Monday, January 11, 2021

"I was wrong again." The right wing faces reality.

Back to work. Just taught a Zoom class, will teach another Thursday evening; next week, the U of T class too. I was wearing a nice sweater and beads on top, sweatpants and Birkies on the bottom. Zoom works really well, even with a group of strangers meeting for the first time. My internal system is revved up, heart beating faster - showtime! How lucky, after all these years, to love my work so much.

The fallout from Wednesday continues. If my Trump-loving high school friend Dan is an indication, perhaps this is a turning point, a nadir for white supremacists and neo-Nazis and just right wingers like Dan. In 1965 he and I argued bitterly about the Vietnam war, he in favour and I against. Though then we were really parroting our parents, he continued on the right and I on the left; last time he wrote, before the election, crowing about the success of Trump's economic polities and ranting about Hunter Biden, I wrote him off forever. But I got an email Thursday: "You were right. I was wrong again." The invasion of the Capitol was the end for him and his friends. "It made us look like Venezuela." 

He's still hanging on - he wrote subsequently that they still might find election irregularities, and was I not concerned about what the Bidens were doing in Ukraine, and more of the same. I commended him for his humility in admitting he was wrong, but "You've had the Gambino crime family in the White House for 4 years and you're still going on about Hunter Biden! The Kool-Aid is still flowing in your veins." Perhaps it always will, but less than before. That's a start.

What makes me sick, I wrote him, is that their disgusting man behaved abominably and even criminally for years, yet few on their side minded until Wednesday. And many millions still swallow the lies and support him, even support the violent invasion. Way too little, way too late for the Repubs who've finally developed a spine, a conscience, an open pair of eyes. But a start.

My tall handsome son came to visit last night. We hugged. I know, that's taking my life in my hands; I did turn my face away, which is easy because hugging him means my face in his chest. But a hug feels as necessary as food at this point. We had a long deep talk with dinner and watched the first episode of Bridgerton, too fluffy for us both, and the first half of A Life on Our Planet, David Attenborough's life story and a sad chronicle of environmental degradation. A more cheerful rest of the evening for us both - he went to watch football with friends, and I watched All creatures great and small on PBS, about exactly the world Attenborough was celebrating, rural, quiet, in harmony with nature. And a doc on the urbane Alistair Cooke. Grateful for the riches of PBS. 

Excitement across town - the bunkbeds I bought the boys for Xmas have arrived. Luckily Thomas is off this week because it looks like quite a job to put it together. There will be boxes for forts. Onward. 

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