Unfriended

One of the saddest parts of the Donald Trump presidency has been saying goodbye to some people I’ve known for years. Many people are going through this. People with whom I’ve always had political disagreements, but as with many such friendships, we have been civil and often wanted the same things, but just had totally different ways of wanting to get them.
Even when we did not want the same things, it never got ugly or personal. As a news anchor and analyst, I sat side-by-side with people whose beliefs on war, the economy and even equality differed, but we could go out to dinner afterwards, enjoy one another’s company and see one another socially.
When Mary Matalin and I worked together for several years, we could talk, and trade stories about our children even though we probably went to bed each night praying the other would never get any real political power. Of course, Mary gets to go to bed each night thinking that about the man she loves that way, and if ever there were a lesson on how we could be, there it is.
There are still many such relationships and many such friendships, but many others are being destroyed by the sheer ugliness of this administration, which is putting our nation in such peril that respect and knowing smiles and the occasional friendly rolled eyeballs, no longer suffice.
On Facebook, I have watched as many of these friendships have exploded. Always happy to put my own ideas out there for people to debate and disagree on, I blocked no one and unfriended no one. That has changed.
It’s been Donald Trump that is responsible in a way, by legitimizing foul behavior even at the highest level of government, but I can’t simply blame him. What he’s done is bring to the surface and make safe opinions that have always been there.
There seem to be two classes of destruction here. One is some friends who supported Trump because they liked what he promised and that he yanked what seemed like a sure victory away from a Democrat and won the day for the right wing. I get that. I’m not happy it happened, but they weren’t happy with the previous 8 years and that pendulum always swings no matter your point of view.
It’s what’s happened since that has destroyed relationships. It actually started before Election Day. Those of us whose reporting careers were based in New York City for decades knew who Donald Trump was and how personally reprehensible he could be, though that still gave only a hint at what was to come with ultimate power.
What became troubling was how his supporters either made excuses for the pussy grabbing brags with Billy Bush or just plain adored it. Try to imagine Reagan or Goldwater or either Bush having that conversation. When Bill Clinton was caught — yet again being Bill Clinton — most liberals were just pained. Many would have been just as happy to see him gone and Gore take over. Even then, it was somewhat easier to defend Clinton because his ugliness was of a personal kind, unless of course the unproven charges of Juanita Broaddrick are true, in which case, he should have been doing hard time.
I had no trouble criticizing Obama for wasting too much time on a Republican Congress that would give him nothing or for waiting too long to support moderate factions in Syria. I liked him, but I wish he had been less of a teacher and more of a politician.
However, many people who supported Trump just cannot admit he does anything wrong. Most of these people are not about policy. They are more about professionally complaining they can’t get no satisfaction. Some are young and can’t face the fact they are losing spots in college or not getting jobs because they just don’t have the skills. They are upset about things like affirmative action, but not upset about the boss’ kid or the legacy admission. Maybe because they are probably also white males and it just doesn’t damage their egos to think they lost out to someone they are sure are inferior to them.
Think about it. Jared Kushner aced some better student out of Harvard when his dad gave millions of dollars to the school, but you don’t hear anyone whining about that they way they whine about a school deciding they might need some people of other colors as well as rich white dads providing more of the same.
Most of the people I’ve lost as friends, though, have been in the last few days as they just refuse to admit that Trump is giving aid and comfort to racists. One decided I had Alzheimer’s, though he’s the one who has already forgotten every campaign promise Trump made about better, cheaper health care covering everyone.
It could be they are racists and I just never knew it, but even though our friendships are gone, I’d prefer to think that’s not the case. I think there are many of my fellow white males who just can’t put themselves in the shoes of someone who is Black or Gay or Female. To a degree, I get it. I can barely do it, even though I get intellectually how bad it can be. Still, thinking about it for a moment and feeling and being affected by it 24/7 are very different things.
Besides, if we had careers where we did not have to worry about discrimination, we take for granted we got the good things that came to us because we are deserving, not because much of the human race could not even compete with us. Still, why are they so damn angry?
