I agree with Tim Norton. Your friend was out of line with that comment at that time.
I can remember a time before talk radio and faux "news" came along and poisoned the minds of the gullible and undereducated when it was possible to talk politics with republicans without it dissolving into a shouting match or a brawl. For many years I voted for the person, not the party. I voted republican probably more than Democrat, but that changed once 2016 came along. The Republicans became a hate filled cult and I'll never vote for one again as long as I live.
And as we're the same age Tom, I'm sure you also being able to discuss politics without a brawl.
I remember it too — arguing a farm bill or a tax rate with a man and shaking his hand after, both of us still neighbors when it was done. That's mostly gone now, I agree with you there.
And don't worry, I've still got about thirty seconds left in me too, if it ever came to that. Comforting to know I'm not the only one.
I'll say this though, and it's the only place I'd push back a little: I still think my friend at that funeral wasn't part of what poisoned it. He was just telling me the weather. Whether the poisoning came from talk radio or somewhere else, he's downstream of it same as the rest of us, not the source of it.
Appreciate you reading it that close. Means something.
I used to be a "person, not party" voter, myself, but I don't even recognize Republicans, anymore. The whole party has transmogrified into some grotesque version of its former self. And in my opinion, the point of origin was Rush Limbaugh.
I agree. I remember the GOP doing the right things during Watergate. My brother was a CO during Vietnam, and his champion was a GOP Senator from our state. There were good people there. I saw this into my career as a lobbyist for a social justice organization when I could interact w members of both parties. Until I couldn't. The change was shocking and heartbreaking since I suddenly was distanced from legislators I'd once liked. Horrible.
I can remember that time, too. I have been commenting to others for a while that one of the biggest problems is that we no longer have a shared set of facts or reality that everyone experiences and has to deal with, regardless of political viewpoints. When we had a few news sources to draw from, people could disagree on what policies to adopt to address issues they heard about. But they COULD agree on WHAT the facts were about those issues. There were always conspiracy theorists insisting that the truth was something else, but they were not able to broadcast their views like they are today.
Now we have people routinely making up their own realities, such as "alternative facts." We also have the Internet and a myriad of t.v. and radio hosts to spread them like wildfire. This is the difference between then and now. Having instant access to information (EVERYONE'S) is not good. Technology is both a blessing and one of our biggest curses.
Nowadays we have people confronted with direct evidence of wrongdoing (e.g., the killings of citizens on the street) dismissing it as "fake." If some people witnessed Bonespurs Bonaparte killing someone on the street, they would claim: (a) it was fake; or (2) if it WAS real, the person certainly deserved it.
I hear you, and I don't think you're wrong to feel that. I went back and forth on it myself.
But I think that's exactly why I kept it in. It wasn't appropriate, not by the usual rules of a gravel parking lot after a funeral. That's what stopped me. A man who's never been unkind to me in fifty years said something like that without even considering it might land wrong. That's not him being cruel. That's just how normal the sentence had become to him.
I don't have an answer to what Democrats are expected to do about a man who holds hate for hate's sake. I don't think I do either, honestly. My rancher friend, near as I can tell, isn't in that category. But I know there are men who are, and I've got no plan for reaching them, and I'd be lying if I told you I did.
Where I still hold out is smaller than a whole country. I'm not trying to fix ungovernable. I'm trying to keep one friendship honest, and maybe do the same with the next man I meet, and the one after that. That's a much smaller thing than what you're describing, and it might not add up to anything at the scale you're talking about.
But it's the only scale I've got any real say over. So that's where I'm working.
For some things, an answer does not - cannot - exist. This lands poorly with many of us who were raised to think problems through and search out solutions. But the longer I walk the earth, the more firmly I have come to accept that conclusion.
And so, I do what I can within the very limited realm of my own life, knowing full well it is not always going to be enough. All any one of us can do is our best. And we must claim that to find peace, if not the answer.
I'm not sure that there is any point in trying to empathize with those who 1) believe Democrats are their enemies, because that's what they're told *even if it conflicts either their own lived experiences), 2) believe that opinions are fixed reality and facts are malleable, 3) the unnecessary suffering of others is acceptable, even if it means they share in the suffering...because of some bizarre distortion of "winning".
If someone you've known for decades holds onto hate for hate's sake, I truly don't understand what Democrats are expected to do.
I've long since accepted that our country is ungovernable. When tens of millions don't share the values, goals, ethics, or even foundational principles of democracy, we might as well be living on different planets.
Even those disillusioned with Trump and the GOP would cut off their arm rather than vote for a Democrat (and corporate Democrats have contributed significantly to our current situation).
I think that a big part of the disconnect is that very few people think as deeply and with as much context as you do. That is not a compliment for its own sake. I just think that the balance in most discussions regarding politics is inherently uneven.
