My father and mother might have fit into the movie "The Best Years of our Lives." If Millennials are peeking at this, I advise you to pay attention to some old black and white cinema, and that one was truly great.
So dad had been an army mechanic at a base near Champaign, Illinois. My mother was an only child who grew up in the small town of Charleston. They met at a USO dance.
They were never very political, and perhaps, like many, they were naive. Much, much later, I learned that my father missed voting in national elections enough to take any pride away from his voting record. He had grown up in a hard-scrabble North Texas town about 40 miles from Amarillo. And it wasn't until age 50 that I learned how 3rd generation descendants of European immigrants were treated immediately following World War I. Or how my father may have been kicked in the head when set upon by his cornpone classmates at the new public school. "Dumb Pollacks and Catholics!" they would shout. So now, I prefer the word "Caucasian" to "White" on ethnic questionnaires of job appications. Since I'm retired, that's what I tell people. I'm Caucasian. One part Dr. King; one part John Brown.
My grandfather on my mother's side was a facilities engineer at the teacher's college in Charleston. For living during the Depression, they had a modest share of comforts. During the 1930s, they bought a small brick home on a shady street-corner, and visiting my grandparents left me with some of the happiest memories of my childhood -- when I chose to remember them.
My mother told stories of my grandfather's Republican orientation. It was not so much a matter of choice. In order to assure his continued employment at the college, he annually went to the home of a local Republican official to deliver a donation.
My father began working in civilian life as a dealership Chevy mechanic. Around 1952, he exchanged the grimy overalls for business suits, and became a Prudential Insurance salesman. Rumor had it that he had a promising future in that company. Soon, he was office manager.
But he began to have serious headaches, eventually blackouts and seizures foaming copiously at his mouth. He was diagnosed with a frontal-lobe brain tumor. There was not a lot of hope in those days for people with that affliction. Surgery was likely to leave the patient seriously disabled, and it would cripple a family. I don't think there were long-term care policies; I don't even think we had family health insurance.
But being an astute insurance man, he somehow was able to arrange a policy that would pay, given his illness and despite his plan to save his family. The church gave him a full Christian burial in the Catholic cemetery. It was something that always puzzled me, because I didn't know about the diagnosis through much of my adulthood. I only knew that he took his own life.
So with the shadow of his death in mind, I continued through life repressing memories of my first 10 years. I think I may have developed with greater than a normal share of a narcissistic personality, and my thinking and treatment of others into adulthood likely reflected it.
I worked hard, went to a state university, eventually earned two masters degrees and taught in a third field. I was extremely competitive; eager to get ahead; certain that hard work would pay off; wondering -- if things seemed slow -- what was wrong with me. And I naively thought that early affirmative action initiatives were stunting my progress. I had chosen a career in the federal service.
So it wasn't hard, drifting away from Johnson and the Vietnam War, that I might flirt with Republicanism. I got to attend a Reagan rally of early 1976 in Fort Worth, sitting some 40 feet from the Great Communicator. I kept falling asleep. There was no substance, no salient ideas -- just political symbols that appealed to the audience orientation. But in the early '80s, I was contributing some $250/annum to the RNC.
And, secretly, in Virginia where partisan choice is not required for registration, I'd go into the voting booth, and, at the last minute -- the last minute! -- flip the switch for the Democrat. I voted for Carter, Mondale, Dukakis. Even through 1985, I still thought I was a "Republican" in spirit.
I remember riding the Metro from L'Enfant Plaza to a K-street bookstore -- Kramers. I sat next to a middle-aged blond woman, hair nicely coiffed with a mink stole, and we struck up a conversation, which turned to public education:
"You know -- I work for George Bush! I don't think poorer children should go to school with the wealthy. It creates unreasonable expectations."
That was my turning point, and I never forgot about it. I turned my plastic RNC card into a serrated shoe-scraper, boldly deploying it on the steps of my office building in bad weather. But I couldn't embrace another party for years. Yet game theory would tell you: you're best to pick an affiliation that has a chance of winning if it's just the lesser of two evils.
My field in economics included public choice, but it didn't sink in until some years after I finished the program. I became interested in declassified history from the Clinton years, and then it all started to make sense. Oil and defense/aerospace, circling their wagons of influence and interest around the national security apparatus. The Panama Papers banking revelations trace back to the Vietnam War. At one time, CIA midwifed books into film with assistance from Hollywood patriots. I had a friend who -- even in the 1990s -- was waking up in puddles of sweat, screaming at the top of his lungs. His dreams would all begin with the deafening report of a .45 service pistol. And which side gave greater support to all this?
I went hiking in the North Cascades in early September, 2001, meeting two old college friends I'd known in the '60s. After seven days in the woods, we sat around the campfire on the night of the 10th like the three witches in Macbeth. And to this day, I still tell the story as I saw it: we predicted the cataclysm of the following morning; the war in Iraq; the financial crisis of 2007.
Today, if the GOP nominated Jesus and the 12 apostles, I'd vote for the other party. Sometimes I fantasize about seeing some poor sucker with his car sporting a GOP bumper sticker in a ditch hoping for roadside assistance, perhaps on Wildrose Canyon Road in Death Valley. I ask him to produce his original birth certificate.
This is a struggle between Good . . . and Evil. And getting Jesus to run as a Republican would have to be the biggest scam anyone ever pulled on the Lord himself -- bigger than Trump University.
Anyway -- He wouldn't do it. I have enough faith to see that clearly. Still, who knows what webs they weave, when they practice to deceive? Remember the old story about Jesus being tempted in the desert?
Let me tell you about Donald Trump. I know about Donald Trump firsthand. You don't want anyone like that near 1600 Pennsylvania, anywhere near Langley, Virginia, or anywhere else than where they came from, with good wishes for their future prosperity.
And as for that, a person is better off knowing where they came from, who they are, and what that means for expectations of a happy life. Don't punctuate your politics with delusional perceptions of your personal importance.
[For Barbara — the Glitter Pirate who hijacked my stunted heart, and still possesses it 40 years later.]