In a college short story, I wrote something to the effect of, Everybody feels the same things. The problem is, we don’t feel them at the same time. It’s one of the few things I wrote back then that I’ll still cop to.
Been thinking about that line lately, when someone complains about Trump and I get grouchy: Oh, why are you bringing that up?
It’s not that I don’t think we ought to be thinking about how this creep and his cronies are destroying the substance of our country and the spirit of our society. How comprehensively, how sustainably, how permanently? My hopeful mind even runs to upsides: Will this arson job also consume some dumb liberal pieties, before it burns out? Could this absurd overreach teach America a permanent lesson? What should I and the people in my sphere of influence be saying and doing about this? I think about it a lot.
I also think about my loved-ones’ health problems a lot, my business dilemmas a lot, my own shortcomings a lot. But I want to think about those things when I want to think about them, when I can afford to think about them, between my main activity of the day: feeding my family, and trying to enjoy my one short stroke of life on this tiny blue ball. And my friends and family know enough not to bring my worst troubles up with me over lunch—not lightly, anyway.
And yet you have no compunction about asking before we even get our beverages, “What’re we gonna do about Trump?”
I don’t know, Nancy, what’re we going to do about your teenager’s glue-huffing problem? Oh, you were up half the night worrying about that and you’d rather talk about pretty much anything else at the moment?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about Trump—it’s your bad problem too, and I wouldn’t ask you to keep it to yourself. I’m saying it’s as serious as cancer, and should be discussed (and gallows-joked about) in just the same spirit. Last time, Trump talk became a kind of small talk—a wry remark about the latest covfefe moment that gently signaled to other parents on the soccer sideline that we were on the same team.
This time it’s different. Or so it seems to me.
Anyway, sorry I’ve been so grumpy lately.