I believe that most people learn prejudice against the beliefs of others and they hold them as an identity tag. Your being told that most people hated your politics at that sad occasion was very ungenerous. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had told the guy to go to hell under those circumstances.
We can explore our own beliefs and affirm our own value systems but it is so difficult to have a meaningful exchange of ideas with another individual. A meeting of the minds with politics is very difficult because tribalism prevails as a rule.
Since what tiny bit is left of my NE family voted for George Wallace years back, and probably voted for Trump now, I understand this. I still love him because he's good, decent - yes, really - but i never will understand him. His late wife, my cousin, was a Dem, and they managed for decades to live well together. After she died, he and I fell out of contact, but I wish him well. No clue why he is so politically conservative when he's so personally kind. So be it.
The people who rail at me aren't MAGA. They are Eastern and Western Dems. Wouldn't dream of voting for a Republican but have contempt for your MAGA friends. I have encountered this for years, the hostility to flyover country and everything about it. Hard to get them to understand why I love it and the people therein. But MORE interesting to me is their racism, their contempt for immigrants, the homeless, for those not like themselves that is parallel to MAGA's wariness. This baffles me. If I can't ferret that out from "my own kind", I can see why your NE friends can't either.
I go about my life engaging with massively disparate people looking for what I can - kindness. I have found it in activists, Black communities, farm communities, Muslims and Jews, homeless people. I come here for fresh air and the capacity to SAY this.
I live so openly I've become one of those people that other people, strangers, will single out for assistance. In the end, that's all I can be - someone approachable by anyone anywhere who needs a hand and a smile. I don't try to covert. I just exist giving others a chance, doing for them what I can. Those are the only ways I know how to be. If I LIVE my politics, it sows kernels of doubt among those who might never listen to a screed. I suspect your life is the same. I have a friend in another state much like you who also has become a trusted person as a liberal in a Red states and very Red town. That, it seems to me, is how we find our way back. Live as you believe no matter who is in front of you. It's worth it.
This story is particularly fascinating to me. I only know a handful of Republicans. They come in three flavors.
The couple Reagan Republicans I know vote that way because of their financial interests. They don't want to pay any taxes at all, and want no government regulation on business, period. They don't hate Democrats, they just don't want to share their money. They think they're open minded: but the poor, the immigrants, the gays and the women can eat cake, as far as they're concerned.
Then there are the two drooling MAGA idiots. They were initially influenced by AM radio, which sent them to Fox. From there they got on the Internet, which completely radicalized them. Like the Reagan Republicans, they want to keep "what's mine." They worked hard for it, goddammit, and they aren't giving it away to anyone. They think we should be strict on immigration because those folks are taking their "tax money." Well except for both of their companies' foremen, they say "he's one of the good ones, he's trying to become a citizen." Both treat their wives like they do their pickup truck or boat. A possession. Both "little ladies" nod along with them, spirits completely broken. They hate liberals with all their hearts, and would even if the Baby Jesus came down from heaven and told them to vote blue.
The last couple are low information, regular Joe-types. They followed the same information path as the MAGA guys. AM radio -> Fox -> Internet. They go along with what they're told. They love "America." They love our "traditional values." They follow the same MAGA talking points. But they're different from the MAGA guys. They're not driven by big egos. They're actually good, kind people at heart. They don't really hate anyone. They're just not smart enough to realize that they've been duped. When I take the time, I actually get through to both of them.
I don't know how this will ever change until the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated. Money is money, it's not going to change. But the rest of them have been and continue to be programmed. That's not going to stop until the whole partisan media complex gets shut down.
Your third category is the whole piece, really. The ones you actually get through to when you sit with them long enough. That's the part worth holding onto.
You're right that money explains more of this than people want to admit, and right that something broke upstream of all of us, long before anybody started shouting. I don't disagree with much of what you laid out here. Just try to stay a little patient with the ones in the middle, the way it sounds like you already are.
I really love one of them and think the other one is ok. I think it would take their worlds being crushed by acts so obvious even Fox can't blame it on Biden or Obama for them to come back into even the gray area. But, if that happens, I'll be there waiting for them. Things may never be the same between us, but if they are polite I'd have a beer with either of them.
The problem is that Democrats (or at least their leadership) stopped believing in anything at all about the time Bill Clinton took the White House. The rhetoric doesn’t match the policies, and the party pundits serve up ideology with a side heaping of contempt for both the flyover states AND for the FDR type left (you know, we radical leftists who think we ought to raise taxes on the obscenely rich, stop the wars, fund the schools.)
You're naming something true, and I think you're right that somewhere around then the rhetoric stopped matching the policy, and people noticed. That gap is real, and it costs trust every time it shows.
I'd add only this: I think that failure and what I wrote about are cousins, not the same thing. But you're right that the leadership earned a good deal of the distrust honestly.
