Today, I am confused, saddened, disgusted … I was talking with an old and much loved friend tonight, and became sickened. I don’t know what to do, or what to think right now.
I found out Sunday night that one of my oldest and dearest friends is a Trump-loving member of the choir. He’s a full member of the club. He is not a ‘deplorable’ (a label we should never have been flinging around). He didn’t lose a manufacturing job. He is not lacking healthcare — he’s disabled former military, so has Tricare. He’s college-educated (MS degree).
This man, whom I’ve know since the age of six, was celebrating the Muslim ban at the bar with his friends earlier. He proudly informed me that he voted for Trump, and worst of all, he thinks Trump is doing a good job because “he’s doing what he said he’d do, but has made missteps because he doesn’t speak well if unrehearsed.” He feels like that’s why everyone is either mad and having serious misgiving.
I once admired this person’s ability to assess social situations better than I (in my younger days my social skills lay somewhere between Leonard’s and Sheldon’s of big “Big Bang Theory” fame). I just don’t know, now.
Incredulous, I asked him (let’s call him ‘Pete’ — not his name) if he supported all that Trump had been spewing, he proudly answered ‘yes’. So I’m stunned, now.
This conversation started over the fact that I had posted a story on Trump’s ‘inappropriate rah-rah/rant session’ with the CIA on Facebook. It also ranged over the fact that I was absolutely incensed about Trump’s actions gagging the government and over the fact that Trump’s visit to the tomb of the unknown soldier made me, as well as members of my family who are in the military or who have retired from it, sick.
My friend couldn’t seem to understand why people were so getting so upset. After all, ‘Pete’ said, ‘Obama banned Korean M1s from coming into the country and THAT was a bigger tragedy (!?)’.
I guess I’m ranting — I’m trying to figure out how to deal with this. This man is not blue-collar, or educated at high-school-level-or-less: he’s very well educated, as were his mama and daddy (fine arts and chemical engineering respectively).
My friend is fine arts trained himself: he has an MS plus a nursing degree, and is ex-military. What he does have in common with Trump supporters, is an absolute, virulent hatred of both President Obama and Secretary Clinton. But he assured me his hatred of Mr. ‘Obama was not rooted in racism’.
I was shocked. And I thought about his late parents — what they’d think. They wouldn’t be cheering for him … they didn’t raise him like this — older brother and sister are not like this.
‘Pete’ said to me, “Trump’s doing quite well for his first week, considering he’s an outsider, and he’s going to make things better, can’t you see that? He’s doing what he said he would do.”. I couldn’t find words, at first.
Then I asked him, “Do you hate me that much?” That left ‘Pete’ silent for a moment — I could almost hear him thinking.
“Do you hate your daughters and your wife so much that you would unabashedly support someone who would treat them like objects, critique them like cattle, then use them like Kleenex?” He said that was unfair.
I asked, “Do you despise me so that you commend a man to me who hates people who look like me, especially if we don’t conform to his standards of beauty and mental acuity (which is decidedly less than), and who wants to take away my rights and eventually deport me to a place I didn’t come from because he feels I have no right to be here even though I am a 5th generation American of predominantly Paiute/Afro-Arab ancestry?” No response from ‘Pete’.
“I’m a woman, non-white, and a scientist, who has no problem speaking my mind. He wants to make me, and every woman of any race, suffer. How could you?”
‘Pete’ seemed shocked that I could accuse him of being racist. I quickly realized that pointing out that I hadn’t was a non-starter, and stopped. He then argued that it wasn’t fair to call Trump disrespectful, dismissive, racist, xenophobic, fascist, or crooked (that last would be HRC, he said).
All this and more, I listened to him defend, excuse, explain. But me, I’m sick. I’m confused. I’m looking at him like I never knew him.
Today, I found out that despite protestations, one of my oldest and dearest friends, almost a family member, is OK with racism, fascism, homophobia, and abuse of our constitution and the deliberate dismissal of his constitutional responsibilities by the new president, if it gets him (‘Pete’) the guns he wants and if he gets to witness the abuse of Muslims, persons of middle eastern descent, and LGBQT persons, as well as gets back the privilege he thinks he deserves.
I tried to point out, gently, that for ‘Pete’ to be extended a privilege he hadn’t earned, it would be taken away from someone else — someone like me,
I learned that he thinks I am unreasonable for expecting to be done by fairly. I learned he really believed I didn’t deserve what I had, because it had been ‘given’ to me.
He knows better. In a I-helped-him-get-through-school way, he damn well knows better. And still he said it.
I found out that, worst of all, he knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he voted for Trump, and HE. JUST. DIDN’T. CARE.