Good Morning.
Being a Republican or a Democrat, or a member of any other political party for that matter, obviously involves strongly held views, but it's also supposed to be about how we govern- how we raise revenue, how we maintain a healthy economy, how we protect the United States, how we deliver health care, and how we fix up a crumbling infrastructure, to name just a few fairly complicated issues. It's supposed to be about what is effectively handled in Washington, what is better assigned to the states, and what should be the province of local officials. It's okay to argue and negotiate and fuss around about all of this stuff, but it's not okay to be lacking in human decency.
The sad truth is that the country is divided into those who welcome human diversity and those who reject it, and the election of 2016 was payback time for what happened in 2008, at least for a certain percentage of the population. A black man was elected president, and within seconds, the earth rumbled in protest and spewed forth a swarm of citizens madder than hornets and determined to find a leader who would give a face and a voice to their anger. My husband and I got to the point that we were reluctant to attend any social occasion because of the relentless rhetoric we had to hear about Barack Obama. He was planted here by a foreign country. He was a Muslim terrorist who wanted to overthrow the United States government. He was a socialist, a communist, a fraud. He was none of that, of course, but he was half-black and a lot of people didn't like it. One woman, sipping on a Martini at an elegant dinner party we attended, declared to the other guests: "Isn't it terrible we have a black family living in the White House and they even brought along the grandmother because all they want to do is mooch off the taxpayers." This was not the sort of chit chat I'd heard about previous presidents. Not everyone liked Reagan or Clinton or George 43, but the conversation was about trickle down economics, crummy behavior with an intern, and weapons of mass destruction. It was not about color or creed.
The same sort of commentary is bestowed upon plenty of other people, of course. An older gentleman at another party stated that his church's ministry to the Native Americans was a waste of time and needed to focus on the traditional membership. "Our own," he called it. On another occasion a retired executive said that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had been shot by a Mexican, someone whose name, Jared Lee Loughner, conveniently escaped him. The name sounds pretty Anglo to me, but in this guy's mind, such a terrible crime had to have been committed by someone who had snuck across the border. At another soiree, a guest muttered that he was tired of listening to languages other than English when he went to the grocery store. I was amused at that one because in Europe, everyone is fluent in at least two if not three languages and nobody has any problem with it at all. Being multi-lingual is actually considered intelligent and kind of sexy. Not here. We're lucky if we can kick out a decent sentence in English. Ask the Brits.
Then there was the guy, probably in his forties, who declared during a coffee gathering at which I was unfortunately present that Treyvon Martin deserved to be shot because he was black and all those people do is break into other people's apartments and steal their stuff and it's time to stand up to them. I was the only one at the table who dared to confront this alarmingly misguided individual and when I did, he shot me a look that would send a rhinoceros running for cover. I admit to being frightened to the point that when I got home, I checked the doors and windows to make sure they were locked. Bigots are scary, whoever and whatever they are.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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