Yes, I understand that. And the “enemy” narrative is an ugly and largely manufactured feature of what used to be our democracy. But, our “team” did a whole lot of the heavy lifting. When Hillary called half the nation deplorable she was just stating how a lot of the liberals thought and felt.
I think the US is at the point where we need to get over the old party labels because, and I know this will rankle some, we are literally at the same point that Germany was at in 1933. Who can even now remember the name of the party that was opposed to the Nazi party? Nobody, that's who. The fascists swept in with their propaganda machine and manufactured social and political chaos. This is exactly where we are now.
We are in the midst of monumental (no pun intended) political corruption with no end in sight. I read today that Trump's youngest son, youngest mind you, is now worth $150million in his own right, thanks to political insider trading. He is twenty years old.
I will be surprised if either of the two major parties in the US will survive this corrupt regime.
There is no "reaching across the aisle" or finding middle ground with fascist. That is not how fascism works. Best of luck to you, Tom, and to all the people who can see through this terrible time for our country.
Appreciate you saying it, and appreciate the good wishes right back at you. These are hard times to sit with, no doubt about it. I'm glad there's people like you out there still paying close attention.
There are still some good people. It sometimes breaks my heart to see them. There are days when I don't know which hurts worse, seeing the things bad people do, or the extraordinary grace of some of the things that good people do.
I would disagree. Look at what Pres. Biden got done as bipartisan voting. Look at what Black House Rep. Lauren Underwoood has passed as bipartisan legislation even now. What they know is that it's still there. It just is muzzled on the GOP side but still can function. We are trying to bring it back, and extremes on both sides can't tolerate it. Being in the "center" doesn't mean being unprincipled but quite the reverse. Find every principled person you can no matter who. It matters. Build OUT. Don't break down.
This is as well said as can be and I will post it to my own social media and recommend we heed your words. You and I are on parallel paths. Some say that a wise man is one who agrees with you, but this is more than that. Thank you for doing something that will help. We have much to do and with action together it can be done.
That means more than you probably know, hearing it from someone walking the same road. I don't know that I've done much besides tell the truth as plain as I could manage it, but if it's worth passing along, then pass it along. That's really all any of us can do — say the true thing where somebody might hear it, and trust the next person to carry it a little further than we could alone.
Tom, your piece is thought-provoking, but … I grew up in a Midwestern Republican family, a kid wearing an “I Like Ike” button riding her bike through the neighborhood. My first vote was Republican. Then years of reading, thinking, work, travel, moving across the country shaped my beliefs, changed my perspective. I live in California. We’ve been married 42 years and my husband is a veteran. We love gardening, camping and travel. He built a gate for a neighbor; we both deliver food to the local food bank. I’ve volunteered at the horse rescue organization, served on city committees, write a column for the senior center newsletter, feed baby songbirds at the wildlife rescue clinic. We’re good people. A couple years ago we took a cruise. One day I stood in line at the pizza station, located next to the ice cream counter where $18 would buy you a towering concoction of ice cream, brownie chunks and whipped cream. A pleasant-looking older gentleman paused, looked at the ice cream display and said “I’d like to buy one of those for my wife.” I had a coupon for a sundae and offered it to him. He happily accepted, thanked me, asked where I was from. California. His smile faded. “California?? How can you stand to live in California?” I’d just bought him ice cream, he didn’t know me and yet my residence alone was enough to tell him everything he thought he needed to know: a leftie, a Communist, someone who endorses child gender reassignment and opening the borders to all those murderers and rapists.
Three or four presidents ago we could have talked across the proverbial aisle. We may even have been friends. But not now. Our divisions are too deep, hard-wired into our very being. A word. One word is all it takes to know the enemy.
That scholarship he gave up says most of what I need to know about him. A man who sacrifices something real, young, for people who need him, doesn't grow up needing to perform his politics. He'd already proven what kind of man he was before he ever cast a vote.
I think what you're missing isn't really the arguments. It's him. The specific shape of disagreeing with someone you trusted completely, where pushing back never once felt like betrayal, just two people who respected each other enough to actually think it through together.
That detail about the thank you gets me too. A plainer way of receiving things, gratitude without a second layer of suspicion underneath it. I don't know exactly when we lost that, but I believe you when you say you miss it. Sounds like you miss him more than you miss any particular era, if I'm honest, and that seems like the truer thing underneath what you wrote.
That's the whole essay in one ice cream line, isn't it. You did something kind for a stranger, no politics in it at all, and one word undid the kindness before he'd even finished the sundae.
I don't think you're wrong that it's gotten harder to cross now than it was three or four presidents back. I've felt that gap widen myself, standing in my own version of that line more times than I'd like.
I still think the word did the damage there, not the woman standing in front of him. He never got far enough past "California" to actually meet you. That's the loss in your story, near as I can tell. Not that you two disagreed. That he never gave himself the chance to find out whether you did.