I know some of my older retired friends are angry because they don’t have that much to live on. They believe they would have done better investing the money taken from them in FICA taxes than social security benefits will pay them, but most people, frankly, are crap investors, and when I ask them about the stock plays they have made on their own they get — as Elmer Fudd was wont to say — vewy vewy quiet.
Also, unlike what you have in your 401K, social security benefits go on until you die. You don’t run out.
Of course, pensions would do that too, but many of these same friends fought against unions to save on dues. Did they invest that unspent dues money? No. They spent it because, again, they are crap investors and savers. Now they are angry because they are living longer than they had expected, and they’ll do it on less money than they would have had with a union pension. Most Americans of retirement age have no more than $148,000 in savings. If treated as a lifetime annuity that would give them $649 a month to live on. Of course, they’re angry, but they are voting for and trusting the people who left them in that position.
Many of this group are angry and at best not empathetic. They see a rich country and they see people who don’t look like the workforce they knew and figure someone stacked the deck. Of course, they should get new skills but if they use any of the precious little savings they have to do that they fear they’ll have nothing at all.
Angry white men look silly to everyone else and that makes them angrier. 91% of CEOs are white men. It is easier for them to get hired than anyone, and when you look at the numbers of white men who have dropped out of the work force — despite there being more than six million job openings right now — most have done it because they don’t have the skills needed for the jobs that are out there and refuse to retrain for those jobs.
Wait. It gets even more complicated. You know those manufacturing jobs Trump says he’s bringing back? Even people with factory jobs don’t want them. At Carrier, where Trump and Pence bragged of saving what turned out to be a handful of jobs because of automation and robotics, workers are taking buyouts in droves. They also get that automation assures there is no future in these jobs. In fact, since Trump was elected the number of Americans quitting their factory jobs are escalated, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So yes, there’s anger, but you can’t scream at a robot and you already put your faith in the business people who have screwed you, so yell at the black woman, or the Jewish guy, or anyone but the president said one thing and outsourced every job he could.
So there’s the angry over something crowd and since Trump seems pissed off like them — even though his life is nothing like theirs — they’re for him. They don’t believe Trump’s racism and embarrassing support of anti-Semitism is a problem, because (a) he can do no wrong and (b) they just really don’t care about people who aren’t them.
And then there are the people who are knowing racists. People who hate people because of their skin color which is like hating people because of their eye color or hair color. They strove for generations to stop such people from progressing or having a break and then blame the fact they don’t do as well on their amount of melanin, instead of the prejudice and discrimination that have kept them in their place.
This is what Trump has done. A billionaire has white men with poor paying jobs yelling at Black men with no job at all. Something about that seem odd to you? Something about that seem like someone is being used and refuses to admit it?
And since they can’t admit it, they’ve gotten angrier. They will defend the billionaire who hires Romanians for poor-paying jobs at Mar-a-Lago against anyone who dares to tread on him. They will forsake friendships to defend Trump and the Koch brothers who made sure they had no pensions and therefore, little to live on. They are sure the deck was stacked against them, when the cards were marked for them from birth, but they just couldn’t read them.
It wasn’t blacks who exported the jobs. It wasn’t women who replaced their livelihoods with robots.
It wasn’t non-whites who sent their jobs overseas to be done by people of color. It was the people who now stoke the flames of racism here. As I said, 91% of CEOs are white men. These are the people who sent what Trump supporters think of as white male jobs overseas.
So they are angry at the wrong people and that anger has become reasonless and hateful. And they don’t see how Trump is protecting and enabling racism and anti-Semitism.
It’s heartbreaking, but if friendships must be broken at least this isn’t one of those things where you don’t remember what you fought about, or what teams you used to root for when you lived somewhere else.
This is about people who called themselves friends who might be sad to hear it was me, but could live with the idea of my being murdered for my religion because they are angry about something they can’t quite figure out.
The world has been here before. It’s not like we don’t know where this leads.
If anything is worth losing a few friends to stand up and fight against, this is pretty much it.
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