My longstanding feud with the wildlife in my backyard took an odd turn this summer.

Typically, the feud involves me trying to discourage the deer from eating my hostas and flowers. But this season, my husband sprayed deer repellent earlier than usual, and it actually worked. Feeling a little overconfident in my amateur gardening skills, I decided to plant a variety of seeds and flowers.

It didn’t take very long for the rodents to discover this buffet.

I’m sure the squirrels had something to do with the dirt flung out of the pots. But the holes burrowed in the ground, the uprooted bulbs and the chewed-up plants looked to be work of chipmunks.

A family of them have lived under our patio for as long as I can remember; I’ve spotted them furtively darting about the flower beds, plotting a crime spree. In the past, I’ve accepted this as part of the deal of having a backyard. This time, I was incensed by their brazen destruction. I began thinking about the ethics of getting rid of the chipmunks -- for good.

Would it be morally permissible to kill a sentient, living being simply for the sake of a flower garden? I was deeply conflicted about the idea. On one hand, the chipmunks have a well-established pattern of ruinous behavior on our property. On the other hand, I’m not growing crops to feed my family.

I talked to several close friends, and got just as many opinions. I thought about writing to The New York Times' Ethicist or asking our imam.

Weeks passed as I mulled this moral dilemma.

One recent morning, when I took Frankie outside to take care of his business, we both noticed a small brown animal moving in the grass. My dog's dreams of catching prey seemed about to come true. But I could not bear to witness a chipmunk murder before my eyes.

As Frankie raced toward the animal, I hollered "Leave it!" at the top of my lungs. Surprisingly, he listened -- not a skill he is usually known for. He sniffed near the chipmunk and raced back toward me.

The intensity of my emotions around the prospect of this rodent’s demise startled me. Seeing something die in front of you is a different experience than calling an exterminator -- even though the result is the same.

It made me think about how many gruesome acts we might support from a distance, but recoil from if witnessed up close. How many of us would eat meat if we had to slaughter the animals ourselves? How many of us would kill other human beings in a war?

Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have debated the role emotions play in forming our values. Moral emotions -- the feelings and intuitions that play a major role in most of our ethical decision-making -- may come from cultural conditioning or even an innate, evolutionary instinct. Empathy and compassion are important moral emotions that we teach our children in the hopes that they become caring members of society.

Of course, we all value different things.

This comes into sharp focus every four years and plays out in 30-second morality plays on our screens. This time around, one of the signature election-year proposals is mass deportations. Former President Donald Trump is promising to round up and deport immigrants who are here illegally, which would mean expelling around 11 million people from America.

Among his supporters, I bet there are those who gleefully cheer for this kind of mass expulsion. Others might not support it, but are unbothered by the rhetoric because they believe it’s an impossible plan -- one that would collapse too many vital industries and would never happen for logistical or legal reasons.

There’s probably also a fair number who support the idea theoretically, but if they had to personally wrench an immigrant mother away from her American-born children, they might balk at it.

If you had to look a person in the eye -- someone who may have been your neighbor for years, might clean your home or do your church’s lawn work or have repaired your roof -- could you kick them out of their home and banish them from their family? Could you do it to millions of people who have done nothing but work, pay taxes and try to live decent lives here?

In short, could you knowingly bring on the suffering of someone in your own backyard?

I decided to pay attention to my instinctive reaction to protect the chipmunk in my yard.

It’s not as complicated as I once thought.

Much of the American electorate has grown numb to Donald Trump’s bizarre social media posts.

But Trump jolted even the most jaded observers with an outlandish all-caps statement on Sunday: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” The former president offered no additional explanation.

Trump is well known for the insults he aims at his adversaries. He has criticized and mocked plenty of women. But this wasn’t an insult: It was a direct declaration of hatred.

He’s never posted “I HATE HILLARY CLINTON” or “I HATE KAMALA HARRIS,” both political opponents he seems to loathe. He’s never posted “I HATE E. JEAN CARROLL,” a woman whose case led to a jury finding Trump liable for sexual abuse and owing her $83 million for defamation. He’s never posted that he hates Fani Willis or Letitia James, two prosecutors who have investigated him.

Merriam-Webster defines hate as "intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger or sense of injury." When children have an outburst saying they “hate” someone or something, parents should try to get them to process the emotion and figure out the root cause of such an intense feeling. After all, letting hatred fester inside oneself is corrosive.

This, however, was not a harmless, healthy expression of emotion. This was a powerful man -- a former president who is seeking the office again -- telling his millions of followers about his hatred of a much-younger woman.

What could possess a 78-year-old man to go after a 34-year-old pop star? Does Trump even understand why he lashed out?

Let’s try to help Trump process his big feelings. Here are a few things that might be behind his hatred of Taylor Swift:

-- She rejected him. Swift endorsed Harris in a moment when Trump was particularly vulnerable. He had just lost the debate in rather spectacular fashion when Swift dropped the hammer via an Instagram post. It may have been even more galling to him that her endorsement of Harris barely even mentioned his name -- just that his website had posted a fake, creepy AI image of her. An all-out attack would have at least given him the attention he craves.

