Optimism is in the Air-Not to mention assassinations

It wasn’t until 2016 that elections began creeping into our family gatherings. Everyone in my family was fractured. I was Team Hillary, my sister was Team Bernie, and my brother was Team Trump. It seemed to mean so much all of a sudden how we voted because how we voted decided which side of the war we were standing on.

In 2016, we were a family and house divided. It was so bad that some family members did not show up around Thanksgiving, the year Trump won. I was one of them. I sat on my couch instead of spending time with my family. I didn’t want to hear, “I told you so.”

I allowed Trump’s win to also disrupt my mourning of the death of my father as my Bernie-supporting sister, and I screamed about the election with my dad’s dead body not yet cold. I still can’t believe it mattered that much.

I was hoping Trump’s win would shatter the mass delusion of so many on the Left. It has destroyed so much of our culture, our unity, our sense of ourselves. Even when I was a loyal Democrat, I could not go along with hating and shunning Trump supporters. My brother had voted for Trump, after all.

My brother explained to me why he’d voted for Trump. He was a contractor who was being outbid by those who crossed the border illegally. It was killing his business. Only Trump would confront the problem. That sounded reasonable to me and it didn’t mean he was a “bigot.”

Four years after that election, we didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas, thanks to lockdowns. But I can’t imagine what that would have been like.

So this year was the first time since 2016 we’d all been together after a major election. I wasn’t sure what to expect this time. I was worried about how people would treat me now that they all knew I voted for and supported Trump. My mother had said I “went to the dark side,” and I’d already gotten in one screaming match with my older sister a month or so earlier.

There were about 20 people at our Christmas Party. What I noticed wasn’t so much a sense of loss, sadness, or even foreboding about the future now that a “fascist dictator” had won. Instead, there was a lightness. There was unmistakable collective relief. It felt okay to be ourselves for the first time in a very long time.

Some members of my family did the Trump dance and laughed about it. It wasn’t something to hide. It wasn’t the elephant in the room. How odd, I thought, and what a difference from whatever “that” was we all just lived through. Could it be really over?

We were celebrating. We weren’t terrified or paranoid, and we weren’t depressed about the state of the world. My nephew, who lives in Thailand, even said that now that Trump won, he’d spend more time in the US because the new administration supported his industry (crypto).

That’s not to say everyone at our Christmas parties was MAGA. But it didn’t matter who was and who wasn’t or how anyone voted. No one treated me like a pariah.

We stayed away from politics mostly, or at least I did. I didn’t want to get into it about transgender issues or the border. This wasn’t about everyone agreeing on everything, but it was about how the tribalism - at least in real life - has ended.

It wasn’t without weirdness. There was intense adoration and focus on the new hero of the Left, the assassin Luigi Magione, who has been arrested and is now on trial for shooting a healthcare executive. He’s become a hero, especially to women and younger family members.

It made me think of Walter Kirn’s prophecy in his podcast with Matt Taibbi, America This Week, where he said that it was a little too convenient that Mangione had emerged now, in the wake of a shocking, humiliating defeat of the progressive Left. They needed their own populist hero, and they got one.

That made me wonder where all of this is going. It did seem to me like Mangione had given many members of my family a reason to keep the fight alive. It also reminded some of them that they’re the side fighting the good fight against the billionaire oligarch machine. It has birthed a new version of the Bernie movement, but this time with someone much younger and better-looking, one that appeals to Gen Z.

I don’t think she, or anyone in her generation, condones murder. They just need something and someone to believe in that makes them feel something other than hopelessness. I wondered if we’re headed into a new era of political violence not unlike the 1970s.

Even if Charles Manson himself wasn’t driven by ideology, his supporters were convinced he was. That is why it was so easy for them to kill the rich. The Weatherman also believed violence was the only answer to wake people up. Is this the dawn of a new phase in our ongoing war?

One thing seemed clear to me with everyone I spoke with, no matter their politics: everyone was sick of the Left. I could sense that that was their collective relief, even if institutional change won’t come fast enough. That was the uniting force - the “woke” had wrecked everything, especially movies.

But I was happy to be around them and not have all of them hate me. It was nice to see that politics isn’t everything, at least not anymore.

"...There was intense adoration and focus on the new hero of the Left, the assassin Luigi Magione, who has been arrested and is now on trial for shooting a healthcare executive. He’s become a hero, especially to women and younger family members..."

This is a most bizarre mindset to me. I had a mild "argument" with a Freeper the other day who inferred most of us who condemn Mangione are hypocrites because we supported Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny, yet feel differently about Mangione.

Here is the exchange:

FREEPER: Slippery slope here people accused of the level of crime Mangione is need high priced lawyers. You may not like Mangione but you probably like Kyle Rittenhouse or Daniel Penny and so on. So the fundraising trying to shut down the fundraising how Soviet of you.

ME: Are you inferring a moral equivalence between Mangione and Penny/Rittenhouse? Please tell me you are not. Perhaps I misunderstood your post.

FREEPER: Hard as it may be to comprehend the notion of innocence until proven guilty remains its established and constitutional much of the drama regarding this murder case wants to convict the defendant in advance. It also wants to politicize inferring that the whole case is political a “Leftist murder plot”. All have sinned that’s why we remember the Savior was born today. I am a Conservative sinner I have lusted and committed murder in my heart among other things. People on “the Left” are sinners too let’s get things into perspective. I’ve spent too much of my life lambasting the Left and not facing my own sin.

ME: I understand that. But there appears to be valid video of this person walking up and shooting another human being in the back. Mentioning this person in the same breath as Daniel Penny who by dozens of eye-witnesses did something they were grateful for, and Kyle Rittenhouse who was also trying to do good, verified by a trial, is not a Christian conundrum on this day (or any day) I am a sinner too. We all are. We are human. But I believe it is a grievous mistake to allow that sentiment, however well intentioned, to cloud this obvious difference between good and evil, and I feel no compunction in saying that baldly, framing the concept of good and evil. If you had simply said: "...All have sinned that’s why we remember the Savior was born today. I am a Conservative sinner I have lusted and committed murder in my heart among other things. People on “the Left” are sinners too let’s get things into perspective. I’ve spent too much of my life lambasting the Left and not facing my own sin..." I would not have even batted an eye. But to frame it in the context of those two good men is an unjust, and even evil thing, IMO. (NOTE: I am not saying you are evil since I do not believe you were doing it to defame those two good men...but I do think it is very, very unjust towards those two men, and unjustified in this context. I would like to believe your statement was used by you to make a point you believe valid, and used improperly, in my opinion, rather than a deliberate attempt to group them in together). I fully admire your view of this on this day, I simply disagree that those two men should be used the way you did to explain your point of view.

It went on like this for a few more posts, and I was a quite offended this person would group those people together in the process of inferring hypocrisy on our part. And I felt astonished this person simply did not get the point I was making.

Then I saw this today:

It was amazing to me we had people on our very own forum who cannot see the distinction. I am generally not a bible verse-quoting person, but it brings to mind Isaiah 5:20..."Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

When someone cannot distinguish between the actions of people like Penny/Rittenhouse and someone like Mangione, it makes me feel that we are indeed lost as a nation. It infects even people we might consider as allies.

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