I often think of my Republican Dad, wishing we could discuss the world today, doubting he’d recognize today’s GOP. We might debate, but there’d be reasoning, serious thought behind our views. He enjoyed politics and I do too. Or did. He grew up in rural Iowa, gave up a college scholarship to keep working and help support his younger sisters. I learned from him the value of work, of mowing the lawn each week to earn my allowance and depositing my earnings in my own bank account. He had opinions, of course, but grew up in an era when a gift from a stranger would have been received with a simple “thank you.”
I play dominoes once a week with a group of people. A lady in that group, upon hearing me identify as a Democrat, looked at me with horror and gasped, "Oh, no, those people are Communists!" I assured her they are not. "Yes, they are.", she insisted. I think most of the folks I play with identify as Republicans - which, years ago, I did, too, before they wandered so far off the path. I do, after all, live in Texas.
That's the whole piece in one gasp, isn't it. She wasn't arguing with you about a platform or a vote count. She'd already decided what the word meant before you ever sat down at that table, and nothing you said back was going to out-argue whatever put that word in her the first time.
I don't think she was trying to insult you either, same as my friend in that parking lot. She looked genuinely scared for a second there. That's almost worse than if she'd meant it as an insult,means somebody convinced her a neighbor across a domino table was a threat, and she believed it enough to gasp.
You kept playing dominoes with her anyway, I expect.
I don't know. This is playing with my mind. I am perplexed. This is striking behavior, a person who chooses to be deaf instead of curious. Based on a word. As in "cause and effect"; as in decisions that impact others. Like women. The "others." An ancient example.
But one of you still holds the mirror. Right?
So thank you for a thought provoking piece on this end.
That's it exactly, deaf instead of curious. I hadn't heard it put that plain before, and I think you're right that it's an old story wearing new clothes. Women have been the "others" in that story about as long as there's been a story to tell.
And yes. I try to hold the mirror on myself too, hard as that is some days. Easiest thing in the world to write a piece about somebody else's deafness and forget to check your own hearing while you're at it. I don't always manage it. But I try to remember the mirror cuts both ways, or it's not worth much.
Thank you for sitting with it long enough to feel perplexed. That's usually where the real thinking starts.
America likes an enemy. Preferably one that can't fight back. Like Cuba. Or Panama.
I think Americans also like to have enemies. Is this a universal human trait, or peculiar to Americans, or maybe it's just that Americans have it in spades?
Immigrants..... On a street corner in Toronto, some guy was inveighing against immigrants. In his small involuntary audience was an Indigenous man, an Indian. He just chuckled and said, "Except for me, you're all immigrants."
Tom, your long time friends who replied that 1."You know that most everybody in there hates your politics." and 2. "Because they think I am their enemy." are 99.9% correct. I gave them -.01% for being in a cult.
I hate, not dislike, HATE!. I have been hating every single day for the past 10 years! I hate what our country has been turned into by the Trump propaganda machine. I hate any elected official with an ( R ) behind their title. I hate the people who supported, contributed to, elected them, and still support them today.
And they deserve every bit of my hate, and then some.
For those who want to disagree with me, you haven’t been paying attention, there is no other excuse.
Tom, your a good man, but if I sent this essay to any Republican, they would simply flip the script in their favor.
Some here will say that’s a lot of hate to carry around. But to me it’s not. Not at all. I didn’t ask for it, and I certainly didn’t vote for it. That’s just how it is today.
I hear you, and ten years is a long time to carry that kind of weight every single day.
I just can't get where you are, though. Hate might be honest — I don't doubt it's honest for you. But I think it costs something too, every day you carry it, whether you feel the cost or not. It changes what a man's capable of hearing, same as it does for the ones you're hating.
I'd rather stay open than be right about who deserves it.
Tom, I grew up and live less than 30 miles from DC.
Politics is pretty much in my face, every gawd damn day!
But, that is my environment I live in. By the time you get the news it’s been watered down and edited to the point I don’t believe you can appreciate what is really going on here.
I treat all people how I would want to be treated. When that simple system breaks down, it forces one to respond. Normally, I just walk away and keep my distance. But, it has gotten so bad here, one is often forced to deal with very unpleasant circumstances. In all of my 74 years, it has never been like this, and it’s getting worse every day.
Staying open is a good thing. But, staying open goes right out the window when you are being threaten with bodily harm for just being in the wrong place, by no choice of your own.
I agree with Tim Norton. Your friend was out of line with that comment at that time.
I can remember a time before talk radio and faux "news" came along and poisoned the minds of the gullible and undereducated when it was possible to talk politics with republicans without it dissolving into a shouting match or a brawl. For many years I voted for the person, not the party. I voted republican probably more than Democrat, but that changed once 2016 came along. The Republicans became a hate filled cult and I'll never vote for one again as long as I live.
And as we're the same age Tom, I'm sure you also being able to discuss politics without a brawl.
