J, St. Louis, 9/13/24
Back in the early days of 2015/16, I didn't understand what was happening to me, my family, my friends, my co-workers, my neighbors, and so many of my most cherished relationships. So many began to change and not for the better.
What I learned in time was nothing short of a seismic shift. Everything different now. The landscape of my life familiar yet alien.
Throughout my life, my Dad had taught me the importance of keeping notes, writing things down for safekeeping and later reference. He had intended this for things like when the tires were last changed on the car, birthdays, vacation albums, who went, when was the trip, and things you did. Normal middle class stuff. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd take that advice to record so much of the fight for the minds for fellow Americans, some of them family. But that's exactly what I did and continue to do.
Facebook and later Twitter and notes on my phone became my go to places for capturing a record of the chaos, the ridiculousness, the tragedy, the fabrication, the heartache, the betrayal, the loneliness, the isolation, the beauty, the laughter, the sense of community, the reality and the hope. And let's face it some attacks by those who oppose America or who would sell it for scrap.
I remember a few years ago having one of the most gutting phone calls of my life with my Dad. I sobbed as I asked him how he could support Trump amidst all the chaos. Nothing I said or how I expressed these feelings moved him so much as an inch. And I remember my Mom in a phone call after Biden won in 2020 passive aggressively asking me how I could support Joe given his stance on abortion implying I was immoral for doing so. And my brother who could always be a jerk calling me from time to time to needle me in the ways only siblings know best to the point where our relationship is a shadow of what it once was. And to them, I'm the a-hole. I'm the one going hard at Trump's idiocy and abysmal record online even though I trade in facts while they trade in Fox News garbage, scary newsletters and in the case of my brother, Joe Rogan podcasts.
I've largely made peace with where things are now. The relationships exist though they are different now. Others I've had to cut out completely. I can forgive them. But they don't get access to my life. The journey has been a difficult one, but I share this now, dear reader, so you know that like you, I am a real person who has faced this hardship and you are not alone having faced it in your own way. You are NOT alone. Find people in your community. Connect. Reasonable people not mired in the propaganda are out there. Build that community. So that whatever happens on November 5th, that community is built to last. And my hope is one day to look back at this strange time we live in and these words and marvel at how far we've come since then.
Will those family and friends that have been lost join me and all of us on that journey? I can't say. But I can't focus on that now for we have just over 50 days to win this thing and set America on a path to sanity with Harris|Walz. I hope the fever breaks, America. I really do.