You’ve read the stories here.
So have I. And when I read them, I would think “sure do wish I could say that about my [Republican] family.” But I didn’t think it would ever happen. And truth be told, I doubt that conversations with my brothers would go the same as the one with my dad did. But I’ll take what I can get.
I grew up in a red state in the heartland (before escaping to the West Coast). I’m one of a large brood of kids. One brother and I are in the libtard category; all the rest of the family is somewhere along the continuum between Rockefeller Republican and Rand Paul.
This past weekend I phoned my 86-year-old dad, whom I would put somewhere between Eisenhower and Reagan. He still lives where I grew up, and he mentioned that the primary elections are going on. He said he doesn’t want to vote for “any of them.” Then, as humans of his age are wont to do, he started rambling/ranting a bit. He complained that all the GOP candidates keep going on about “I’m a Trump man” and “I support the NRA.”
So far, so good. But then came the stunner: “I can’t stand Trump. I think he’s the worst president of my lifetime.” Wow — since FDR! I managed to recover my voice enough to insert “Well, I definitely agree with you on that,” before he continued:
“He’s just a bully. When he was elected, I thought he could be really good because he was a businessman, and he’d be able to bring people together to negotiate and get some things accomplished. But he doesn’t know how to negotiate. When he negotiates, it’s ‘my way or the highway.’ He bullies people, and that’s not how you get anything done.”
I managed not to literally start whooping and hollering as I heard this. I affirmed what he had said, then tentatively mentioned something about corruption, but he said nobody’s found any evidence of that, and I decided this wasn’t the day to argue with him about it. And then we got to the part where he went off on AOC and Adam Schiff, and the magic of the moment waned.
Still, it was not a moment I had anticipated or ever would have predicted, and as the daughter of a man in his late 80’s, I’m old enough to know that when serendipity hits, it’s best to appreciate it without reservation.
