On Feb 8, the Thursday before the Super Bowl, I had a doctor’s appointment. As I sat in the doctor’s waiting room a young lady wearing a Forty-niners’ jacked sat down in a chair near me. The sight of her wearing that jacket made me think of the latest conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce helping Joe Biden win a second term.
“If you’re a swifty, Republicans will call you a nonpartisan,” I said.
In my mind there was now something akin to a whiffing sound as my comment sailed over her head. I often forget that most people are not as politically engaged and informed as I am. I am afraid that “political junkie” is probably a less polite description of what I must admit has become an obsession in these dangerous times. Be that as it may, the whiffing sound was soon replaced by booing coming from an equally obsessive but ill-informed duo wearing MAGA hats. They will probably also don Donald Trump’s golden sneakers as a part of the new American fascist ensemble. I would tell them that tacky and hateful is no way to go through life, but that would only feed the paranoia that makes them fascists.
Fortunately, a nurse calling my name spared me any further interaction with the MAGAs. I followed her into a hallway and stepped on the scale as she instructed.
“How are you doing?” she asked as she recorded my weight on a form.
I was not having a particularly good day and I had just been booed, but nobody wants to hear that. So I said, “Well, I’m hanging in there.”
She smiled and said, “Me too.”
There was laughter coming from behind me. The nurse who was laughing came into my line of sight as I stepped off the scale. “Hanging in there is a good description of how we’re doing today,” she said.
The nurse who was taking my vitals then told me that they were not having a good day. She let out a little giggle. “Hanging in there,” she said. “I’m sure it will get better if we just hang in there.”
“It usually does,” I said rejecting the temptation to add something like “when we vote to save democracy and sanity.” I rejected the temptation because she was smiling, and I did not want to change that by interjecting politics into the conversation. Therein lies the problem. As much as I hate the very real danger posed by right wingers, there are too many of them who are members of my family and who I consider to be my friends. As much as I hate their delusions, I cannot hate them as people.
We must reject the fascists ideology so handily in the next election that the pundits will fear an end to the two-party system. If we can accomplish that the MAGA delusions can be viewed as eccentricities that are mainly harmless unless or until another demagogue makes us take them serious again. This will make it much easier to be around right wing loved ones, even though their grousing will still be annoying.
