More people than usual were flying out of Portland Jetport on a weekday, and access to iPhone recharging stations was at a premium. Worse, the unit I was sitting next to was DOA, the blue power light extinguished. Of course, that didn’t stop me from cluelessly prodding around until a helpful fellow traveler pointed the problem out to me. When I asked her if I could appear any lamer, she assured me it was a common issue that most, including herself, responded to no differently than I had. I thanked her for the fib to make me feel better and started surveying the gate area for unaccompanied blue lights. A silver haired witness to my inadequacy generously offered me the seat next to him, which boasted a true blue energy source.
His name was Steve and he hailed from near Augusta, born and bred in the vacation state. Mainers are noted for their pleasant stoicism, and my new friend was no exception. I did most of the talking, but he was jovial and responded to my inquiries with what can best be termed enthusiastic brevity.
The grandfather of five, he was a cable company construction supervisor on his way to Syracuse for training. His employer had played a dirty trick on him and necessitated he first fly south to Philadelphia to then connect at 9:30 pm to eventually arrive in Syracuse near midnight. I cringed at the thought and offered my heartfelt sympathies.
Throughout our conversation I was struck by how, despite certainly not talking my ear off, Steve answered questions thoroughly, while making sure to never stray past the subject matter he was discussing, there were no tangents to his line of thought, no unnecessary anecdotes. He was pleased to answer any inquiry, and willing to rejoin with an invitation for me to address the topic as well, but we stayed on whatever point was at hand. That I found his method of discourse comfortable, even admirable, perhaps speaks to a certain self-loathing toward my own tendency to tell stories and wander fairly aimlessly during discourse. I don’t know. Point is, he was a very easy guy to be around… and to like.
I have no doubt, were I lucky enough to count Steve my neighbor, he would dutifully have my back, and would appreciate but certainly not feel entitled to me having his. Good communities start with the Steves of this world, and countries are merely the sum total of their communities. So, from what I know of Steve, he is an asset to America, necessary to our fundamental prosperity, a root of our foundation, Rockwellian salt of the earth.
This Holiday Season, our third under the Trump Administration, may in fact be the most appropriate opportunity of the year to consider Steve and I and how the awful divisiveness of MAGA encroaches on the community development most agree goes hand in hand with our well being as a nation.
I never asked Steve about his politics, and wouldn’t be surprised wherever he came down. Which is to say I’ve been repeatedly disappointed by otherwise wonderful people I’ve known for years who are now unapologetic members of the wretched core, just as I know plenty of unpleasant sorts I’d just as soon avoid who have not a shred of patience for Trump. However, that is not at all to equate the two groups, which way too many still seem prone to do, contributing to our ingestion of ruinous toxicity.
The space between a rock and a hard place America now occupies consists of two precepts all of us took for granted growing up. Until 2016 we never had any compelling reason to challenge either one of them because each serviced the other. The demeanor of our Presidents never strayed from parameters they entered office determined to respect and left unchallenged. As a result, we had the luxury of assuming, Democrat or Republican, they would function in the background of our life routines, and, more importantly, respect the system that enabled their ascendency or terminated their service. Moreover, they would faithfully champion one common theme, paramount to our existence as a country: national unity. Together, these bedrocks established acceptable norms for civility and behavior, protecting relationships from political passions. No more.
As America confronts its version of the classic symptom authoritarian populism presents, a steady erosion of democratic society, Trump’s wretched core are no longer the primary issue. They’ve become a constant variable. They have elected and emboldened a destructive nihilist, and will embrace his worst, which could certainly descend to historically malevolent depths, but there is no longer any mystery to them or their misguided inclinations.
The open unanswered question now is how the rest of America tolerates them amongst us because, sadly, that has become synonymous with whether MAGA prospers further or is contained and eventually dies out. Totalitarian movements can’t survive dormancy. They can’t live through the collective disdain required to drive them from power, regroup, and then again hit the ground running. Trump out of the White House will look and sound very different, and without the Presidency’s bully pulpit and resources, even with 24/7 Fox/AM participation, he will become page A4 rather than the headline. Relevancy will become much harder work, and we all know Trump is a very lazy man, his own worst enemy.
Our ability to accept Trumpism as anything other than an ugly aberration is everything, the metric of our future. The most significant measure is whether we continue to categorize politics, doggedly refusing to permit this Presidency’s cauldron of degradation to boil over and co-mingle with community relations. No matter how many times it’s been said, it bears repeating, this isn’t Romney, or W, or even Nixon, and it’s a GOP the country has never before experienced, an enterprise with nothing in the way of constructive governance on its day timer. The ever growing list of former Republican Party stalwarts now as opposed to MAGA as any “liberal” certifies this reality.
When the Senate majority leader breathlessly reassures a Sean Hannity of his predisposition to, not only acquit an impeached President, but fully map out the entire process of his trial with him, there exists a massive chasm between the historical norms that are supposed to inform his job performance and absurd new expectations he believes his primary constituency intends to hold him to.
It’s our everyday give and take with that bloc that will define us moving forward. They don’t exist in a vacuum. They aren’t cordoned off and neatly showed for their worst. Many are Steves, whose plethora of good qualities are right now consumed by the existential crisis they believe is saving their country. Of course, it would be a far more pleasant task to talk about grandkids and the New England Patriots. Yet and still, it’s the grandchildren who are at the heart of this matter and deserve more than pleasantries. Confronting ruin. BC