I have a wonderful friend and former colleague, let’s call him Jim, in many ways a second father, who always listened and counseled me on family challenges I would confront as my kids grew. Parenting a child with autism is tough for the most enlightened, and believe me, I never claimed to be Father Knows Best.
This is a godly man, strident and sharing in his personal relationship with Christ, a devotion that seems to have always provided him with a serenity I envied. He has two fully separate families and is the type of patriarch one would surely do well to emulate. He is kind, and devoted, fully caring, a wonderful friend to have…. until you discuss current events. Suddenly a switch goes off, and his voice gets a bit more terse. When he chuckles, it is with a strain of cynicism. And when pushed for facts he feels should be self-evident, the serenity is gone, replaced by grievance and exasperation. Sean Hannity makes it all so sensible, so easy to digest. Why can’t you see that?
I always abided Jim’s allegiance to Fox/AM, but since Inauguration we have become estranged. I was up in Maine mourning for my nation when I saw he had posted on FB, maybe the only time he had ever done so, a few minutes after Trump’s wretched 16 minute diatribe… “So thankful for my God and country” I suppose the rapturous moment got the best of him.
Jim has reached out by phone several times, but our conversations have been brief and stilted, my patience at a premium, and his ability to make small talk sorely tested. The last time he left a voicemail I simply erased it without much thought. He is an older man, in receding if not failing health, and at some point there is no doubt I will get a call that he has passed. I have no doubt about the regret I will feel for distancing myself from him; it will haunt me, I am certain. I accept full blame for our falling out, and feel shame for the occurance Yet and still, I move on.
I am not narcisstic enough to believe my situation is unique. And I am neither popular enough to afford the loss of friends, nor cold enough not to suffer the void such cutting of ties leaves, but I appear unable to get past abiding allegiance to Trump and Fox/AM. Whether that means I am simply an asshole, or actually more obliged to principle than I realized is I suppose a symptom of a society under duress, it’s patience stretched thin.
Yet and still, one thing can’t be in doubt, and if it ever does become a debatable point, our ruination will be complete… what comes out of this White House and the relentless segments on Fox and the AM dial is a Shit River of lies and distortions, in full service to a narrative founded on our worst inclinations and overtly anathema to everything I was taught to be proud of my country for. The fact that it infects most of the GOP enables a crisis that threatens a catastrophe.
I suppose if we survive this nadir in which we have allowed our governance and national political life to descend I will have to reckon with the question of whether I panicked and allowed important relationships to suffer. Whether I was the very embodiment of what I decried. But from where I sit now, as our POTUS vomits dictums to a team of cowering sycophants, and relentlessly repeats his scurrilous lies about the institutions that make our freedom possible, that will be a good problem to have, since we will still be a going concern.
I’m sorry Jim. BC