-- She’s much more popular than he is. Trump respects celebrity, and Swift is one of the biggest celebrities on the planet. She has 284 million followers on Instagram. The most he ever had on Twitter was 88.9 million.

-- Her crowds are way bigger than his. She sells out stadiums with close to 100,000 seats -- and those all are people who paid to see her. His rallies this year have had an average crowd size of about 5,600, according to Crowd Counting Consortium.

-- She ignored his compliments. He's called her “very beautiful” multiple times -- “unusually beautiful,” in an interview for the new book "Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass." She didn’t even care.

-- He believes she owes him. In February, Trump posted on Truth Social, "I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists. Joe Biden didn’t do anything for Taylor, and never will." He added that Swift endorsing Biden would be "disloyal to the man who made her so much money."

-- She’s not intimidated by him. Trump has ruined ordinary people’s lives with lies about them -- Georgia election workers and Haitian immigrants, to name a few -- but he can’t do that to her. Swift has her own power, and he has no control over her.

-- He’s scared of her. He knows she has a massive and loyal fanbase, and that her endorsement will matter to some of them. Also, she is using her massive influence to register new voters. She posted a link to Vote.gov and encouraged her fans to register. In 24 hours, 400,000 people clicked through from her link to the federal site for voting information. Trump seems to be intimidated about what this means for the election.

-- She made his vice presidential pick, JD Vance, look ridiculous for insulting single women who own cats by signing her post “Childless Cat Lady.” Touche.

-- She’s a real billionaire. In eight months, her Eras Tour grossed a record-breaking $1 billion on a single tour.

In a song from her latest album, Swift asks a lyrical question: "Could someone give a message to the smallest man who ever lived?"

The Swifties have spoken, Donald: This beef won’t go well for you.

Families with deep ideological divides have a common coping strategy that becomes especially critical during an election season: Avoid political discussions at all costs.

But years of hyper-partisanship, vitriol, misinformation and strained relationships have led some to a more nuanced approach.

If the past few elections have taught Kimberly Kabak Epperson of Ferguson, Missouri, anything, it’s how to navigate potential minefields, she said. She and her husband hold different political beliefs than their parents. Her mother-in-law will post things on Facebook that Kabak Epperson finds offensive.

Still, “That’s our family -- our kids’ grandma,” she said. She created a boundary for herself: She will call out these posts, but refuses to engage in an online back-and-forth.

“I want to be clear where I stand,” she said.

If she sees something offensive posted by her mother-in-law, she might respond by saying, “That’s not acceptable.” She won’t try to change her parents' or in-laws' minds, but she will leave if their conversation denigrates others or goes against her morals and beliefs.

“I can only control myself,” she said.

Kabak Epperson said that once she communicates to a family member that she’s not trying to change their beliefs -- and tells them what it means to respect hers -- she’s better able to manage the relationships that she doesn’t want to lose. (She says there are some that have become unsalvageable.) The bottom line in these situations: Be respectful of me, or I’ll have to remove myself.

The dynamic is different when close friendships diverge on politics.

Kabak Epperson described a recent visit from her best friend from college, whom she has considered a close friend for 15 years. They have stayed in touch through texts, but had not spent time together in person for five years.

During the course of the weekend visit, her friend asked Kabak Epperson why she was going to homeschool her child. When she shared her reasoning, the friend dismissed her concerns, saying the issue was "not that big of a deal."

Kabak Epperson felt stunned. When she tried to explain further, her friend shut the conversation down, saying she didn’t want to talk about anything “controversial” that they might disagree on.

“It was hurtful for me,” Kabak Epperson said. “It broke a lot of trust. It’s been really weird to see these invisible fences arise.”

The rest of the visit felt awkward and uncomfortable, she said. It changed her perspective on the relationship because she realized she could not be her whole, real self around her friend.

She said she wants to try to continue the relationship from a distance, and to humanize the issues her friend described as “political” by sharing the ways they impact her family. Maybe something she says will influence the way her friend thinks about issues that have only been theoretical to her until now.

“I won’t try to confront her or change her mind,” she said. “But I will continue to live my truth.”

Kabak Epperson has also taken other steps to try to bridge the chasms that hyper-partisanship has created. A key aspect has been educating herself.

“I’ve been reading like crazy the past few years,” she said. She read “Jesus and John Wayne” to better understand the Christian evangelical movement. She’s more informed on the history of race in America. But she understands that not everyone is interested in having nuanced discussions.

“It feels like a minefield trying to talk to anyone these days,” she said.

So, she limits her energy to those who are in a true position of influence, such as members of her local school board. She volunteers for voter registrations efforts rather than engaging with trolls. When she encounters negativity online, she counters it with a donation or time spent toward a cause important to her.

“Budget your energy,” she advises. “And push positivity.”