Guilty on 34 Counts.

I have not been writing about politics much (at all) not because I'm not still fully engaged in it, but because it raises my blood pressure/makes me depressed. But I'll share this little vignette from deep in "older white Republican golfer world," where I got a great deal on a condo close to work over a decade ago.

I have very sweet 80+ year old neighbors. They're very sweet, and the husband has really formed a cute bond with Eddie. Eddie loves absolutely everybody so that's not hard, but it obviously means a lot to him that Eddie is happy to see him. He says he and Eddie have a special bond, and I'm happy to encourage that belief.

I know they're Republicans and go to some evangelical church (I think they're on their third church since I met them) but yeah, we mostly talk about neutral subjects, and when he does veer into politics (I never do) I quickly steer away, or say the dogs have to go walk. 

The other night we had a very brief chat, like maybe 2 minutes, and I can't remember what the issue was, but it ended with him slagging union workers. Okay, he's a native Floridian so he's lived with anti-union brainwashing since forever, I am used to that. I just said something noncommittal and kept moving. My aunts and uncles up North raised all their kids on good union jobs, sent them to college, took vacations, and retired with dignity, something the South and it's "right to work" bullshit can't even imagine. Basically, nobody shits on unions around me, but again, this is my 80+ year old neighbor so I just pretend I didn't hear it and take the dogs on their walkies. 

He saw Eddie this evening and came to greet him, and was petting him when his wife ran out their front door and yelled his name and said, with her voice SHAKING hysterically: "Guilty on 34 counts." And he looked shaken and turned to me and said, "I don't know what's happening in this country when they can do this..." 

And for the first time in the decade plus we've been neighbors, I said, "Let's stop here. I like you and I like being your neighbor, but this conversation will not go well, and I really do like you as a neighbor." And took the dogs on their walkies. 

When I came back from walking the dogs he was watering the plants in the courtyard, and we had a discussion about how the landscapers keep planting new bushes in our courtyard even though they keep dying, and they really need to do soil samples because it's not lack of water. And we will continue to discuss issues like that. 

And I realized that this sort of thing happens over and over, not just in my neighborhood, but in other settings. I'm never the one to initiate a political discussion, but there's an expectation that as an older white woman, I must be a Trumper, or at least a Republican, though there's no difference at this point, and that I will nod along in agreement with whatever crazy (and nearly always racist) shit they're mad about at the moment. And really, it's lonely. I crave not having to dodge conversational land mines with people I have to deal with every day. 

It's by no means everybody. I'm grateful for online friends and podcasts (and that my family and real friends are all wokety-woke lefties who live in the reality-based community), but damn, it's a daily feeling of sadness when genuinely nice people are shaken and sad that a jury did its duty, saw the evidence, and came to a swift and unequivocal verdict, based largely on the paper trail created when they, uh, PUT THE WHOLE ILLEGAL PLAN IN WRITING. This wasn't a sketchy, both sides, he said she said case, and it wasn't a porn star payoff case (fuck you "liberal media").  If their orange lord and savior had just quietly written a personal check from his own funds, none of this would have happened! But no, they had meetings, documented it, and of course nobody who worked for him trusted him so they kept notes. To me that's the most hilariously appropriate part of this saga! 

But I'm still sad because the guy who is sure he has a special friendship with my dog is a sad, deluded old man.