…OR HOW I WENT FROM A BERNIE BRO TO A TRUMP HO

It’s been a weird year for this blog. For years it’s been about Filipinas, marriage and moving to the Philippines. But this year more often than not I’ve written about other things; mostly Covid and the lockdowns. Now once again I write against my core interests and look at my political transformation.

It’s several days after the election and finally Joe Biden has been declared President – by the media who apparently decide these things. Yes, there will be more counting, recounting and some court cases, but in the end it looks like we get Joe. Half the US is elated and the other half – not so much.

I got no problem with the celebrations and certainly expected to see such posts. They have a right I suppose. But several of the postings surprised and disgusted me, though I should not have been. In one, a 60-something woman I have known since childhood very eloquently opined how she would forever remember that many of her neighbors are racists, sexists and general monsters – because they voted for Trump – and that she would never forget.

In another post, a non-American friend was celebrating Biden’s win and mentioned he would be dumping some FB Trump supporter friends. Several Americans said they hoped not to be dumped. I wrote him a message also stating that I valued our friendship, although I had never met him in person, and tried to explain why calling Trump and his supporters racists, fascists and evil might be just a little bit insulting. He said he thought I was a reasonable guy and would only dump me “if you continue to support his attempts at fascist, racist, disgusting egotistical spoilt views.”

This all got me to thinking, how did I go from being on the right side to the wrong side of things lol.

Part of the following is a letter I wrote a friend some months ago trying to explain. The explanation didn’t work at the time and I’m not sure it’s gonna work now, but here goes nothing.

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“2016 was a weird year. Facebook was exploding but the phenomena was still relatively new. All my friends were posting scores of political articles, links, and memes. Most of them were ugly and I had no interest. I found myself spending much of my FB time deleting posts. I was determined not to unfriend anyone – that seemed important at the time – and discovered that I could unfollow people, to save my mental health from their onslaught. I unfollowed one of my best friends who posted at least 10 nasty articles and bits of nonsense daily. I stopped watching TV news. A daily newspaper reader my entire adult life, I stopped reading the news and stuck only to the sports page and entertainment section.

I had 20 years to know that I couldn’t support Hillary; hated the bitch really. I didn’t agree with all of Bernie’s stuff but I liked him enough to vote for him in the primary. It was clear to me that the DNC stole the nomination from Bernie and handed it to Hillary; hmm, this sounds familiar. Voting for Trump was never an option. I had 20 years of history with him too and besides I had never voted for a Republican for President. Fortunately I lived in one of the few states that allowed me to write in my Presidential vote. So as they say, I stuck with the guy who brung me to the dance, and voted for Bernie in the November election.

Three things happened that soured me on the Democratic Party. As I say, I literally did not watch the news and had no clue as to what was happening other than people at work would occasionally talk about the polls and I heard hints that Hillary was up big.

Janet got sick the day before the election and election night I took her to the ER. CNN was on the TV and for this first time that year I spent 4 hours forced to watch CNN. I watched as the horrified “newsmen” sat apoplectic as Donald Trump won the Presidency. I was laughing. I felt great. I really got a kick out of watching those morons (aka experts) fall flat on their faces. I have always loved it when the pundits are wrong. I remember that Super Bowl when the defending Super Bowl Champion Bret Favre Packers were up against the Broncos and virtually not one sports commentator in the country thought the Broncos would win. Loved it when they did.

So anyway, I’m watching CNN, shocked at what I was seeing. But then reality came back to hit hard. I was told that based on this shocking result the stock market would crash hard the next day. It wasn’t a maybe, it wasn’t a possibility. Like most BS on CNN it was reported as a given fact. Since I was 6 months from retirement and my retirement funds were important to us, I told Janet to brace herself; the experts said we would be losing a ton of money tomorrow. The next day I didn’t look at my funds; I couldn’t bare it. I was still a fool who believed the media. When the following morning I opened up my account and saw that the market had jumped big time, I realised that just as I had bought into the Hillary will definitely win, I bought into the market crash. That day was the last day I have ever or will ever watch CNN.

