The news of Trump's election took me almost entirely by surprise. Just in the last few days I had begun to wonder faintly if the polls had been that far off all along, or if perhaps things were shifting. Caught flat-footed, I barely knew how I felt about the result. I know the man will drive me crazy, and yet he's already won my heart by proposing a climate skeptic for EPA chief. I always said I'd like some small fraction of what he did, which put him head and shoulders above Hillary F'in' Clinton. Maybe this week I'm like the guy passing the 22nd-floor window on his way down: "So far, so good!"
Something else that surprised me, but may have been evident to everyone else, is that the anger I thought had faded a bit, or at least been tamped down, is in fact still roaring. I was refusing to make myself miserable concentrating on it all the time, but it was unabated. All it took was 50 or so funereal Facebook posts by friends and family members who weren't sure they were ever again going to be able to get out of bed in face the day, to awaken a fearsomely vengeful spirit in me. After several startlingly un-self-aware messages from my sister, I broke down and replied with the question whether she was actually aware that she was communicating with someone for whom the last couple of presidential terms had been sickening, maddening, embittering calamities. (About which response in me, I didn't add, she had given not a single rat's patootie, not even when the lying little thief's law confiscated my health insurance.)
OK, that last line brings me to the point: until recently, I could be irritable about bad government and economic policy, but I never let it knock me very far off balance. I certainly couldn't sustain rage for years at a stretch, or much personal animosity. I have to acknowledge that these people had never before made me feel afraid and vulnerable. They'd never figured out a way to take away something that was deeply important to me and that I was afraid of not being able to replace. Since then, my reaction has been more personal and more ugly. I can work every day on not gloating openly, but the truth is that every weepy text message makes me incandescently angry. I want to text back that I'm exactly as sympathetic as they were when the tables were turned, and I'm completely uninterested in any more theories about how I feel this way because I'm a racist. Just bite me, that's all. I have completely had it. For the most part I restrain this impulse and answer noncommittally or not at all. To my sister, I've taken to answering that I know how she feels.
On a happier note, we just got back from a reunion in Houston with our old commune buddies. I see some of these folks from time to time, but there were some I hadn't seen for decades, and it was rare to see more than one or two at a time. Eschewing politics, we did my favorite thing in the world, which was make music and sing along in 2 or even 3 parts, including many of the old songs we used to do nearly every night after communal dinner. I'm terribly fond of the two guys who were playing guitar--then suddenly it came to me that these two guys had mocked up a big cardboard wedding cake for my bachelorette party in 1983, then jumped out of it in their underwear. Who knows how either of them voted? I love them both anyway. In that moment I reached some kind of transcendent state of happy nostalgia and harmony with the world. It was a lost moment of youth I never thought I'd feel again.
11 comments:
Tex, I certainly hear you. People I love are making me sick and tired of the whining, and the people that are just 'friends' I'm sorely tempted to put straight- but I don't.
I've been debating if it would be better to tell them that while I'm not an outright Trump supporter, I did vote for him, and I don't think it's the end of the world. The people that know me- but aren't fully aware of my political leanings (I tend to hold that back so as not to be summarily dismissed in their heads as a nut) tend to think I'm quite sane and rational and possess some modicum of wisdom. When I speak publically at school meetings for instance, I invariably get a few comments from people who are glad I spoke and think what I said was well said. Given that, perhaps if they knew that at least some Trump supporters are folks like me- not neo-Nazis, it might give them some comfort.
Anyway, I'm thinking that with most of the people immediately around me, it will pass eventually. If it doesn't, all bets are off.
Oh, and I should add that I am so glad that I don't do facebook or anything like that (the only person I personally know I follow on twitter is my brother, and even he has been barely tolerable since the election).
Tex, I feel the same way- never before has any political party inflicted such a direct and personal hurt as smashing my health insurance.
My internal reply is "look you little shits, you made it PERSONAL this time. No fancy policy differences or tiny increments of taxation or squabbles over who will reign in east bugsuck, but PERSONAL. You messed with me and mine.
There is very solid evidence that the DNC and Clinton Campaign broke the social compact by hiring rent-a-rioters in an effort to provoke violence and blame it on Trump. There is further evidence that Bill and Hillary Clinton judged DJT to be a formidable opponent, and so they decided to do whatever they could to attack his character instead of arguing the issues.
There is further evidence, including busses, pictures, and Craigslist ads that is some indication that the current "demonstrations" are in fact rent-a-riots.
We dodged a bullet. Now, perhaps the Democrats will examine this situation, get rid of the criminals that have taken root amongst them, and come back with fresh faces and fresh ideas. If they don't, they can just stay out in the wilderness, a little longer.
Valerie
I'm glad you had such a wonderful time with old friends!
LittleRed1
Among my left-leaning friends who are very upset about the election, one major complaint is Obamacare's pending demise. This is going, they tell me, to kill their friends and family who have pre-existing conditions.
It strikes me that the complaint is similarly personal, and also that they have no sympathy for your similar complaint. You could get new insurance, after all, even if it was worse and more expensive. You should have been willing to make that sacrifice of your family's relatively privileged interests for their family's less-privileged interests, and if you weren't it's because you're a bad person.
Which means, of course, that you're selfish as well as sexist and racist. Also, Republicans are cowards because they didn't find a way to stop Trump.
So the grieving is going about as rationally as you'd expect from such an emotionally weighty process. Give them time, and perhaps some of them will begin to come around.
