A Carnival Season

I'm running behind and short on material lately as I focus more energy on fiction. I am, truly, sorry that I'm not posting as much. Best I could manage this month is an old piece from April that I've finally sanded most of the rough edges off of.

When I’m hurt, or scared I lash out. I don’t know if it’s a personality flaw, something broken inside of me, or just a survival trait learned from years of childhood bullying, barracks hazing and street assaults but when cornered and scared I attack, physically, verbally, metaphorically. When I’m scared and hurt I try to make it someone else’s problem. But I live a lonely life these days, 2000 miles away from home and family, surrounded by strangers, so there’s no one to lash out at. So I go online. I go on Facebook because that’s where I know my family and the friends from my old life still lurk, and I post incendiary shit. I try to poke people in the eye with words. I try to wreck people’s day the way I feel mine has been wrecked. I’m not proud of it, but it’s what I do, what I have done since 2016 when President Trump first got elected, largely thanks to my family and friends from my past life.

I held on for a day or two after the 2024 election. Those last weeks of November were grim for everyone and I set about trying to keep a stiff upper lip. I tried to smile. I tried to do a little extra around the house. I tried to be a little more cheerful because I could see folks needed space. But I’m not good at cheerful. I’m not good at smiling and hiding the hurt. Not anymore. After 24 years of living with daily pain and disability I’m exhausted physically. After over a decade of MAGA I’m exhausted mentally, and November 2024 was especially bad, because for the first time I found myself and my family firmly in the crosshairs of MAGA politics. I have no great love for academia or higher education, in fact I honestly hate it, but academia pays my bills. Higher Education is what my spouse loves to do, and the Trump admin had campaigned on destroying it. I’d pointed this out endlessly to anyone who I thought would listen. I explained to my family and alleged loved ones how this would hurt my family, how it could destroy us. I realized it was fucked up that they didn’t care about the poor, or minorities, or immigrants, but maybe they would care about me and my family.

Turned out I was mistaken.

Turned out they cared more about their pocketbook and saving a few percentage points in taxes than they did me and mine.

It hurt.

It scared me.

So I lashed out. It’s funny because the post that caused my problems was relatively benign. I said “If you voted for Trump know I think you’re a bad person.” Pretty tame, and one hundred percent true. I do not think there is a moral justification for voting Trump 2024.

A beloved family member responded with three laugh crying emojis.

It would have been better if they’d responded with an angry screed. I would have taken it better if they’d responded with a long winded justification about how Joe Biden had affected their taxes or driven up gas prices or some such bullshit. I would have been much happier with an argument, a knock down, drag out, fucking fight. Instead they responded with mockery. Didn’t even take the time to type it out. I was hurt and scared and felt like shit and a person who was supposed to love me, a person I would have described as a hero that morning when I woke up, responded with lazy mockery. They fucking laughed at my discomfort.

I was angry enough I tried to call them out. I reached out to them prepared to have the fight I wanted but they were too busy to take my call. It was months before I heard from them again. They texted out of the blue, “Hey we’re in town and would love to see you, as long as you don’t talk politics.”

I told them to pound sand.

It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever done.

But it wasn’t the first time I’d lost a friend, even a “loved” one to MAGA politics. Some time around 2015 people started drifting away. It started quietly and often online. A typed and deleted comment from a once beloved Aunt, “When did you kids become so liberal.” An angry comment from former friend, “I don’t know what happened to make you such a fucking libtard!” Week by week and month by month we watched battle lines be drawn and follower counts shrink as people were unfriended and blocked. What were once conversations between friends became arguments and then arguments became fights and fights became estrangement. Soon we all had “Trump derangement syndrome.” The Trump admin’s behavior forced us to draw lines. It forced us to choose between a relationship with the beloved but racist uncle that gave us our first sips of beer or our black and immigrant friends who were suffering. It forced us to choose between our immensely flawed but loving grandparents and our LGBTQ friends. It made us choose between the people at the family reunion and our morals and each choice left us wounded.