As always, an excellent thought provoking piece.
I remember it too — arguing a farm bill or a tax rate with a man and shaking his hand after, both of us still neighbors when it was done. That's mostly gone now, I agree with you there.
And don't worry, I've still got about thirty seconds left in me too, if it ever came to that. Comforting to know I'm not the only one.
I'll say this though, and it's the only place I'd push back a little: I still think my friend at that funeral wasn't part of what poisoned it. He was just telling me the weather. Whether the poisoning came from talk radio or somewhere else, he's downstream of it same as the rest of us, not the source of it.
Appreciate you reading it that close. Means something.
I used to be a "person, not party" voter, myself, but I don't even recognize Republicans, anymore. The whole party has transmogrified into some grotesque version of its former self. And in my opinion, the point of origin was Rush Limbaugh.
I agree. I remember the GOP doing the right things during Watergate. My brother was a CO during Vietnam, and his champion was a GOP Senator from our state. There were good people there. I saw this into my career as a lobbyist for a social justice organization when I could interact w members of both parties. Until I couldn't. The change was shocking and heartbreaking since I suddenly was distanced from legislators I'd once liked. Horrible.
It's tragic.
I can remember that time, too. I have been commenting to others for a while that one of the biggest problems is that we no longer have a shared set of facts or reality that everyone experiences and has to deal with, regardless of political viewpoints. When we had a few news sources to draw from, people could disagree on what policies to adopt to address issues they heard about. But they COULD agree on WHAT the facts were about those issues. There were always conspiracy theorists insisting that the truth was something else, but they were not able to broadcast their views like they are today.
Now we have people routinely making up their own realities, such as "alternative facts." We also have the Internet and a myriad of t.v. and radio hosts to spread them like wildfire. This is the difference between then and now. Having instant access to information (EVERYONE'S) is not good. Technology is both a blessing and one of our biggest curses.
Nowadays we have people confronted with direct evidence of wrongdoing (e.g., the killings of citizens on the street) dismissing it as "fake." If some people witnessed Bonespurs Bonaparte killing someone on the street, they would claim: (a) it was fake; or (2) if it WAS real, the person certainly deserved it.
I’m not sure the message he gave you was appropriate or necessary at all. I enjoy all of your pieces, this is just my opinion.
I hear you, and I don't think you're wrong to feel that. I went back and forth on it myself.
But I think that's exactly why I kept it in. It wasn't appropriate, not by the usual rules of a gravel parking lot after a funeral. That's what stopped me. A man who's never been unkind to me in fifty years said something like that without even considering it might land wrong. That's not him being cruel. That's just how normal the sentence had become to him.
That's the part I wanted you to sit with too.
I did understand that that was a point you were making. Thank you for responding.
I knew you did!
I don't have an answer to what Democrats are expected to do about a man who holds hate for hate's sake. I don't think I do either, honestly. My rancher friend, near as I can tell, isn't in that category. But I know there are men who are, and I've got no plan for reaching them, and I'd be lying if I told you I did.
Where I still hold out is smaller than a whole country. I'm not trying to fix ungovernable. I'm trying to keep one friendship honest, and maybe do the same with the next man I meet, and the one after that. That's a much smaller thing than what you're describing, and it might not add up to anything at the scale you're talking about.
But it's the only scale I've got any real say over. So that's where I'm working.
I, as well.
For some things, an answer does not - cannot - exist. This lands poorly with many of us who were raised to think problems through and search out solutions. But the longer I walk the earth, the more firmly I have come to accept that conclusion.
And so, I do what I can within the very limited realm of my own life, knowing full well it is not always going to be enough. All any one of us can do is our best. And we must claim that to find peace, if not the answer.
I'm not sure that there is any point in trying to empathize with those who 1) believe Democrats are their enemies, because that's what they're told *even if it conflicts either their own lived experiences), 2) believe that opinions are fixed reality and facts are malleable, 3) the unnecessary suffering of others is acceptable, even if it means they share in the suffering...because of some bizarre distortion of "winning".
If someone you've known for decades holds onto hate for hate's sake, I truly don't understand what Democrats are expected to do.
I've long since accepted that our country is ungovernable. When tens of millions don't share the values, goals, ethics, or even foundational principles of democracy, we might as well be living on different planets.
Even those disillusioned with Trump and the GOP would cut off their arm rather than vote for a Democrat (and corporate Democrats have contributed significantly to our current situation).
There is no way to bridge the divide.
I think that a big part of the disconnect is that very few people think as deeply and with as much context as you do. That is not a compliment for its own sake. I just think that the balance in most discussions regarding politics is inherently uneven.
I believe that most people learn prejudice against the beliefs of others and they hold them as an identity tag. Your being told that most people hated your politics at that sad occasion was very ungenerous. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had told the guy to go to hell under those circumstances.
