Carnage

The crash of the Democratic Party has hit home – literally. We’re all reluctant liberal Democrats in our family since Bernie lost his presidential nomination by a whisker to Hillary Clinton. Here in the Bay Area, though I’m still pissed about being pepper-sprayed by president-in-training Ronnie Baby while walking to class at UC Berkeley; it’s been pretty much rollin’ along singin’ a song at the dinner table, presidential-election wise.

Until He decided, after more than a quarter century of marriage to my sister-in-law, to join the fray of our family dinner political discussions. “He” is John, my sister-in-law’s Kansas-born accountant husband, who we suspected might be a closet Repug though he had pretty much kept his mouth shut, a survival skill he unsurprisingly must have mastered during his corporate career in über-lib San Francisco.

That all changed recently mid-celebration when John jumped up from the table mid-pie and said (very unkindly) that “people like us have destroyed California” before flouncing out the front door, his majorly humiliated wife trailing along behind him. He further announced on his way out that we would no longer be blessed with his presence at future family events, and is even hosting an “alternative” Christmas dinner the week before Christmas, effectively bifurcating celebration of the holiday. The kids were invited.

This unfortunate family upheaval was closely followed by a rash of demonstrations for freedom of speech here, of all places, in Rossmoor. Rossmoor’s board would clearly prefer that Rossmoor’s 10,000 senior residents confine their complaints to the quality of the golf greens or the temperature of the bar’s martinis, but the outside world inevitably rears its ugly head. The day Trump had his ear shot, a Rossmoor matron walked into the pickleball court and announced the bumbled assassination attempt on Trump — to which another woman, sitting on the bench, enthusiastically shouted “Good!” The announcer than physically attacked the seated woman, causing a kerfuffle serious enough to involve Walnut Creek PD, though the advanced ages of the combatants probably contributed, I was told, in no chargeable physical injuries.

What followed this tempest in a teapot was far worse. Rossmoor canceled its popular and long-running weekly resident political columns in the Rossmoor News, claiming they incited “discord” among residents. (Disclosure: I both wrote and edited the Dem columns for eight years, with nary a shot fired nor an eye blackened.)

Progressive residents did not take this dictat lying down. We made placards decrying the death of the columns, to the point of turning out significant media coverage of our demonstrations at the front gate (Channel 5, Channel 2, the Chron, the L.A. Times and the UK’s Guardian [never underestimate seniors’ professional contacts]). What better news story than a bunch of oldsters protesting their right to free speech in the liberal Bay Area? Several of us spoke at the Rossmoor board meetings in hopes of overturning the ban on the columns, meetings which in retrospect were cynically staged to show “sensitivity to resident concerns.” All to no avail.

So… family-wise, it has now been decreed that all political discussions are verboten at extended-family dinners (though I doubt the sole Trumper will start attending again), and our community weekly is filled with both more marketing ads about what a great place this is to live and more vacuous “columns” about aging gracefully and being on the lookout for signs of dementia.

Why doesn’t this frictionless environment feel better than it does? Premature death is more like it: all peaceful, unfailingly polite, easier to digest than Wonder Bread, and as inoffensive on the tongue as plain vanilla.

When Nixon was elected President back in 1968 my liberal, politically active parents were upset. Very upset. Yet they didn’t envision the death of democracy or jettison the few Republicans in their broad social circle. (Though one of my mom’s friends, married to a Republican, once dumped a martini on her husband’s head at a party. No daggers were unsheathed or pistols drawn.)

Now that I reflect on the martini-dumping incident, maybe what we lack today is a collective sense of humor. (If you miss political cartoons as much as I do watch Michael Smerconish at 6 a.m. Saturday mornings on CNN, read his books or his many radio/social media commentaries.)

Everyone laughed as the icy gin dripped down Mr. Stockton’s face back in 1968, and the incident joined many others in the annals of neighborhood lore at the time.

Today I suppose someone would have felt traumatized and called his or her attorney. My parents just kept right on truckin’ with their usual political and civic activities and hoped for better luck next time.

So where does all this leave those of us who have written about the world, in one way or another, for nearly all of our professional lives? Sadly, just as bifurcated as our politics: seeking out ever more finely defined groups of like-minded souls. When I have voiced complaints about the shallowness of “mass market” news, I’m frequently told, “Just go to Blog XYZ.” I have no interest in endlessly probing the depths of the internet for informed news sources, though I have bottomless sympathy for younger journalists forced into this techno-marketplace to put food on the table.

This is what we’ve become: a country of poorly educated, misinformed, shopaholic consumers with fleeting attention spans: kinda like Trump himself.

The difference is that the clear morning light after a rough night can be a catalyst for better future behavior…while Trump will always be the same old predatory felon.