I was elated. I still had no idea of what Trump actually stood for but I watched as days, weeks and months went by and I made a lot of money. Now that the media were reporting that the market surge was because of that bad bad Trump I told myself “well he made me money. He can’t be all bad.”

So back to those three things that soured me forever. First, the DNC clearly stole the nom from Bernie. Just after the election, came the great depression for most of my friends. I hadn’t voted for either Hillary or Trump and knew my guy wasn’t gonna win, so I wasn’t depressed. Within several days many people were asking who I had voted for. This struck me as contrary to my 60+ years of experience. Voting was a personal thing; something between you, your conscience and the ballot box. No one, other than my spouses had ever asked and I rarely told them. In the old days when I grew up, voting was supposed to be a private thing.

Imagine my shock when I told a few friends that I had voted, not for that bitch Hillary or that nut Trump (who was by then making me money) but for Bernie. I kid you not; all those people told me the election result was my fault. It was terrible people like me who caused Hillary to lose. So, now I knew that CNN was full of lying bullshit artists and my Dem friends were idiots, looking to blame people (I was influenced by the Russians apparently) instead of accepting their defeat and determining to do better next time; after all I was still a Dem, I thought.

What did I care? I still had no idea what Trump stood for, but my friends were apoplectic and I sort of liked that, and the media who somewhere deep inside I knew were no longer reporters, had lost their shit. Life was good! I was preparing for my retirement and who was President had little impact on me. Whenever people asked, my standard line was, “As long as the Social Security check clears, I don’t care.” But deep inside I wondered what the hell had happened and why I was kinda happy about it.

One other thing helped turn me off the Dems forever. For most of my life I had been a registered Independent. That felt classier. I still voted for Dems 99% of the time (I remember voting for Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield once) but I could say that I was independent; not owned by a party. But in 2008 I wanted to vote for Obama in the primary and that meant I had to register Democratic, so I did. I was too lazy to change back to Independent, so in 2016 I was still a Dem.

Oregon has had vote by mail for many years. I think we might have been the first state. A few weeks before the election, the Democratic party called; I hadn’t turned in my ballot yet. Could they come and pick it up? No! A week later I got the same call and they got a louder NO. Frankly I was pissed that they knew I hadn’t turned in my ballot yet and even more pissed at the implication that they could help the old geezer by picking up his ballot. I got a third and then a fourth call. On the fourth call I yelled at them, “If you call again I will vote straight Republican,” and hung up. Trump is absolutely right about vote by mail; it’s a total scam.

So now I knew that my Dem friends were full of shit, the media even more so, and the DNC wanted rigged elections. I still didn’t know what Trump really stood for but I knew I no longer wanted to be associated with these clowns.

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Over the next year or more all my efforts went into my retirement, selling my house, moving to the Philippines and getting settled here. I knew nothing about the Russian controversy. I vaguely remember hearing that taxes had been lowered. I thought that as a retiree that would have little impact on me, which has turned out to be true.

Once again what little news I knew about came from my FB friends and their inane postings. Trump was a monster, Trump was a Russian agent. All I knew for sure since I didn’t listen to the news was that the market kept going up and economic news was generally positive. 

Again, I vaguely had heard that there was an investigation and special prosecutor but didn’t care. I was living in paradise and as long as my Social Security check cleared…

But guys here in the Philippines argued politics all the time. Watching 60-something Americans come to blows in a foreign country over who was and wasn’t President is something weird to experience. But again, who cared. But at some core level I must have cared. But how to find out? My FB friends were clueless, I would never watch CNN again. And then there came that fateful day when I casually did what every American liberal said he would never do (and I never had); I turned on Fox News. As I say I had never watched Fox News in my life; it was akin to going out to meet the devil at the crossroads.