We can explore our own beliefs and affirm our own value systems but it is so difficult to have a meaningful exchange of ideas with another individual. A meeting of the minds with politics is very difficult because tribalism prevails as a rule.
Since what tiny bit is left of my NE family voted for George Wallace years back, and probably voted for Trump now, I understand this. I still love him because he's good, decent - yes, really - but i never will understand him. His late wife, my cousin, was a Dem, and they managed for decades to live well together. After she died, he and I fell out of contact, but I wish him well. No clue why he is so politically conservative when he's so personally kind. So be it.
The people who rail at me aren't MAGA. They are Eastern and Western Dems. Wouldn't dream of voting for a Republican but have contempt for your MAGA friends. I have encountered this for years, the hostility to flyover country and everything about it. Hard to get them to understand why I love it and the people therein. But MORE interesting to me is their racism, their contempt for immigrants, the homeless, for those not like themselves that is parallel to MAGA's wariness. This baffles me. If I can't ferret that out from "my own kind", I can see why your NE friends can't either.
I go about my life engaging with massively disparate people looking for what I can - kindness. I have found it in activists, Black communities, farm communities, Muslims and Jews, homeless people. I come here for fresh air and the capacity to SAY this.
I live so openly I've become one of those people that other people, strangers, will single out for assistance. In the end, that's all I can be - someone approachable by anyone anywhere who needs a hand and a smile. I don't try to covert. I just exist giving others a chance, doing for them what I can. Those are the only ways I know how to be. If I LIVE my politics, it sows kernels of doubt among those who might never listen to a screed. I suspect your life is the same. I have a friend in another state much like you who also has become a trusted person as a liberal in a Red states and very Red town. That, it seems to me, is how we find our way back. Live as you believe no matter who is in front of you. It's worth it.
This story is particularly fascinating to me. I only know a handful of Republicans. They come in three flavors.
The couple Reagan Republicans I know vote that way because of their financial interests. They don't want to pay any taxes at all, and want no government regulation on business, period. They don't hate Democrats, they just don't want to share their money. They think they're open minded: but the poor, the immigrants, the gays and the women can eat cake, as far as they're concerned.
Then there are the two drooling MAGA idiots. They were initially influenced by AM radio, which sent them to Fox. From there they got on the Internet, which completely radicalized them. Like the Reagan Republicans, they want to keep "what's mine." They worked hard for it, goddammit, and they aren't giving it away to anyone. They think we should be strict on immigration because those folks are taking their "tax money." Well except for both of their companies' foremen, they say "he's one of the good ones, he's trying to become a citizen." Both treat their wives like they do their pickup truck or boat. A possession. Both "little ladies" nod along with them, spirits completely broken. They hate liberals with all their hearts, and would even if the Baby Jesus came down from heaven and told them to vote blue.
The last couple are low information, regular Joe-types. They followed the same information path as the MAGA guys. AM radio -> Fox -> Internet. They go along with what they're told. They love "America." They love our "traditional values." They follow the same MAGA talking points. But they're different from the MAGA guys. They're not driven by big egos. They're actually good, kind people at heart. They don't really hate anyone. They're just not smart enough to realize that they've been duped. When I take the time, I actually get through to both of them.
I don't know how this will ever change until the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated. Money is money, it's not going to change. But the rest of them have been and continue to be programmed. That's not going to stop until the whole partisan media complex gets shut down.
Your third category is the whole piece, really. The ones you actually get through to when you sit with them long enough. That's the part worth holding onto.
You're right that money explains more of this than people want to admit, and right that something broke upstream of all of us, long before anybody started shouting. I don't disagree with much of what you laid out here. Just try to stay a little patient with the ones in the middle, the way it sounds like you already are.
I really love one of them and think the other one is ok. I think it would take their worlds being crushed by acts so obvious even Fox can't blame it on Biden or Obama for them to come back into even the gray area. But, if that happens, I'll be there waiting for them. Things may never be the same between us, but if they are polite I'd have a beer with either of them.
The problem is that Democrats (or at least their leadership) stopped believing in anything at all about the time Bill Clinton took the White House. The rhetoric doesn’t match the policies, and the party pundits serve up ideology with a side heaping of contempt for both the flyover states AND for the FDR type left (you know, we radical leftists who think we ought to raise taxes on the obscenely rich, stop the wars, fund the schools.)
You're naming something true, and I think you're right that somewhere around then the rhetoric stopped matching the policy, and people noticed. That gap is real, and it costs trust every time it shows.
I'd add only this: I think that failure and what I wrote about are cousins, not the same thing. But you're right that the leadership earned a good deal of the distrust honestly.
Yes, I understand that. And the “enemy” narrative is an ugly and largely manufactured feature of what used to be our democracy. But, our “team” did a whole lot of the heavy lifting. When Hillary called half the nation deplorable she was just stating how a lot of the liberals thought and felt.
