Today I texted with a family member about Trump. He initiated the conversation by telling me about Elon Musk's PAC, which I already know about, trying to poke me to make a donation, which he knew I wouldn't. Part of me feels like Musk is mostly just butt hurt that Biden didn't invite him to the consortium on electric cars at the White House, which, frankly, I agree, seemed lame. But Musk is behaving like a wounded, angry, egotistical boy, and now he hitching himself to another wounded, angry, egotistical boy.
Anyway, I should not have taken the bate from this relative. I'm not on social media much; I hardly ever engage in that way. But his texts were so irritating to me that I kept responding. I was thinking about this relative. I was wondering what had him so disgruntled with anything Democrat. He comes from a working class family, pulled himself up from his boot straps (that might be part of it), but then, when he had a wife and kids and money, hired an illegal immigrant who lived in his house and whom he paid meager wages to basically help raise his kids--and she did. This undocumented nanny woke in the morning, made everyone's breakfast, walked the kids to school in the morning, cleaned the house all day, and picked the kids up from school and made them do their homework while she prepared dinner. Both his kids got into and graduated from excellent colleges, which he on one than more occasion told me was in part because of this ["illegal"] hired help.
The same hired help his candidate would have deported.
It's so baffling to me. This family member, despite not graduating from a university, makes a really good 6-figure income, has had two kids graduate from great colleges (cue the illegal nanny), has three vacation homes, several cars, and a large stock portfolio. But America sucks right now and we have to right the ship?
Goddamit, I hate talking politics at all. But I have been arguing politics with this person since we could form sentences. I personally hate all things divisive. I believe in listening to your "opponent" and trying to find common ground (a la Carl Rogers, the great psychotherapist who tried to help people with empathy, and whose message I taught in my argument classes at Cal Poly for almost two decades). I try to believe that's the only way we'll make any progress in this world is by listening to one another and finding common ground. Today, that seems so naive. Yet I try to embrace the idea that even my bitterest enemy and I are connected...
This relative is afraid of what will happen to the country if Harris wins. I am afraid of what will happen if Trumps wins and perhaps even more afraid of what will happen to the country if he doesn't. And I'm a Capricorn, a notorious unemotional non-worrier. I have trained myself to not grasp for future comfort or to dread future discomfort. And yet ... I harbor some fear. And so when I am pimped by this relative, a person I have tried to love and help and support in his deepest need, and yet also a person I have been at odds with ethically and politically and spiritually, and yet with whom I also share so much history--including very difficult, tragic history--my god. I mean, we love each other. But we will spend our whole lives thinking the other is mis-guided, incorrect, illogical, WRONG.
And that sucks.
And that's how much of this divided country is right now. You love the person. You have history with them. You disagree with them to your core. Brother against brother--thus was the Civil War. America, let's not go there.
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