The Divided States of America

When the possibility of tRump as the Republican candidate started getting real for me late in the winter of 2016, I started blogging in plenty worried sick about him as the eventual nominee and the winner. 

Soon, I detected a change in the tone of the discussions at what were usually friendly meetings of the Home Owners Association's board, for which I was the secretary.  At one of the meetings, when I heard the HOA president say that he didn't care to be politically correct and worry about hurting feelings, I knew that tRump had truly arrived in my neighborhood.

I quit the Board.  I was not the secretary anymore.

The summer of 2016 we did not have the annual neighborhood potluck because the political heat had been turned up way high.

The election happened, and the result was not a surprise to me, though it thoroughly depressed me that there are millions of fellow citizens who couldn't care about who tRump is.  Millions, in fact, voted not despite who he is, but because of who he is.

A few months after the 2016 election, a neighbor across the street walked up to my home and knocked on the door.  I stepped out to the porch.

She had realized only then that I was no longer her friend on Facebook--this was back when I had an Facebook account.  It had taken her a few months to realize that I had unfriended her well into the campaign season in 2016!

She asked me whether she and/or her husband (who was the HOA president) offended me in any way because I had stopped saying hi to them.

I calmly explained to her that tRump's election had changed everything.  

"It is not about Republican politics," I reminded her. 

After all, in the neighborhood we have always had hardcore Republicans and Democrats.  

"tRump is different," I told her.

She attempted to defend the man that she loudly and vocally supported from the time he launched his candidacy.  "Give him some time," she said.

"I don't want us to debate about him."  I forced myself to be polite.  I got back inside.

She walked away angrier than ever.  That was the last time we spoke.

Other friends who voted for tRump also became persona non grata in my life, consistent with how I never forget nor forgive.

In spring and summer of 2020, protests erupted in response to the horrific murder of George Floyd.  We too marched and raised our fists.  We said his name.

I put up a Black Lives Matter signage on a window that faced the street.  On another street-facing window, I posted The Lincoln Project's "Never Trump" poster.  And, yes, "our flag was still there" in the front.

Some tRump supporting neighbors publicly displayed the "blue-lives-matter" flag and re-election signs for tRump. 

A neighbor whose values coincide with mine was visibly upset.  This is a man who had never shown any negative emotion in all the years that we have lived in the hood.  "What they mean to say is all white lives matter," he complained to me.  We commiserated as we wussy liberals do.

When masks became mandatory in public spaces like grocery stores, the uber-tRumpy neighbors started wearing masks that had their Dear Leader's name.  With the red hat on top, of course.

Even though tRump was defeated in the elections in 2020, trumpism lives on in politics.  The Supreme Court, which was shaped by tRump's appointees who were successfully confirmed by Republicans led by mItch McConnell, has delivered a series of blows to liberal democracy and human rights, and threatens to undo progress that was achieved through blood, sweat, and tears.

I am not sure how to yell a "we shall overcome" in a country that The New Yorker's cover image aptly describes as a House Divided.