There was a commentator who was bright, articulate and made sense. What was wrong with this picture? I went to YouTube and watched a bunch of his videos and before I knew it I had taken the red (no, not Russian) pill.

I discovered the other commentators were just as good, well maybe except for Hannity. Trump wasn’t some TV moron. He had a clear vision of restoring some of the things America had lost. The Dems hated him, the Europeans hated him, the Chinese hated him. And why not? He told them they were bums and from now on had to pay up. It all sounded good to me. And when he terminated the Iran nuclear agreement and moved the embassy to Jerusalem – well this was someone I had to look more closely at.

Through Fox News I got turned on to others. I watched hours of Ben Shapiro. A conservative Orthodox Jew? In an era of rising progressive anti-semitism? Are you kidding me? And then I got turned on to Jordan Peterson. He’s not particularly political and he’s Canadian. But he refused to let the government force him to speak in a particular way. He got hammered for it. But the more he was attacked the more sense he made and somewhere along the line became one of the most important thinkers of our time.

And of course I finally started listening to Trump and to my surprise often agreed with him. He reminds me of LBJ, who was crude. Of course the country got stuck with LBJ because of the Kennedy assassination. For good or bad we chose Trump. But the Dems couldn’t accept that, which strikes me as bizarre. It ought to be like sports; if you lose work harder.

And then there was the pandemic, which is Trump’s fault. It’s hit every country in the world including the one I live in – but it’s his fault. There is no doubt in my mind that some states have deliberately suppressed their citizens for political purposes and to make Trump look bad. The same people who went to the American people and with a straight face told them that the person they voted for is a Russian spy now were hopeful for economic collapse – so that they can win elections.

And as the population goes insane we had a police killing. I suspect the response is less about George Floyd and more the need to get outside and go crazy. Which also isn’t Trumps fault. But it is his responsibility to protect American people and American businesses that had already been destroyed by the lockdown and adding rioting to the mix ensures that many of those businesses will never come back. And there are people who are glad. 

Most of my friends are my age – 60+. My guess is they are not out looting and rioting. But many support the looters and rioters. So, after the crazy election of 2016 and the beginnings of the crazy election of 2020, after the pandemic and the reaction to the pandemic, and now rioting, I have done what I should have done years ago – started to unfriend people. When a FB friend writes a long manifesto about how to stay concealed as you are out to “protest” I realised it was time to dump these folks. When my upper middle class white friends, who will not lose anything, and whose prime knowledge of black people are the people who do their yards or pick up their trash, proclaim our white priviledge – well it’s time to dump them.

BTW, small point of note: I was married not once but twice to African American women. I know that African Americans are just like white people – no better, no worse.

I live in the Philippines now. Filipinos often dislike other races and countries. They express their feelings openly; such talk is not taboo. They often express similar disdain for their fellow Filipinos. I wince sometimes but I also admire the honesty. Somewhere along the line in the US we’ve decided that we must control thoughts and words, but let actions go unchecked. It should be the opposite. Give people the freedom to think and say what they want, even if ugly, while we make it clear that they cannot act on such feelings. And drop the hammer when they do. And that’s what Trump’s good at.”

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Today, five days post election, I watch some of the Republican and conservative pundits speak calmly about the election results, the aftermath and the future. How can they stay so calm I wonder, when they have been called monsters for the past 4 years? And then it occurred to me; they’ve had a lifetime of the name calling, but this is all new to me.

For 63 years I was one of the good guys. Whether my guy won or lost and whether he was a decent leader or not if he did win; none of that mattered, because I was on the side of the future, not the past. Now, for the first time in life, I am on the side of evil. Cue the Darth Vader Theme.

I’m the guy wearing the black hat in Westerns. I’m the bad guy wrestler hitting the good guy when his back is turned. OMG I’m that giant who killed Tony Stark in The Avengers! And I’m surprisingly liking it!

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Addendum: I got a message the next day from the non-American friend, apologizing but stating that he could no longer be friends. This is the time we live in.