I think the US is at the point where we need to get over the old party labels because, and I know this will rankle some, we are literally at the same point that Germany was at in 1933. Who can even now remember the name of the party that was opposed to the Nazi party? Nobody, that's who. The fascists swept in with their propaganda machine and manufactured social and political chaos. This is exactly where we are now.
We are in the midst of monumental (no pun intended) political corruption with no end in sight. I read today that Trump's youngest son, youngest mind you, is now worth $150million in his own right, thanks to political insider trading. He is twenty years old.
I will be surprised if either of the two major parties in the US will survive this corrupt regime.
There is no "reaching across the aisle" or finding middle ground with fascist. That is not how fascism works. Best of luck to you, Tom, and to all the people who can see through this terrible time for our country.
Appreciate you saying it, and appreciate the good wishes right back at you. These are hard times to sit with, no doubt about it. I'm glad there's people like you out there still paying close attention.
There are still some good people. It sometimes breaks my heart to see them. There are days when I don't know which hurts worse, seeing the things bad people do, or the extraordinary grace of some of the things that good people do.
Keep on keeping on!
✌🏻
I would disagree. Look at what Pres. Biden got done as bipartisan voting. Look at what Black House Rep. Lauren Underwoood has passed as bipartisan legislation even now. What they know is that it's still there. It just is muzzled on the GOP side but still can function. We are trying to bring it back, and extremes on both sides can't tolerate it. Being in the "center" doesn't mean being unprincipled but quite the reverse. Find every principled person you can no matter who. It matters. Build OUT. Don't break down.
This is as well said as can be and I will post it to my own social media and recommend we heed your words. You and I are on parallel paths. Some say that a wise man is one who agrees with you, but this is more than that. Thank you for doing something that will help. We have much to do and with action together it can be done.
That means more than you probably know, hearing it from someone walking the same road. I don't know that I've done much besides tell the truth as plain as I could manage it, but if it's worth passing along, then pass it along. That's really all any of us can do — say the true thing where somebody might hear it, and trust the next person to carry it a little further than we could alone.
Much obliged to you. Keep at it.
Tom, this is an excellent article! Many thanks for sharing and reminding us that above all, we are all human and in the same boat!
Thank you!!
Tom, your piece is thought-provoking, but … I grew up in a Midwestern Republican family, a kid wearing an “I Like Ike” button riding her bike through the neighborhood. My first vote was Republican. Then years of reading, thinking, work, travel, moving across the country shaped my beliefs, changed my perspective. I live in California. We’ve been married 42 years and my husband is a veteran. We love gardening, camping and travel. He built a gate for a neighbor; we both deliver food to the local food bank. I’ve volunteered at the horse rescue organization, served on city committees, write a column for the senior center newsletter, feed baby songbirds at the wildlife rescue clinic. We’re good people. A couple years ago we took a cruise. One day I stood in line at the pizza station, located next to the ice cream counter where $18 would buy you a towering concoction of ice cream, brownie chunks and whipped cream. A pleasant-looking older gentleman paused, looked at the ice cream display and said “I’d like to buy one of those for my wife.” I had a coupon for a sundae and offered it to him. He happily accepted, thanked me, asked where I was from. California. His smile faded. “California?? How can you stand to live in California?” I’d just bought him ice cream, he didn’t know me and yet my residence alone was enough to tell him everything he thought he needed to know: a leftie, a Communist, someone who endorses child gender reassignment and opening the borders to all those murderers and rapists.
Three or four presidents ago we could have talked across the proverbial aisle. We may even have been friends. But not now. Our divisions are too deep, hard-wired into our very being. A word. One word is all it takes to know the enemy.
That scholarship he gave up says most of what I need to know about him. A man who sacrifices something real, young, for people who need him, doesn't grow up needing to perform his politics. He'd already proven what kind of man he was before he ever cast a vote.
I think what you're missing isn't really the arguments. It's him. The specific shape of disagreeing with someone you trusted completely, where pushing back never once felt like betrayal, just two people who respected each other enough to actually think it through together.
That detail about the thank you gets me too. A plainer way of receiving things, gratitude without a second layer of suspicion underneath it. I don't know exactly when we lost that, but I believe you when you say you miss it. Sounds like you miss him more than you miss any particular era, if I'm honest, and that seems like the truer thing underneath what you wrote.
That's the whole essay in one ice cream line, isn't it. You did something kind for a stranger, no politics in it at all, and one word undid the kindness before he'd even finished the sundae.
I don't think you're wrong that it's gotten harder to cross now than it was three or four presidents back. I've felt that gap widen myself, standing in my own version of that line more times than I'd like.
I still think the word did the damage there, not the woman standing in front of him. He never got far enough past "California" to actually meet you. That's the loss in your story, near as I can tell. Not that you two disagreed. That he never gave himself the chance to find out whether you did.
