“He sold us out. You know me. I’m a conservative. Trump is no conservative. I didn’t vote for him. And he sold us out.”
In truth, my uncle is an old-school Orange County (CA) Republican. You probably know what I’m talking about, but in case you don’t, here’s a 2-minute summary. Orange Country Republicans pride themselves on their “libertarian leanings.” That’s code for they are not right wing Christians. Because it’s mostly about them, their money and being left alone. Obviously, they sneer at progressives; they style themselves “hard-nosed individualist,” are suspicious of government, and really don’t like “their taxes” going to other people. Any other people. Many of them give a lot of money to their kids, or their religious institution, or the NRA. But that is THEIR CHOICE!!!!! They were mavericky before all the cool kids were. They don’t necessarily consider themselves racist or sexist or anti-gay, but they do 1) enjoy pushing buttons (less so in recent years) and 2) in every case I’ve seen, because they are not right wing Christians, are anything but beholden to the diseases of racism and sexism and even transgenderism, and when such bigotry would interpose itself between them and their family, they would chose family. I grew up around men who wouldn’t pass up making a snide comment about Paul Lynde, or Jane Fonda, and later Oprah and Ellen Degeneres. In retrospect, it’s obvious: they didn’t get along very well with their mothers and wives and they didn’t mind showing that in public. Still, these misogynists expected as much from and supported their daughters equally as their sons, and when their daughter or son came to dinner with >gasp< one of them, they did their level best to be civil, if not welcoming, and would never, never initiate, out of respect for their children. It really depended on the kind of person they were: if they were good parents, they accepted and supported their children; if they were assholes, they didn’t. More than half were good parents.
My uncle used to use Republican and conservative interchangeably. And to tell the truth, though I enjoy sparring with him, he’s sharp and knows his stuff, I have never respected his politics and I don’t really like him all that much. I don’t dislike him, I just don’t like him because I don’t know him. He keeps me, almost everyone in fact, at arms distance. To be fair, I am his older and smarter sister’s son, and his mother played them against each other as kids. Thanksgivings were dreadful for all, particularly for my mom and her brother. It took years for me to even want to get to know him, and probably the same goes for him. Anyways, I don’t really like him because to like him would require his letting me in. Which guys of his generation and background just don’t do very much. And when he does, when he gives brief and awkward glimpses of who he is, for example, the love and respect he has for his children, or his missing his oft insulted wife, I can see why they consider him a good father. Which really was mystery to me for most my life. Because he, like many Orange County Republicans, pride themselves on being tough, and don’t mind if you think they are an asshole. If fact, they like it.
Ok, maybe that took more than 2 minutes. In all fairness, I morphed into talking about the kind of man my uncle is. But that is a big point of this diary. The kind of man my uncle is. Over the past decade, I have periodically called him on the phone to sound him out. Y’know, like the radars from the old movies, with green center-to-circumference line spinning around and beeping — bing! — whenever it passes the target. Well, my uncle was the target. And he’s been a movin’.
So, called him yesterday to see what effect Helsinki and aftermath has had on my uncle. And, as you know, he replied: “He sold us out. You know me. I’m a conservative. Trump is no conservative. I didn’t vote for him. And he sold us out.”
That is the first time he has admitted to me he didn’t vote for Trump. Over the past year he has moved from hinting, to strongly suggesting, to now openly declaring Trump is not his guy. As I said, he knows me, but not too well, and kinda likes me (especially because I went into his, and not my father’s, profession, which matters to guys like him), and so to tell me he didn’t vote for Trump means that is his public position now. Which is a BFD. This guy has voted party line since 1962. He’s an old, white conservative Orange County Republican wannabe asshole who is now openly declaring he did not vote for Trump.
Me, being me, and having the relationship I have with my uncle, seized the opportunity, for an inroad presented istelf in and through the vast and sophisticated defense system around a personality my uncle has spent over 75 years developing. Yes, I know it’s sick. That is the kind of man who votes right wing Republican his whole life is, and that is the kind of dynamic he sets up with his family and friends. It’s war. Always war. War of all against all. And I was ready. I had been waiting over twenty years to make him recognize what I knew to be true: that, although he was a deeply cynical and selfish man, he wasn’t as cynical as he pretended to be, that he had over time convinced himself he was a principled conservative, and due to this self-deception, had compromised his ability to think. In short, that the Bubble had got him. He was a pretender who had unwitingly exposed himself. I had a thin line of attack, and crying to myself “Into the Breach,” said,
Me: “Wow, Uncle ______. That kinda surprises me, because you’ve always been such a staunch Republican.”
Uncle: “No, no, no. I’ve always been a conservative….blah blah blabity blah... I didn’t leave the Republican party. It left me.”
CHAAAAAAARRRGGGE.
Me: When?