Like a lot of purple counties, mine tilted right in the last election. On my block and among my colleagues I am in a mostly blue bubble, but in Gladlyville as a whole I am in the minority. At the gym, at the grocery store, on the trail, roughly every other person I encounter voted for Trump. It's almost certainly a more pronounced majority at my church.
I expended many hours and many pixels blogging about Trump between 2016 and 2021, culminating in a post about January 6 that caused at least one long-time reader to decide she was never coming back here again. I found it unimaginable that he could be elected in 2016, unimaginable that 2020 could be anything other than a Biden landslide, unimaginable that he could think of running again, unimaginable that the 2024 race would be close. The Gen Z kids were going to turn out in droves, I asserted in the fall. The polling only looks close because they never answer their phones.
This is where Inigo Montoya turns to me and says:
Sad to say, my imagination is not keeping pace with the preferences of my neighbors.
So what happens in a world where the unimaginable has in fact become the everyday? I do not really know the answer to that question.
I have put myself on a pretty strict news diet. I'm not even reading Heather Cox Richardson. I have called my reps once, but a once-a-month schedule feels more doable to me than the once-a-week schedule I maintained during the first Trump administration. In 2017 it felt urgent to me to follow the news closely. Did it do any good? Did it do enough good to offset the peace of mind it cost me? I'm managing my inputs much more aggressively this time around. I can't predict what Trump will do or say because he doesn't think or act like a normal human being. I can't focus on the hypotheticals while also preserving my sanity. So I won't.
But one thing hasn't changed for me: in those stunned sad posts from November 2016 I put a lot of emphasis on kindness. That's still where I find myself, trying to be intentional about kindness while not shying away from honesty. You know that old saw about people not caring how much you know unless they know how much you care? It has been my experience that kindness and curiosity are more likely to advance a conversation than the zingiest arguments. Here in my red-shifted town I am trying to take the long view, one conversation at a time -- keep the door open, share new information, invite a different perspective.
During the pandemic the polarization was visible in my church in a way that still plagues me. Our pastor handled it well, I thought, by designating two weekend Masses as masks-required and two as masks-optional. "I implore you," said the pastor, "in your charity for the vulnerable -- for the elderly and those going through cancer treatment and others who must avoid this virus -- wear a mask at these two Masses so they can be safer." A small subset of parishioners refused; they were going to Mass when they wanted to go to Mass and they weren't going to mask. One of them in particular afforded me a lot of opportunities to practice custody of the eyes; I still see him and think "WELL, IF IT ISN'T MR. CAN'T-BE-BOTHERED!" This is a failure in charity on my part, I know; he is more than his bad decisions.
In the intervening years the masks have mostly vanished but the polarization has only grown. I know many people who were tenuously Catholic then and emphatically not Catholic now; I know many people who have slid toward rad-traddery without seeming to see the absurdity of telling the Vicar of Christ that he is insufficiently Catholic. I categorically refuse to relegate my church to the crazies. I belong there, in my parish; I belong here, in Gladlyville.
I think, maybe, because I don't know what else I can possibly think without succumbing to despair, that the best way forward is just to keep showing up. I'm going to keep talking about my trans kid in church circles, where a lot of people don't know that families they care about include trans members. I'm going to keep sending Christmas cards to that one big family we used to be close to. I hate it that the daughters in that family have less access to higher education than the sons, but I'm willing to be Christmas-card-level friends anyway. Over the years I have occasionally established connections with our friends' kids via Christmas letters (e.g., they think my letter is funny and find me on social media), and so I'm going to carry on, as one of the few women in higher education in their orbit, saying that I am happy to hear from them.
And so I am going to choose to believe that other people are out there doing the same uncertain and occasionally heartbreaking thing: showing up in their purple counties, purple churches, purple marriages, and saying, "Hey, I care about you, and have you considered that...?"
It would be the height of irony for me to write a thousand-word post about the importance of being persuadable and then follow it up with a 1400-word post in which I appear to disregard the comments disagreeing with me, so let me be clear: I've been thinking about the things you said. I hear you: that husband sounds pretty far out there. It's a tough situation, no question about it. They may wind up divorced; that might be best for everyone involved. It may be the case that she asked the question in that particular group because she knew how they would respond.
But who is better positioned than that guy's wife to say, "I love you; that's bonkers; you know better than that"? I can imagine a marriage in which she is genuinely seeking better ways to say those things, which is why I answered the question she asked. I did suggest some other resources; I did invite her to DM me if she'd like. But I started by answering the question she asked, because once we start assuming that disconnection is the best option, the world gets bleaker.
Would you cut off a parent who voted for Trump?
Would you cut off a son who announced that household voting seemed best to him?
Would you cut off a brother who showed up to Thanksgiving dinner in a shirt with a Punisher logo?
In every case, it seems to me, the devil is in the details, and a Facebook post is unlikely to supply those details.
I see a lot of Facebook posts from West Virginia friends steeped in the Fox News worldview, and I teach a lot of young adults from farm country whose parents' worst nightmare is that they will be brainwashed by the libs in the pursuit of higher education. Last year I got a couple of thank-you cards from students that meant a lot to me. One said, "You have made me rethink so many things, in the best way." The other said, "In your classes there is an atmosphere of joy that I treasure." I am so lucky to have the job I do, where I can waltz in as my curious goofball self and teach about why we should fund scientific research, and how access to healthcare saves lives, and why disability advocacy matters. I'm going to keep requiring my students to participate in the political process as advocates for people with disabilities, and reflecting on what they learned. I'm going to keep telling them about the costs of inequalities in access to healthcare, and our collective responsibility to enforce environmental laws that protect gestating babies and their families from avoidable harms.
I'm not going to change a lot of minds on Facebook, but I'm willing to answer questions, to offer compassion and connection. The outcomes of my work in the classroom are variable and uncertain, but I'm going to keep showing up and doing my best. And I cannot know what the future holds for the US Catholic Church, but I'm confident that if the gates of hell will not prevail against it, neither will Donald Trump.
I don't have an ending for this too-long post, except to say it again: Kindness. Honesty. Patience. Persistence. That's where I am right now. You?
Recent Comments