My neighbor came to see me last weekend. When I answered the door I invited him in, which I always do, and he came in, which he almost never does–usually we talk in the front yard and often other neighbors wander over. It is all good. When he sat down, I could clearly see that he was worried. He told me that he was worried about his children. He has three, one in high school, one in the fifth grade, and one in diapers. He and his wife are well-educated. He is a manager for a large national corporation that is growing, and she is a nurse with a very special specialty. He said that he was worried about the future of his children. He said that he was worried about the climate and global warming. He wanted to know what he should do to protect his children. This is the first time this topic has ever come up with him or any of my other neighbors.
I told him a little about the things I had learned and I told him about key time points that were deadlines, or maybe drop-dead dates. He was anguished. I am the odd duck among my neighbors, I am the science guy or the math guy and they regard me as the crazy old guy who lives in a little cabin in the edge of the forest. But now, for this one neighbor at least, something has changed post Trump’s election. My sense of his transformation is that he, or his wife, suddenly asked, “What if Trump’s critics are right?”
I have many lifelong friends who are very conservative, and several of them live in Oklahoma and Texas. Since the election, they have been letting me have it. They felt pretty good about the election. But I kept asking them what they thought he would accomplish in his first 100 days. Their responses have gotten shorter and shorter. I detect a note of doubt, and they do not want me to see it.
But, none of this matters at all. If progressives, what a silly term, ignore the warning signs, which I predict they will, then we are doomed.
But if some people, like my neighbor, who have finally realized that they have skin in the game, their children’s skin, may be motivated enough to act—provided that you or I offer them a step-by-step plan to effect change.
From where I sit the only, let me repeat, the only way forward is to tell the losers in the last election that they have only one more chance and it will come in the next two election cycles. They have four years to get ready and they will be fools to try to work within the present two-party system.
And there I go again. My wife and I took a vacation to NYC in 1967. We stayed two weeks and had a great time. I had worked there for a while before we went up together, and I told her that one could see anything or anybody on the streets there. We stayed at a hotel on Fifth Avenue and as we went out the side door, we met a man who was disheveled and wild-eyed. He looked at us and held out his right hand. In it was a huge ball of keys, bound together with chains, string, and ribbons. He said fiercely, “I hold the keys to the kingdom.” I feel like that man.
I did not give him the time of day, and no one gives it to me either. Good luck to you and yours. I am an old man and I will be lucky to finish this comment, but most folks who come here seem to have a long life in front of them. I wish I could help them stave off the onrushing catastrophe that is moving their way, but I can’t. I know what to do, but I do not have the ability to motivate people like Trump. I suppose I can learn to lie, or be brutally honest, or be hateful to poor people or people of color, etc. But, on the other hand, if that is what it takes to alter our trajectory then perhaps it is not worth it. But on the other, other hand, I have three grandchildren…
If you have a way forward, let me know, and I will pass it on to my neighbor.