Will the Trump Divide Ever Subside?
Now that Donald Trump has been indicted four times, I have been thinking a lot about the fallout from his first presidency. Don't even get me started on the concept of a second Trump presidency - that is not even a sustainable concept to me at this point. I wonder about all of the personal damage that has been done - the rifts between families, the divorces, the many Covid deaths. How do we ever recover from the mental and emotional damage that the symptom of Trump has caused in all of our families?
I am estranged from members of my family from which I have had to consciously distance myself, or just ignore altogether. Like many of you, my tolerance for political disagreements ended after the election in 2016. It was no longer a question of conservative or liberal principles, it was a matter of life and death, and spoiler alert: I was right. I think about those lost relationships and whether there will ever be an opportunity to mend those rifts caused by racism, and misogyny, and hate. I just don't know how that is supposed to happen.
It makes me sad for my mother, who has lost a relationship with her only sibling at a time when they likely need each other most. I think about how my Mimi would never have allowed this to happen, if she were still alive, and then I am sadder. The truth is, with the last seven years, I'm not sure even my grandmother could have fixed this mighty chasm, the one fueled by the narcissism of one man, but readily backed by the overwhelming fear and hatred embodied in nearly half of America.
"Where do we go from here" is a question that I have been asked many times, but I have always dismissed the solution because there were other pressing matters, and elections at hand. Now it feels like there will be pressing elections happening for the rest of my life, and at a time when I need to maintain maximum optimism, this divide is downright depressing.
My aunt used to always send the best Birthday cards - they were Hallmark or a brand of real quality, with that thick, creamy card stock, and they usually were loaded with confetti or glitter. There was also sometimes a Home Goods gift card in there, which was our secret pleasure that we shared and would talk about for hours. As my birthday rapidly approaches this year, I am saddened thinking about how that card will never arrive, and pondering all of the loss and change. I guess I will just have to keep thinking and writing about this until I have a better and less depressing plan.
Excerpt of "Trump Shockwaves are Still Dividing Us," by Amee Vanderpool, published in SHERO on July 6, 2021:
...I haven’t been speaking to my aunt for most of the year. Politics and religion have always been a bit touchy, but my mother learned early on just to roll her eyes and not take Thanksgiving too seriously. Everything changed when Donald Trump was elected.
My aunt and her family left the Mormon Church several years ago so I might have been holding out hope that their “Republicanism” wasn’t as strong as their religious faith. I was wrong. I made a decision immediately after that crushing blow in 2016 that I was finished talking about politics entirely with my extended family, even when they would band together to bait me like I was the entertainment for the afternoon. Things had become much too serious, even if it involved making people laugh, which is my Achilles heel.
Last summer, when it became glaringly obvious that Donald Trump was undeniably a racist and Biden had secured the Democratic nomination, I decided to stick my toe in the water. There was no way she could continue, especially now that she was going on and on about not liking him. Biden was a moderate, a former dear friend of John McCain. I am from Arizona, which most Republicans will still argue is McCain territory. My overall assessment was so wrong.
I should have ended the call when she denied the coronavirus and kept espousing that it was a hoax. “But, I had it in March,” I reminded her. “Your daughter had it, you were terrified.”
“Oh, I know, I know,” she breezed right over it, not listening. She continued, “I just don’t know about Trump, he’s either the worst man to ever live or the greatest.”
I decided to take a chance, but to be honest — I really needed to know if she was finally willing to draw the line with the racism issue because I knew I was finally ready to take the ultimate stand and cut out anyone else from my life who was not.
“So, I take it you’ll be voting for Biden, then…” Silence. I repeated my question, and she said with complete fury, “Oh! I would never in a million years vote for that pedophile.”
That electronic sound from the older video games telling me I was out of lives played in my head. There was no perky barbershop start-up music to Pac-Man that I could cue in, either. This was the end of the road.
The worst part in all of this is not that I hung up on her after screaming, “Got to go, I love you!” really loud to keep myself from saying something unforgivable. Apparently, after I hung up on her, she looked in shock at my cousin, who was in the car with her, and said, “Amee just hung up on me.”
“No, she didn’t — the call dropped,” my cousin told her. “Amee would never hang up on you.”
My mom has been trying to broker a peace settlement while attempting to respect my boundaries. The biggest issue at play is not the apology, but the idea of moving forward. How do you explain to someone, who still tells people she “doesn’t see color,” that if you don’t actively speak and act out against racism at this stage, you are collectively racist. It would just be me talking in circles, and I have no more patience for explaining things to someone who thinks church gossip constitutes a credible source that even the most reputable law journal would use in a citation.
So, for months, my mother has been relaying to me her conversations with my aunt. They include my aunt repeating QAnon rhetoric and my mother patiently explaining that the information is not credible. How did both my mother and my aunt come out of the same woman?
