Every once in a while I meet a person I like who turns out to be a Republican. This is a problem for me, as I like life to be neat, predictable and coherent. It isn’t, of course. Life is chaotic and messy, and people are a mass of contradictions.
During George W.’s reign — and may I say George W. now seems like a pussy cat, albeit, a kitten with a sinister puppet master — but, nonetheless, a confused pussy cat — I was able to grapple with my dislike of the said Republican and, more or less, lay it flat. We always suspected my beloved brother-in-law, a wonderful man if there ever was one, voted for G.W. Bush. But as he’s a person of very few words, and my sister knows how to leave a thing alone, we were never quite sure.
Some years ago I met a couple and I liked them both, especially the man. He was clever, warm and funny. He was also, I found out to my distress, a Republican. His wife was not, and she too, like my sister, knew how to navigate. “We never talk about it,” she said.
This, of course, would not work for me. I can be friends with a Republican. But if a Republican were my intimate, I would forever be struggling not to smother him with a pillow while he slept.
Still, I keep meeting Republicans and liking them. My latest Republican is a woman I hike with. I like her. I like her very much. I really do.
But I feel that if aliens came out of the sky, captured both of us, and dissected our brains, they would certainly come up with the conclusion that we don’t belong to the same species. She keeps saying “He doesn’t really mean that,” whenever Trump speaks.
This is a Hobson’s choice of an election. I don’t much like Hillary myself (I love Bernie) but on a continuum of experience, capability and coherence, she comes a lot closer to sane than Donald does. But in a country of 324 million, it’s astonishing that we, the people, were unable to find, in those millions, no other viable candidates than these two.
But there it is. A two-party system (plus the antiquated Electoral College) often forces the voter into an untenable corner. No one enjoys voting for the person they dislike the least.
And then too, I’d like my friends to come in more than two colors, red or blue. And indeed they do … there are a rainbow of positions. Green is the new liberal, for one.
But I will continue to like my Republican friends, albeit with some measure of consternation. Emotion often trumps reason. Fear often wins out against fact. The demagogue, the showman, the illusionist are powerful. We want to believe, of course we do. As P.T. Barnum might have said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” And some of them are my best friends.
Joan Jaffe moved to Norwich from Manhattan with her baby daughter 35 years ago. She trained as a nurse in London, England and pursued that profession for many years. She has contributed to various publications, including the Valley News.