All it took was 50 or so funereal Facebook posts by friends and family members who weren't sure they were ever again going to be able to get out of bed in face the day, to awaken a fearsomely vengeful spirit in me.
Emotion is more than enough to elect a US President, especially over a traitor and Leftist like Alinsky girl Clinton.
But emotions also make people easier to manipulate. The Left and Mao figured this out. Gramsci did. And so has the Alt Right, while Trum was probably born that way.
Trum is who people voted for, but what they will get is the Alt Right, since at least half a President's effectiveness is based on their loyalists in DC. And the Alt Right and Trum's own clan, is the only loyalists he can count on.
When Nixon pushed his admin and Congress to decide whether they were loyal to the US Constitution or whether they were loyal to Nixon personally, Nixon was perhaps surprised to realize that even in DC's den of corruption, many of the people he personally picked chose the US over loyalty to Nixon. They even chose principles over party loyalty. Why he would be surprised at this after picking them in his cabinet, is perhaps why Nixon went into retreat from politics. Nixon's cunning was insufficient for DC, and it didn't suit him anyways. He was not nearly corrupt enough for DC, if he had a cadre like Hussein brought, he wouldn't have been in nearly as much trouble.
Steve Bannon is now in the White House, or will be. And there's talk of the Alt Right pushing Milo as Press secretary.
This is indeed a Changing of the Guard, but all of it actually improves the chances of civil war, rather than decreases it.
The Alt Right has 3 leaders I have identified. Milo, Michael Cernovich, and VoxDay. They all lead their respective factions in the Alt Right, and there's plenty more that haven't been named, but they are the ideological front runners, or the Lenin/Trotsky/Stalin troika.
The Alt Right will probably do a better job governing than Trum would. So would Trum's family. People don't have to understand or believe this, since a lot of things that go in DC is beneath people's notice. But the consequences will be interesting to see.
So the grieving is going about as rationally as you'd expect from such an emotionally weighty process. Give them time, and perhaps some of them will begin to come around.
They aren't generally the problem. The problem is that the Alt Right, in seeking to defeat or destroy the Left, must by nature of military necessity, become more like the Leftist alliance. But there is a breaking point there on the scale of good vs evil, where evil will FLIP you from good to their side, even while you think you are winning a military campaign against them.
Peter and Paul were examples of humans that flipped from good to evil, and evil to good. Peter when he thrice denounced Jesus as his mentor and Lord in public, similar to a Japanese divorce. Paul when he forsake the name of Saul and the Jewish religious authorities, to defend the Jews he once persecuted and executed.
This world is corrupt enough that I mostly see evil converting humans to evil. Converting people from evil to good, is much rarer. Which is why if this was merely a human power struggle, the Alt Right would by necessity always win and so would everyone who is good, benefit. But if the fight is against evil, as VoxDay has also claimed, then the strategic scenario becomes much more dire.
In thinking in decades and centuries, it becomes more and more difficult to look at the small forest of tactical problems such as the Left's reaction to this election. The Left's reaction to this matters about as much as the US putting faulty magnetic warheads on torpedoes in WWII.
I certainly couldn't sustain rage for years at a stretch, or much personal animosity.
For me, it was from 2007-2014.
That's at least 6 years, where reading about politics or what the Left is doing was intolerable. Since there wasn't anyone to take it out on, except collateral damage, I chose to change myself and devote all those energies to more useful pursuits of knowledge and craft. Like war craft or psychological manipulation.
Which is why the Trum advent and Alt Right stuff didn't catch me off guard.
I can work every day on not gloating openly, but the truth is that every weepy text message makes me incandescently angry. I want to text back that I'm exactly as sympathetic as they were when the tables were turned, and I'm completely uninterested in any more theories about how I feel this way because I'm a racist.
There was an interesting story about Jesus taking his place on the cross. The Romans gave the Jews the option of pardoning a criminal every once in awhile, so the other Jesus was a rebel and murderer, and the Jews wanted him freed, and put Jesus of Nazareth on the cross. Except two of the criminal's allies were still going to be sentenced to death by crucifixion, and they had an interesting conversation with Jesus during their last few moments on Earth.
I am good at reverse engineering, so with the help of the Fata Morgana and other materials, I reverse engineer what it takes for a human, Jesus of Nazareth, to say the ones nailing him to a cross and breaking his legs "forgive these Roman soldiers, for they knot now what they are doing" as they are under Roman authority, orders, and pretty much ignorant about why the Jews are promoting this or what the conflict is about.
The Leftist alliance certainly contains many guilty parties, a lot of them are just cannonfodder. To forgive them is perhaps too high a task to ask of humans, but to treat tools as tools is still within our grasp.
So the grieving is going about as rationally as you'd expect from such an emotionally weighty process. Give them time, and perhaps some of them will begin to come around.
Not when they're led--and they permit themselves to be led rather than choosing to think for themselves--by such fundamentally dishonest politicians as Nancy Pelosi, Elijah Cummings, John Conyers, John Lewis, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Patty Murray, Dianne Feinstein, Kamela Harris, Harry Reid, et al. (Yes, yes, I know Reid is "retiring," but he won't go away. And if I get my way, he'll be kept permanently in the public's awareness for generations to come through Congress and Trump collaborating to open a sorely needed Harry Reid Memorial Nuclear Repository at Yucca Mountain.)
And not when they're led by such hysterical, if fundamentally honest, politicians as Bernie Sanders.
Eric Hines
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