My best friend in the world posted a meme that said, “Once Trump gets done with the illegals he should deport Democrats next” and it shocked me. This man was my friend. My brother. We’d spent years working night-shifts together. We’d risked our lives. If I had to be in a fight, he was the guy I wanted beside me. I very literally ran into a burning building with him. I very literately followed him to the sound of the guns. He’d been in my house. He’d eaten my food. I’d given him money. I’d met his kids and he’d met mine and he FUCKING KNEW my spouse was a Democrat. I loved him and I thought he loved me and he publicly called for the deportation of my spouse.

So I called him out. “You gonna do it bro? You gonna come deport my wife? You gonna deport me?”

“It’s just a joke.” He replied. “Why are you getting so bent out of shape.”

“Because it’s not fucking funny motherfucker!”

We haven’t spoken since. Another friend lost to MAGA politics. Another relationship destroyed by Donald J Trump. The red faced MAGA hat bullies who cover their pickup trucks and houses in flags and slogans have become something we just live with. The mass of obnoxious strangers, the Army of internet trolls and semi-literate meme posting goons all can be ignored. But it hurts to think of the long list of friends I’ve lost due to MAGA politics. The fact that I am estranged from my family, from people I love, from men who I once considered heroes due to politics pains me to this day. And I know I’m not the only one.

I speak to people often enough that I know this loss of friendship, this painful estrangement, is a near universal experience. Everyone has a tale of losing a friend or love one down the rabbit hole. The phenomenon is so widespread there are Canadians who have lost friends to MAGA politics. We are divided as a nation. Our communities, our friend groups, even our families have been ripped apart, sometimes literally and violently, by the Donald J Trump administration. I submit to you that when this national nightmare is finally over and we survey the cost in dollars wasted and lives destroyed, that the most painful and lasting damage, the worst thing that they’ve done, is destroy our bonds with each other. They tore apart our communities, pitted us against each other, ended friendships and estranged families and I don’t see how anyone begins to make that right.

After almost a decade we’re all hurt, scared, and angry and losing the ability to keep that pain from slipping into our day to day life. That’s why more and more you see people publicly talking about when “IT” will happen.

What’s “IT”? We can’t say. To say the words publicly and out loud is dangerous. To say the words publicly and out loud could lead to a visit from serious men with expensive guns and cheap suits. We can’t safely say the words so we talk about when “IT” happens.

The question pops up every few days now.

“When will IT happen?”

“Why won’t IT just happen?”

“God wouldn’t it be funny if IT happened right now?”

It’s scary how common and public the question has become. Scarier still the people that ask it. Years ago wishing death on a political figure was the act of a fringe revolutionary. Praying for “IT” was once for freak weirdos on the far extremes of our politics but now normie libs, church goers, my old conservative cop friends and VetBro gym buddies all have a theory about when “IT” will happen. Hopefully soon. Shit, one of my most read pieces was about the topic of what I’d drink to celebrate when “IT” occurred. That piece was written and published over a year ago. Things have gotten so much worse since.

After a decade of fighting. After a decade of anger and hatred. After a decade of losing friends and loved ones, here we still are, lorded over by a dying, angry, old man and a legion of petty sycophants all hell bent on abusing us and enriching themselves. All clearly relishing the fear and the anger they inflict on the rest of us. It’s a gruesome time. If I said it was uniquely gruesome there are a lot of people who would disagree. There's a vocal internet minority who would get genuinely angry. “There’s always been racist thugs with guns!” they’d scream, if one can scream via text. “There’s always been oligarchs and bombs and corruption!” Yea, but this feels different. Hell maybe the internet weirdos are right and it’s because world events are breaking through my privilege. Maybe it’s because things are affecting ME now, a suburban, middle class, white, man, but shit feels grim these days in a way it didn’t in 2001 when I watched the 9/11 attacks live on TV then died in a desert half a world away. Shit feels dangerous now in a way it didn’t in 2003 when I watched my brother and my best friend go to war or in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina destroyed our home.

