I'm an infrequent participant on this thread because it really doesn't mean squat to me. When my wife I and screwed up our mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, we said the hell with it and didn't care enough to get new ones or vote in person. We are blessed to live in a town, and to live a lifestyle, where it's mostly still 1957. If I encounter a Black guy on one of my 5 AM walks, as I sometimes do, both of us know it's going to be nothing more than "Good morning, how ya doin'?" Trump, Biden, et al., are never even mentioned in our many interactions with our neighbors; they just aren't relevant to our lives. All of the assorted paranoia-fueled "protections" that seem to characterize modern life - guns, Byrna and Mace, elaborate security systems, cameras everywhere, survivalist stockpiles, blah blah blah - are simply not part of our lives. Unless we're going to be gone overnight, we don't even lock our doors. The only "incident" I've had in 29 years of living here is that some goofballs stole some decorative rocks out of my yard at 2 AM, apparently thinking they were way more valuable than they were.
The radio stations I get most clearly in the garage, where I do most of my workouts and hobbies, are "The Big Talker" right-wing conservative talk radio (Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, etc.) and American Family right-wing Christian talk radio. I can listen to them without coming unglued, although I do a fair amount of talking back. What's incredible is how one-dimensional and cartoonish they are. "The Democrats" and "the left" and "the liberals" are spoken of with a snarl, as though all Democrats and liberals are fungible and the listeners understand that these terms are simply code for "everything we hate and everyone we wish were dead." It's just completely unnuanced and mindless. I also enjoy, in a perverse sort of way, reading the comments at FOX News for the same reason - they are simply jaw-droppingly predictable and ignorant. Sometimes I'll make an innocuous little non-Trumpian comment of my own just to stir up the natives and accumulate 187 "dislike" votes. (And, yes, I know - MSNBC and its ilk are no different.)
I am someone who is probably 75% conservative - but a rational, issue-by-issue, non-doctrinaire sorta-kinda conversative. God knows what a rational, issue-by-issue, non-doctrinaire 75% liberal must feel like in this environment. I see absolutely no hope that America will ever resemble a country again. On both sides, the inmates are running the asylum and all forms of media just ratchet up the hatred and fragmentation. Something has to give, and it eventually will. I always say I'm glad I'm 76 and not 7.6, because it isn't going to be pretty. (I've been saying this since I was 45 and saying I was glad I wasn't 4.5.) If I had to bet on America existing 100 years from now as a 50-state republic in anything like its present form, I'd bet everything I own against it.
When Trump was elected in 2016, my best friend, who lives in the Big City, was ready to move to Canada. I talked him down off the ledge by simply asking "Honestly, what difference has it ever made to your life or mine who the President was?" If Hillary or Kamala had been elected, life here in 1957 would not have missed a beat. I was fully prepared for that with Hillary - didn't stay up to watch one minute of election coverage. What mystifies me about Trump now is the number of people who are seemingly oblivious to the pretty obvious reality that, apart from any policy issue, this is a seriously disturbed and potentially very dangerous man. He is an existential threat to life here in 1957 in a way that no other President has ever been. Even though I'm glad I'm 76 and not 7.6, I'd still like to make it to 80 in my little corner of 1957. Give me Hillary any day - and I can't stand her!
I actually feel sorry for people, including some on this obscure JFKA forum, who almost seem to feel it's some sort obligation, some duty as a citizen, to be caught up in the divisiveness and hate. Very strange and self-destructive, it seems to me.
Yep, pretty much like this -
