infections, pregnancy risk, the orgasm gap, and fertility cliffs fall disproportionately on women. Those realities should inform policy and empathy without licensing speech-policing.

Parents, Schools, and Secrecy

She opposes policies that require schools to hide major identity issues from parents (New Jersey’s lawsuits against districts that notify parents). Swap “gender” for “religion” or “political radicalization” and the principle is clearer: the state doesn’t own your kids. At the same time, she warns that “for the kids” can justify overreach—you can oppose third-grade lessons on complex gender theory and oppose criminalizing a queen in a leotard.

On Bill Maher’s podcast, Timpf called taxation “armed robbery.” Maher called that “stupid”; she didn’t flinch. Her point isn’t that society needs no revenue; it’s definitional clarity: if you don’t pay, armed agents come. Clear language makes hypocrisies visible—on both sides—and makes you harder to hustle.

The Hypocrisy Tour

Progressive stars rail about “fair shares” while flubbing their own (AOC’s tax issues; Ilhan Omar’s filing controversies). Nancy Pelosi moralizes about “tax cheats” while her family’s stock-timing raises eyebrows (Google sale before DOJ suit; Microsoft buy before a $22B Army contract). Republicans who brand themselves fiscal hawks greenlit near-Obama-sized spending hikes in under half the time pre-COVID; a 2023 House bill trading green subsidies for higher total tax revenue shows moralism crossing labels. Team jerseys obscure outcomes.

Orwell for Daily Use

Timpf urges you to watch political language: “student loan forgiveness” (really, transfer), “health care” vs. “health insurance,” “safety” vs. “security.” If the government gets to define the terms, it gets to define your options. George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language remains the field guide: vague words invite lazy thinking and quiet power grabs.

Third Parties and the Jo(e)s

She’s voted third party every time—not to pretend libertarians will win, but to register consent for smaller government. When Gary Johnson flubbed “What is Aleppo?” Timpf noted Trump had said “Huh? Hmm” to “Brexit” months earlier. The real difference was one man bluffed better. Penalizing honesty teaches politicians to fake it; clarity rewards the wrong skill set.

Timpf doesn’t just critique; she offers a way of living that preserves your principles and your friendships. It’s equal parts skill and posture—curiosity, humility, precise language, and the courage to be vulnerable. She applies it to faith, too: she’s agnostic, her late mother was fervently Catholic, and love survived the binary.

Make Room for the Whole Person

Her mom once dragged the family on pilgrimages and asked a hospital priest to hear all their confessions as she lay dying. They also fought over hell and salvation. Timpf honors both truths. Likewise, her “Puppet Girl” roommate—a devout Christian puppeteer who later married a pastor—was the kindest roommate imaginable during Timpf’s darkest months. Knowing real believers makes it harder to caricature “religious people,” just as knowing kind atheists should challenge religious caricatures. (Pew finds people rate out-groups more warmly when they personally know someone in them.)

Stop Pretending

One of the book’s most useful admonitions is simple: quit pretending to be more of a problem than you are. Friends who “secretly” like her won’t engage her publicly because of Fox; a rapper she dated posted a pic with her, then deleted it for brand reasons. This fakery feeds polarization. If you like someone, say so. If you disagree, say that. But don’t live a double life for applause.

Daily Habits That Help

• Read the bill: Don’t rely on nicknames (“Don’t Say Gay,” “Protect the Children”).
• Name your sacred cows: Identify two issues where you’d defy your party.
• Practice radical acceptance: You can’t fix the existence of partisan media; you can choose how you consume it.
• Lead with a question: “What’s your best evidence?” beats “How dare you.”
• Show receipts: Cite a source the other side respects (e.g., Pew, AP-NORC) when making a claim.