facing the monster

Yesterday afternoon I heard from an old acquaintance, a boy I knew during one year of high-school in Halifax in 1965-66; I was fifteen, he sixteen or seventeen. He was virulently right-wing then, and he still is. We argued about the Vietnam War and much else then, and we argued about Trump when he came through Toronto a few years ago from his home in upstate New York, where I think his business is foreclosing on companies in trouble. Of course it is.

He emailed me for the first time in years. Here’s how the exchange went at 1.30 p.m. yesterday, much as it used to go in 1965, too much passion and too many words from me, smug and supercilious from him:

“Any predictions?

I am holding onto my faith in humanity, though I don’t know why, since the world right now gives no indication of deserving my faith. But your country particularly – beyond belief. The Toronto Star editorial cartoon shows today Uncle Sam looking at a ballot with two choices, Sanity and Insanity, and he’s undecided. Horrifying and nauseating.

I knew I could count on you for a colorful response. Always risky to go against Beth Kaplan. But all indications here are that Trump is going to win maybe big.

Please don’t make me vomit, I just had lunch. You were wrong about the Vietnam War and many other things, and I pray with all my soul, and I rarely pray, that once again you are deeply wrong. A lot of people have voted in the past for very very bad people. They have been as wrong as you, and have lived to regret their blind wrongheadedness. It’s possible your countrymen will elect a vile, evil man again, one of the most evil men on earth. And the entire planet will suffer, as it has in the past. I joke in one of my books that my father thought Richard Nixon was as bad as a U.S. president could possibly be. Nixon was a wise saint compared to this guy.

Beth, you got to lighten up a bit.

With all due respect, fuck off. This man is not a joke, he and his cult are examples of the worst of human nature, and if you haven’t seen that in his many years of extremely bad behaviour, if he hasn’t proven that to you, then you’re blind.

Haha. You were so much fun in history class. And for the record, while you turned out to be right on Vietnam, let’s be honest you weren’t convincing at the time.

Yes. I had no idea in those days what I was talking about. But now I do. We are talking about racism, misogyny, hatred at an extreme level. OK I’m at the theatre and the lights are going down. All the best to you. May you be wrong again.

Enjoy the show.  Promise I won’t rub it in. All the best to you. And I have reserved a Straight White Toxic Masculinity T shirt for you.”

And there you have it – same old same old. Nearly 60 years of argument in a nutshell. How beyond grateful I am to be Canadian, and that I managed to divest myself of the absurd albatross of my American citizenship this year. Wrote to my ex who lives in Washington to tell him to get out of there, there’s always a place for him here.

I was attending a matinee of What the Constitution Means to Me, a scintillating play that examines what works and what does not about the US Constitution, with particular emphasis, through moving personal stories, on how for many years it ignored basic human rights for women and minorities. Then the show dove into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, what it does well and what it does not (the notwithstanding clause, for example.) A fascinating discussion. I walked out into the weirdly gorgeous day — 23 degrees in November, something is brutally wrong! — and rode home to the nightmare of the evening’s revelation.

We good lefties simply could not believe it would happen, that people could be so stupid. We didn’t believe it could happen in 2016, but now it’s so very much worse. Imagine, the land of Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt has elected the equivalent of Mussolini. A buffoonish criminal.

Ah well. We in Ontario have also elected a buffoon and will undoubtedly re-elect him and his party. And a fascist lite at the federal level too. Dark dark days ahead, my friends, as our beautiful planet floods and burns.

This cartoon I think is what most of the world feels today – we’re in a cosmic joke that will endanger us all.

Last night when it became clear what was happening, I put on the greatest piece of music ever written, Bach’s B Minor Mass, to try to remind myself of the beauty and wisdom human beings are capable of. It helped. But mostly pain today. My daughter texted, “Let us take care of each other.” Amen. Sending my love to you all. Let us take care of each other.

This, too, helps.

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