With a Heavy Heart, Goodbye Trumper
The only way I see to move forward
Like many people who easily chose Kamala this election, I am baffled by the millions of people who opted for Trump, and I am longing for a way to move myself forward. How do I wrap my head around the fact that Americans collectively chose such a hateful, criminal, inept, and cruel old man to lead our country? How can I comprehend their praise and admiration of him?
How do I live in peace with my neighbor when I am so completely bewildered by the way they see the world? How do I face the reality that treasured family members and friends voted against me and my family, against our health and livelihood? How do I face them?
Wrestling with these questions feels different than it did in 2016. Back then, there was a bit of ignorance that could be granted, a bit more forgiveness for just not knowing better, because Trump hadn’t yet filled the role. We all hadn’t experienced the horror of 4 years of his terror, scandal, and mishaps. Now there is no excuse.
There is clearly no reason, no logic, no compassion. Trump voters are not connected to any reality that I know, and they have no interest in it.
In some ways, I am reminded of my relationship with my Grandma Louise. When I was little, she was such a mainstay. I’d go over to her house and she’d watch me when I was sick, or when my cousins visited from Pennsylvania. She hosted holiday meals like a pro, kept special cookies in a cookie tin for the kids, and served pudding in pretty dishes for us to eat while we watched cable tv on her living room floor. She’d hook up the sprinkler and fill up the kiddie pool, and laugh as we splashed around her backyard.
Then, as I was leaving grade school, Alzheimer’s disease took hold. She started to change. She was often confused, her temperament changed, and she would forget important things. I remember my mom and aunt desperately trying to get her to remember, hoping to bring her back to their world. It couldn’t change what was happening.
Eventually, my grandma lost pretty much all of her memory. She didn’t know any of our names, and she definitely didn’t act the same as the woman who I knew her to be before. Visiting her was like visiting a strange person from somewhere far away. I never knew what she would say or what it meant to her, and I assumed that she had a unique understanding of everyone else’s shared reality.
When she passed, it didn’t feel like my Grandma Louise dying. It was more final than it was sad for me. She had left us long before.
I think in the wake of this election, I’ve realized just how far apart my reality is from people who voted for the Republican ticket. People who used to share the same basic common ground, have waded out into a sea of MAGA where nothing is sacred and nothing makes sense. They went willingly, and they aren’t coming back.
They are in a world I don’t understand. Where God’s love means “Mass Deportations Now!” and “end the welfare state”. Where holding up family values sits side by side with abortion restrictions, rejection of LGBTQIA+ rights, and relegation of women back into the kitchen. Where rape, cheating, taunting, and treason can be signs of honor.
Trump voters speak a different language, every word saturated with meaning from some far out conspiracy theory or twisted radio show host logic. They imagine danger lurking in the shadows of sunny days, yet they are blind to obvious storm clouds on their horizon. We stand side by side, but we are not in the same place.
I have accepted that the people in my life who voted for Trump are lost to me. Probably forever. I can’t plead or argue them back. They are not the same people anymore.
As I grieve the loss of a hopeful future and a vision of America that I adore, I also grieve the loss of loved ones and community. I accept that people I once admired and looked up to are now those who disappoint me beyond words. I choose to say goodbye to them now, while I remember and cherish who they were before, and to understand that they are irreversibly altered into someone new who I don’t know and don’t really like.
They may not see it happening, and if they do they may not understand why I have closed the door on our relationship. They would probably interpret it as hate or unjust persecution or something like that. In my mind it’s a kindness, both to them and me.
With love and hope for the future,
Stephanie
How are you dealing with the post-election fallout of personal relationships? How do you make sense of it?
You sum it up in a beautiful, rather poetic manner. There is cognitive dissonance to this whole thing. I cannot make sense of it.
I have a Trump family and grew up with these values expecting my sibling to follow me into a healthier way of looking at the world and being in the world. I have been sadly wrong and my heart has been broken so many times with disappointment that I have gradually closed the door on my family. I will also say one other thing that has been a source of deep grief: I cannot be proud of my heritage. I am not a jealous person, but I sometimes find myself jealous of those who are proud of their heritage. In standing up to the fascism being forced on us, I hope we can restore our self-respect and protect the self respect of future generations by being the one who said no.