This past month, while I was out door-knocking for Trump, I was struck as I walked along a neighborhood using the app that described the voters in each house. So many multi generational families of odd collections of ages in houses with missing roof shingles or shutters askew or paint peeling. Cars needing repair, broken bicycles, torn blinds.
What was the story inside those houses? Unemployment, , elder care, divorce, custody battles, IRS ? It was easy to see a collective loss of hope in a once-thriving town.” I sensed years of neglect and sadness and hopelessness. Something is brewing in our country and it is NOT good!
I recently told a friend that my emotions felt too close to the surface—for months history had been going through me and I felt like a vibrating fork. I had not been laughing at the splintering of a great political party, but mourning it. Something of me had gone into it. Party elites seemed to have no idea why it was shattering, which meant they wouldn’t be able to repair it, whatever happens with Mr. Trump.
I was offended that those curiously quick to write essays about who broke the party were usually those who’d backed the policies that broke it. Lately conservative thinkers and journalists had taken to making clear their disdain for the white working class. I had actually not known they looked down on them; me. I deeply resented it and it pained me. If you’re a writer lucky enough to have thoughts and be occasionally paid to express them and there are Americans on the ground struggling, suffering—some of them making mistakes, some unlucky—you don’t owe them your airy, well-put contempt, you owe them your loyalty. They too have given a portion of their love to this great project, and they are in trouble.
Earlier this month, just prior to the AZ primary, after a long hard work week and most of nights writing on my new book, I woke up that Saturday morning, got coffee, fired up the lap top and put on cable news. I read an email thread from a group of conservative women—very bright, all ages, all decorous and dignified. But tempers were high, and they were courteously tearing each other apart over Donald Trump and the GOP.
I read the comments , full of notes from people pro- and anti- Trump, but all seemed marked by some kind of grieving. I looked up and saw Hillary Clinton screeching on TV and immediately switched channels. Breaking news, said the crawl. A caravan of Trump supporters driving to an outdoor rally in Fountain Hills, Ariz., had been blocked by demonstrators. The helicopter shot showed a highway backed up for miles; I wondered where our police force was? No one seemed to be in charge, as is often the case in America. It was like an unmovable force against an unmovable object.
I watched dumbly, tiredly. Then for no reason—this is true, it just doesn’t sound it—I thought of an old Paul Simon song that had been crossing my mind, “The Boy in the Bubble.” I muted the TV, found the song on YouTube, and listened as I stared at the soundless mile of cars and the soundless demonstrators. As the lyrics came—“The way we look to a distant constellation / That’s dying in a corner of the sky / . . . Don’t cry baby / Don’t cry”—my eyes filled with tears. And a sob welled up and I literally put my hands to my face and sobbed, silently.
Because my country is in trouble.
Because I felt anguish at all the estrangements.
Because some things that shouldn’t have changed have changed.
Because too much is being lost.
You’ll feel better the next day, I promised myself, but you won’t be able to tell yourself that this is history as usual anymore. This is big, what we’re living through. Big, and frightening and so very very sad. My grandchildren will NEVER know the America my parents fought for, that their grandfather fought for and that I grew up in.
Yep... this is big.