I think “jokes” about when “IT” happens prove my point. There is something deeply wrong, something badly broken, when run of the mill normal people, taxpaying American citizens, long for the death of a politician. Sure, we’ve lived through death threats and assassination attempts. Hating the President is almost a sport, it’s damn near the first American pastime, but I’ve walked this earth since 1978 and I’ve moved in fringe far right spaces, hell I was once a member of an infamous firearms related internet forum, and I’ve NEVER seen so many rank and file tax paying normal U.S. Citizens talking openly about when “IT” might happen.

I’ve damn sure not had the conversation in my own home. Not once.

Until recently.

I spent twenty years of my life working in the violence industry. I’ve been a soldier, a firearms dealer, and a cop. I’ve been a violent man, but I’ve wished death on myself far more often than I’ve wished death on another human being. I’ve hated and wished harm but I’ve never prayed for or celebrated the death of another person. I don’t watch bodycam footage of cops shooting it out with armed felons. I don’t watch gun cam footage as Apache helicopters gun down insurgents. I don’t watch drones hunt Russian soldiers. I don’t cheer when hated public figures die. Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Qaddafi, Rush Limbaugh, Henry Kissinger, I didn’t shed a tear one when those assholes got got, but I didn’t joke or celebrate either. I’ve always tried to balance the understanding that there are evil people in the world who need killing with the fact that every human life is sacred and every untimely death is a waste.

Now? After the past decade? After watching them sneer and strut, after watching them destroy anything that was good about my beloved country, after they tainted the institutions I believed in, the things I revered, after they destroyed my friendships and estranged me from my loved ones, I have a special beer set aside for the day “IT” happens. And I don’t even feel bad about it. It’s not like “IT” would be untimely. I lost my father and a beloved aunt in their early fifties. Both were decent, hard working, people who tried to make the world a better place. “IT” seems long overdue.

A few months back the President disappeared from public view for several days and a rumor began to spread that he was dead or dying. Once again I found myself laying in bed with my spouse discussing what we would do when “IT” happened. Neither of us are dummies. We both realize that little would change in the hours or days after that awful man dies, but at least he’d be gone and maybe his coalition would fall apart without him holding them together. Maybe the awful spell he holds over The Republican Party and roughly 30% of this country would break once “IT” happens.

“You know they’re going to want a giant state funeral.” My spouse said in disgust “They’re gonna want him to lay in state and then have a big parade and a memorial. Weeks of pomp and circumstance and taxpayers will foot the bill.”

“Let em.” I said without thinking.

The idea seemed to pop into my brain fully formed. “They want a parade we should line the route and cheer. We should get hammered and make it a big party, like Mardi Gras. Hell, we can make it a whole carnival season, eat, drink, and be merry from the second he dies until the second they stick his ass in the ground.”

“It won’t change anything when ‘IT’ happens.” My spouse pointed out. “Not right away.”

They’re right of course. They usually are. J.D. Vance is no better than Donald Trump. Mike Johnson, Chuck Grassley, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessenet, Pete Hesgeth are all MAGA pieces of shit, all complicit in the destruction and misery of the past decade. Each bear some responsibility for the pain we all feel. You can go deep into the chain of succession before you find a single decent, moral, human being who doesn’t have blood on their hands. What replaces Donald J Trump when “IT” happens could very well be worse. Celebrate all we want, the problems don’t go away when he does. Thing will not get magically better when “IT” happens.

My spouse said as much as we lay in bed that night.

“So we take a day off to recover after the funeral and get back to work.” Seemed the only logical response.

Every time I write and post one of these pieces I get concerned about a visit from stern men with expensive handguns and cheap suits. I think long and hard about the potential consequences but in the end that's why I have to press "publish" on these kinds of essays. If I, a veteran, an ex-cop, an ex-Republican, a white man, a tax payer, can't post this without getting harassed by armed representatives of the state then we are well and truly fucked.

Anyway, here's Margo Price....