When the January 6th attack on the Capitol happened, my aunt didn’t call me to make sure I was safe. She knows I am only a few blocks away and typically she would have been the first one to latch on to the inside scoop of the drama, but she never called. She also never called my mother to talk about it, and this made my mother hopeful.
“She knows how wrong she is,” my mother said reassuringly. “She can’t face it and it’s a good sign.” Either way, I was now justified in continuing my stubborn strategy, so I was actually fine with the silence.
I am going to start the adoption process soon and I am constantly thinking about what I would tell my child in any given situation. You don’t get to choose which baby the universe sends you and I could very well be raising a child of color and I welcome that. As offended as I get at racism now, I also know it’s nothing compared to the idea of someone inflicting it directly on the child that I don’t even have yet. How am I supposed to navigate all of the ignorance when each incident could leave a lasting scar? How am I supposed to keep learning so that I can be the best parent to my child, no matter their background or color? How do I child-proof my life before I even have the child?
On the Fourth of July, I decided to just make amends and call my aunt and ask her if we could move forward and make a moratorium on all things political. I explained that I couldn’t hash out all of the reasons why I got so upset, but the truth was, I didn’t want to say what I really felt: that she and her past behaviors had reached the designation of “racist” in my mind, and I couldn’t risk that in my future.
I dialed my aunt with my mother already on the phone, a trick I learned years ago when I needed a witness to a heavy conversation and a moderator at the same time. After my mother carefully explained the terms I was proposing, my aunt agreed and she had a hurt sound in her voice that made me think I had made a mistake.
Then she started to tell me about my lesbian cousin’s engagement, which gave me hope that she would be able to uphold our new “no politics under any circumstances rule.” She excitedly began to tell us the story of the engagement, and I was excited to hear about how brave my little cousin, who had been raised Mormon, had been to be with the woman she loved.
“You’re not going to even believe this,” my aunt started. “They are having dinner after they are married, so no one is at the ceremony and they are making everyone show their vaccination cards as proof to get in…”
I have no idea how this ceasefire is supposed to work.
Amee Vanderpool writes the SHERO Newsletter and is an attorney, published author, contributor to newspapers and magazines, and analyst for BBC Radio. She can be reached at avanderpool@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter at @girlsreallyrule.
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Yeah, I lost my parents - my last living family - to that cult. They were already Southern Baptists at that point, both from strict religious backgrounds, and convincing themselves they weren't racist "because they had non-white friends."
Except they'd lock the car doors while driving through non-white areas, because God knows the only thing saving them from injury or death was whether or not the door was going to open from the outside.
Except they never invited non-white friends to the house.
Except they bitched constantly about affirmative action stealing jobs from "more qualified" people.
Except every time a non-white person moved nearby, they'd grouse about the property value going down.
And in the end, they lived in a shack three miles from the nearest town, a mile up gravel road, on a lake, thirty miles or more from the nearest non-white people and went to an all-white church.
Should I have confronted them about these things? Probably.
First they denied "the COVID hoax" - things like this always happened in election years, my 160ish I.Q. mother would state with confidence, despite having been a nurse almost her entire adult life.
Then they downplayed it - just a bad cold, really. They even went so far as to lie about getting vaccinated because I threatened my household would stop visiting.
They stood by Drumpf through his adulterers, his lies, his crimes, his attack on the Capitol. He was God's Chosen, sent to purge this wicked land of its sins, you see. Everything he did was ordained and blessed.
Last year, my mother died of COVID, my father three months later from grief and starvation/self-neglect-induced suicide. Not actual suicide, of course. That would go against doctrine. Nevermind they had already abandoned every alleged moral their church had to support this fiend in human flesh.
Know what I never found? Vaccine cards. Not-a-one.
So when I say "I feel you", I want you to know that is not hyperbole.
What a wonderful and helpful post yours is in so many ways. I have one sibling a sister who is nine years younger. She is a right wing evangelical fundamentalist, believes the earth is 6,000 years old and that climate change is a hoax and vaccinations of all kinds are suspect. To her all of todays gender issues are both suspect and against Gods plan of male and female and science is to be taken with a grain of salt, and abortion is murder. Also, Trump apparently is a a victim of the left wing media the "enemy of the people." We have one thing in common, our parents are both 92 and suffering from mid to late stage dementia. I recently decided that I would devote this time in my life to caring for them, helping them to stay in their own home and keeping them as happy and content as possible. I am divorced so moving in with them to give this kind of care was a no brainer. My sister and I have joint Power of Attorney status for both personal care and property. So getting along is compulsory but not easy. I can't put myself in your shoes but hesitate to say I understand your struggle, it is mine too. To get along I avoid all topics that refer to religion, politics, gender, healthcare and the planet we live on. So I am meek for now but I look forward to the day I can move on to relationships that are kind, forgiving and accepting. Godspeed!