I don’t know what to write. Should I take several years off before composing a blog post or essay or rhyming couplet about my Afternoon with Foxpanzees? Do I fling my fiery sobbing words into some sort of incoherent stream of consciousness shriek for the one or two that actually read my stuff to try deciphering? Or just…dribble something out in the hopes I can start laughing at myself and all this? Before I go off to make signs to march or send off for survival muffin tins and coupons to buy sister-wives? I could go either way here. I have options!
I spent a truly bizarre afternoon with the relatives. I heard things I can’t unhear. Here. Let me give an example.
Microbes that eat oil. Now live in the ocean. And no spilled oil reaches the shore. Because of the microbes. That eat the oil all up. And they swim around looking for more oil. And we need more oil spills. Yeah. Those kids who go to clean animals are not needed or something. Yeah. Yeah. Microbes. Yeah.
No wait. There’s more. Also, did no one fact check anything they’ve heard screeched at them from talking heads and painted lips? Fact checking? Hello? Um. FACT CHECKING YOU FREAKING…yeah.
Why can’t illegals just get their green cards and be legal? How hard is that? It takes like a month. They drive over the border and kill people, like that one in San Francisco and then they drive back. He’s suing the government. That guy who killed that woman, he killed five others, the liberals want him to go free. Liberals liberals the liberals those liberals.
Nanci Pelosi is an extreme conservative in California. [Did I bring up the concept of purity politics and how they are splintering the Democrats? No, I did not.]
California, liberals, crazy, everyone moving away, California, liberals, crazy, everyone moving away, liberals. Regulations regulations liberals liberals liberals. [All the nuttiness and bad stuff in Idaho happens because of California liberals, by the way. Same in Oregon. Oh my, do Ore-Ida folks hate Cali peeps. I can’t even. I can’t even here.]
Obama had 1600 regulations he put on us, all executive orders. Trump has undone 750 of them. That colored man [Obama] blah something something and they call me a white racist when I disagree with him? [Yes, you are a racist. Yes, you are. Own it. You are a racist, you hate “coloreds”, as you’ve stated since I could understand that loud noise coming from mommy meant stuff. You won’t watch most sports because there are too many ‘colored’ playing in them. Own it. Yes, you are a racist.]
Liberals are trying to take our guns. They were punishing kids who sat out the protest. [No, they were punishing kids who went to the 17 minute walkout.] Let those kids eyeball a guard with a gun on his hip, that will teach them. [When there was a guard at Parkland. There was a guard at Columbine. At…]
They took God out of schools. That’s what’s wrong. [Point for point NRA selling points followed. Damn spooky.]
Do you think raffling off an Ak-47 will hurt the VA? [As the relatives raffle off guns to help raise funds for the local VFW chapter.]
We want to raffle off four guns this time. [Patter followed on all four guns. Make, model, etc. I zoned out like a dippy little bee.]
Regulations that safeguard water, air and soil bad bad bad. Liberals bad. Obama added all these regulations. [Obama seems to be King Regulation. ?]
Your neighbor can turn your land into a wetlands with the snap of a finger and you lose your farm land. [Paranoia? Who’s telling people this? We live in a high desert area. Wetlands ain’t really a big concern here.]
THE LIBERALS THE DEMOCRATS THE LIBERALS THE DEMOCRATS!!!
Oh and it went on and on.
I had to leave the table, where everyone had the voice tone of those who discuss the Illuminati as if they actually exist and are about to take over the world. That earnest, hushed, children telling ghost stories about a campfire…but they’re all adults who should fucking know better.
I watched adults, who were supposed to be the non-snowflakes, the non-liberals…become raving loons. Surreal does not seem enough of a word for that drawing down of a foggy veil of conspiracy theories, outright lies believed and then told as absolute truth and the sneering at anything remotely considered ‘left’. And then the not so sly sidewall of eyes directed at me…yep, I’m the Charlie Manson at the table, uh huh.
It was like watching my relatives through a smoke screen, is the nearest I can get to what happened. As my ears tried to close up shop rather than listen to Right Wing Talk hammer away at common decency, common sense and…some other stuff. That needling pound of the nonsense hammers on the happy blissful, angry, fearful, angry angry angry human nails on my poor ears. Puk puk puk!
As it was St. Pat’s day, it was rather like a moment from Waiting for Godot, except it was real life and you can’t go get a snack at half-time and then return for Act II, which is, as everyone knows, just a slight variation of Act fucking One! Thanks, Beckett. My relatives are all caught in a Waiting for Godot loop! Help me, Sexy Jesus!
A smoke screen with hammers pounding away and there’s nails and sound effects happening in my head. Then, just that humming silence when you turn your brain off before YOU START SCREAMING AND THROWING THE BOWL OF DIP AT THE NEAREST WALL WHILE INVOKING THE POWERS OF DARKNESS TO TAKE YOU TO THE BEACH FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. As sending your entire family to hell is such a liberal, Antifa, crisis actor, Nancy Pelosi thing to do.
I went to the other room rather than explode and scream and probably start crying from sheer frustration at how empty my relatives must be to buy that poisonous crap. And then regurgitate it so faithfully. With such erudite precision. Yes, they all look at me as if I’m the monster in the room. Because I’m a bit of a liberal. Which is right up there with being a bit like Jeff Dahmer these days.
No, seriously. That’s the impression I got. That I get. From the ‘other side’. Liberals are classed with serial killers, mass murderers, lunatics, cray cray sorts of all sorts. Have you not read the comments section under…? Yeah. So, you do know. Yeah.
Example of that from Twitter:
The left is obsessed with AR-15s when we all know what the most dangerous assault weapon in America is; Liberalism! Liberalism is an assault on our Judeo Christian values and morals. Liberalism is an assault on our Constitutional freedoms and liberties. Liberalism=Death. Elder Lansing
I’m an agent for death! Whee. Yay. Hurrah.
I remember, vaguely, corned beef and some small red round potatoes and a roll. I don’t like cooked cabbage so I didn’t have any. I remember horseradish. And a Coke. And clouds piling up over the Owyhees. Those big gorgeous stormclouds of spring that truly delight me and remind me why I love Eastern Oregon. Those gigantic spring storms that just rip the sky apart and smear it with clouds that go on for miles and miles. Those clouds that look painted by some beginning art student. That not-real collection of clouds that look like a post card.
I’ll end this therapy session with a woeful confession that aye, I should have stayed home. Let them have the talk they really must have wanted to have. I no more fit in with them than I…ever did.
And now it’s painfully obvious, since I cannot embrace their new/old views with a glad heart and nodding head, that I must gently retreat. And hope I find the social courage, if I am ever in their company again, to start screaming.
Let them see just how crazy ass crazy this liberal actually is beneath her contorting, lips glued shut, face. The horror on their faces, the nodding as they all turn on me, ready to watch me bleed and suffer. A real live liberal in their midst…I am the enemy.
That’s what I felt like today. The enemy. That on a battlefield, they’d put two in my head and then call me a snowflake as they did it. With the Glock that would be raffled off. Help me, Sexy Jesus. I fear I am past saving. I’m a liberal, after all.
ANN WUEHLER 