Unlike many of my friends, I have been an unabashed radiclib, as Spiro used to call us, since my teens. My dad was a Scoop Jackson Conservadem who voted for Kennedy, Stephenson and Nixon; And I suspect for Reagan. Still it was JFK whose picture always adorned his office wall. Personally, I have voted for every Democratic Presidential candidate since HHH. I am an Eagle Scout (as the constant letters requesting money for a BSA Eagle Scout Directory prove) and worked for the BSA for five years until the hypocrisy of “God Bless Ronald Reagan for bringing God back into our Christian Nation” talk finally outed me as a Jewboy who could not help but mention his revulsion at the direction our nation was heading. Still, it was my pleasure and duty to engage those with radically different viewpoints from my own in intellectual discourse. Among the highest praise I ever received was from the father of our Exploring Division’s President who although he seldom agreed with me about anything , had to admit that “at least I gave intelligent and forceful support for my opinions” and didn’t rely on talking points, Political Correctness or easy answers.
Today, my next door neighbors are a dying FBI agent (lung cancer) and a recently arrived Texan from the El Paso area who proudly wears his NRA T-shirt, has taken many gun protection and response style classes and said he will be there if an invader threatens out community. Frankly, if it came down to a fight, I’d much rather have him on my side than against me; he’s a big strong, well-trained although not ex-military, dude. We had the discussion about bringing a knife to a gun fight and how the owner of the gun was more likely to win but he assured me he’d win in either case since he had “training” in disarming anyone that he got within “21 feet” of. Apparently there is an NRA meme about this and that the distance that a trained respondent is effective at has grown from a previous 16 feet (if I remember the numbers correctly). I so want to ask him if he knew anyone touched by the recent tragedy in El Paso but I haven’t run into him recently and don’t want to seem to be trolling him since I really do like him, his wife and his adorable kids. He also praised me as someone who he enjoys talking to since I listen as well as I speak. Communication. Can. Happen. My other neighbor’s wife when revealing the end stage diagnosis to me also confided that when he dies she’s “going to buy an RV and travel the country like a Hippie” since she was denied that opportunity as a youth. I suspect she’d seen me in enough Grateful Dead T shirts to guess I was/am of the Hippie clan.
I used to see several of my other neighbors proudly place Republican campaign signs and posters on their lawns here in South Florida. They haven’t disappeared but their numbers are somewhat cowed in this generally liberal enclave of purple FL. I’m still not ready or physically adept enough to go door to door espousing sanity and a return to Democratic principles (capital D intended) or even promoting democracy since there are plenty of “I’d rather vote for Putin than a Democrat” T-shirts and “protected by Smith and Wesson” window treatments in the neighborhood. My one rec’d post was from 2016 election eve when after my Clinton for President sign was egged and I responded with: ”Democrat. Cleaning up Republican messes since 1968”. But, in the words of one guy who came to a yard sale I was holding a couple months back: “I’m a lifelong Republican but Trump is a bridge too far for me to cross.” It gives one a touch of hope. Every silver lining has a touch of grey. Or something like that.