I have many, many friends who are hurt, angry, disappointed, and gobsmacked this week. That’s because I, as a libertarian-leaning cultural conservative, don’t reject people as friends just because they have very different political opinions. If they paid more attention to my beliefs, they might not want to be friends with me, but I mostly keep quiet and they just know me as a nice old lady who plays the harp, flies airplanes, and has a wicked sense of humor.
To my friends on the left: I understand you are baffled at what has happened. You didn’t conceive such a thing could happen. I’d like for you to understand what has gone wrong for you, because I want you to fix your party. I think it would be a terrible thing for there not to be at least two viable political parties in rough parity. The GOP is absolutely capable of being horrible and I would like for there to be a plausible counterweight to that.
To my friends on the right: shut it with the triumphalism. Be gracious. We need the support of some of these people going forward.
I see what I see as clearly as I do because I have lived my life walking a balance beam. I was born to two unemployed people who were camping with Mom’s parents in a house that had gotten indoor plumbing five years previous. I grew up doing hard farm work, but at the same time I was the public school star pupil…the smart kid who aced every test and attracted scholarships. I went off to Indiana University on a full ride and repeated that trick for graduate school in Texas. I entered what became the laptop class twenty years before that term was invented; I make a very good living with clean, soft hands by rearranging bits.
But I come from, and have always lived, blue collar. My family in Indiana were farmers, bricklayers, and stonemasons. My neighbors in Dallas were garbage collectors, car repo men, and meth cookers. In the 1980s I was inventing methods of analyzing Census data and writing Fortran programs that got incorporated into SAS, but rubbing elbows with guys who built boat trailers from metal scavenged from construction sites and the landfill. A couple of them taught me to shoot my first handgun, a Ruger Security Six. My next-door neighbors were Cambodian refugees and they showed me how to train my melons and cucumbers onto the roof of my duplex to both maximize the sunshine they received and insulate my house.
I’m not a white supremacist. I don’t hate immigrants. I don’t hate women, brown people, or black people, If your political argument starts there, I’m going to respond with a massive Fuck You. Just stop. I do resent overprivileged soft urbanites who think the problem with democracy is that too many poor, male, Hispanic and black people vote. Again: Fuck You.
So how do we bridge this divide? I would suggest that there are a number of upper middle class white women who need to talk to The Help. Remember that movie? I think y’all might not have absorbed the full meaning. But also — who is cutting your lawn? Who is maintaining your roof? Who is opening adorable ethnic restaurants in your downtown? WHO DID THEY VOTE FOR?
I'm seeing this sentiment a good bit this week. I don't disagree with it; a good number of Harris voters, not the dead ones, are our neighbors just doing the best they can on a lousy public education. It would be good to help them see the potential that this country can be. Ask questions, listen; but don't affirm any of the craziness that is Democrat malarkey.
The rest of the Harris voters are just plain crazy, or dead. They are best avoided.
Be well.
I agree with this comment "We need the support of some of these people going forward" but I wonder if THEY will be allowed by their ruling class to take a moment to consider things. I mean they spent the last (at least) summer months NOT reminding them that Trump was actually the President for four year.