I often think of my Republican Dad, wishing we could discuss the world today, doubting he’d recognize today’s GOP. We might debate, but there’d be reasoning, serious thought behind our views. He enjoyed politics and I do too. Or did. He grew up in rural Iowa, gave up a college scholarship to keep working and help support his younger sisters. I learned from him the value of work, of mowing the lawn each week to earn my allowance and depositing my earnings in my own bank account. He had opinions, of course, but grew up in an era when a gift from a stranger would have been received with a simple “thank you.”
I play dominoes once a week with a group of people. A lady in that group, upon hearing me identify as a Democrat, looked at me with horror and gasped, "Oh, no, those people are Communists!" I assured her they are not. "Yes, they are.", she insisted. I think most of the folks I play with identify as Republicans - which, years ago, I did, too, before they wandered so far off the path. I do, after all, live in Texas.
That's the whole piece in one gasp, isn't it. She wasn't arguing with you about a platform or a vote count. She'd already decided what the word meant before you ever sat down at that table, and nothing you said back was going to out-argue whatever put that word in her the first time.
I don't think she was trying to insult you either, same as my friend in that parking lot. She looked genuinely scared for a second there. That's almost worse than if she'd meant it as an insult,means somebody convinced her a neighbor across a domino table was a threat, and she believed it enough to gasp.
You kept playing dominoes with her anyway, I expect.
Oh, yeah. The game goes on. 😊
I'm so glad to live in a country where people vote for whom they think has their best interests, not just because they belong to a particular party.
I don't know. This is playing with my mind. I am perplexed. This is striking behavior, a person who chooses to be deaf instead of curious. Based on a word. As in "cause and effect"; as in decisions that impact others. Like women. The "others." An ancient example.
But one of you still holds the mirror. Right?
So thank you for a thought provoking piece on this end.
That's it exactly, deaf instead of curious. I hadn't heard it put that plain before, and I think you're right that it's an old story wearing new clothes. Women have been the "others" in that story about as long as there's been a story to tell.
And yes. I try to hold the mirror on myself too, hard as that is some days. Easiest thing in the world to write a piece about somebody else's deafness and forget to check your own hearing while you're at it. I don't always manage it. But I try to remember the mirror cuts both ways, or it's not worth much.
Thank you for sitting with it long enough to feel perplexed. That's usually where the real thinking starts.
"I try to hold the mirror on myself too, hard as that is some days." ~
As we should, otherwise, I agree, the mirror holds no worth. Introspection~ being curious about ourselves.
I appreciate your very thoughtful reply.
America likes an enemy. Preferably one that can't fight back. Like Cuba. Or Panama.
I think Americans also like to have enemies. Is this a universal human trait, or peculiar to Americans, or maybe it's just that Americans have it in spades?
Immigrants..... On a street corner in Toronto, some guy was inveighing against immigrants. In his small involuntary audience was an Indigenous man, an Indian. He just chuckled and said, "Except for me, you're all immigrants."
Tom, your long time friends who replied that 1."You know that most everybody in there hates your politics." and 2. "Because they think I am their enemy." are 99.9% correct. I gave them -.01% for being in a cult.
I hate, not dislike, HATE!. I have been hating every single day for the past 10 years! I hate what our country has been turned into by the Trump propaganda machine. I hate any elected official with an ( R ) behind their title. I hate the people who supported, contributed to, elected them, and still support them today.
And they deserve every bit of my hate, and then some.
For those who want to disagree with me, you haven’t been paying attention, there is no other excuse.
Tom, your a good man, but if I sent this essay to any Republican, they would simply flip the script in their favor.
Some here will say that’s a lot of hate to carry around. But to me it’s not. Not at all. I didn’t ask for it, and I certainly didn’t vote for it. That’s just how it is today.
NOVEMBER CAN’T GET HERE QUICK ENOUGH !
I hear you, and ten years is a long time to carry that kind of weight every single day.
I just can't get where you are, though. Hate might be honest — I don't doubt it's honest for you. But I think it costs something too, every day you carry it, whether you feel the cost or not. It changes what a man's capable of hearing, same as it does for the ones you're hating.
I'd rather stay open than be right about who deserves it.
Tom, I grew up and live less than 30 miles from DC.
Politics is pretty much in my face, every gawd damn day!
But, that is my environment I live in. By the time you get the news it’s been watered down and edited to the point I don’t believe you can appreciate what is really going on here.
I treat all people how I would want to be treated. When that simple system breaks down, it forces one to respond. Normally, I just walk away and keep my distance. But, it has gotten so bad here, one is often forced to deal with very unpleasant circumstances. In all of my 74 years, it has never been like this, and it’s getting worse every day.
Staying open is a good thing. But, staying open goes right out the window when you are being threaten with bodily harm for just being in the wrong place, by no choice of your own.
Be well .....
Please let us all remember. “a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but only a piece of a big one”.