Memorial Day

Most days, I receive unsolicited emails from a Vermont neighbor who believes Trump is the greatest president in history and that the presidential election of 2020 was a fraud.

These emails usually add that Biden is controlled by Black Lives Matter and that Vice President Kamala Harris is runnings things. They often end with a call-to-arms such as "Armor up." It is always about an unfeeling federal government, Trump's return to power, and something nasty about Nancy Pelosi, the 81-year-old speaker of the U.S. House.

Friends say I need to stop giving these crackpots a platform by writing about their unhinged rantings. Maybe it's my mother's teachings - that sunshine is the best disinfectant, but I feel that we need to stand up to those who seek a white Christian hegemony at the expense of marginalized people. What happens if we don't argue with them? Someone has to make the argument.

I have gone back and forth with this guy about the fate of democracy, the election, and Pelosi.

I could understand the dislike of Democrats, immigrants, the loss of his white rural identity, farming culture in Vermont, liberals, and regulation.

But when it came to his own family, I was truly stumped.

I asked him if he took the stimulus checks from Trump and then Biden. Did he take the tax credits for each of his children? Did he realize that his ObamaCare health care premium was down to near zero and tax-free? Did he know that the Medicaid program his family used is a socialist program created by a Democratic president and funded by the dreaded Nancy Pelosi and that his small farm pays far less in state property tax because it is a farm?

It turns out he took the Trump checks but not the Biden checks. At least that's what he said.

The attempt at honest debate gets lost in a flurry of anti-government, anti-Biden vitriol and ends with him telling me to get a real job. So I gave him up for crazy and stopped engaging, sending his emails straight to the deleted file.

I retreat to the safety of my bubble in liberal Vermont, but his views nag at me. Because at some level, we are the same. He cashed his stimulus check just as I cashed mine. I'm angry my health care premium is so high, just as he's probably angry about his Medicaid premium if he has one at all. I'm peeved at the road crew tearing away my driveway every spring, and he's angry at ....

On and on it goes.

And that's where we are.

The Democratic Party - the party of Kennedy, LBJ, and Pelosi - lost this guy. They had him back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. He was the guy they were trying to help - Medicare for his grandparents, Medicaid for his parents, a higher minimum wage, tax credits for his family, tax breaks for his farm, a job, vocational training, food stamps.

But somewhere along the line, Democrats forgot about him. It happened sometime before 1980 and led to Ronald Reagan. The poverty programs didn't work. The education system was failing. We failed to produce a livable wage. Rich people started getting uber-wealthy. And this guy, living on his small roadside farm, watched a rapidly accelerating world pass him by.

So he abandoned the Democrats for anybody who would talk to him. Trump, Limbaugh, Fox News - all frauds and charlatans. But they found the language and market opportunity to convert this small farmer into a customer. And now he angrily yearns for that yesterday that is gone. Ellen Barry of The Times wrote about the consequences and tragedy of that anger this week, describing how Vermont farmer Romaine Tenney lost his farm and life to the Interstate.

Here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/us/vermont-farmer-tree.html?searchResultPosition=1

It was 1964, and the Interstate was blasting through tiny farms in Vermont, taking land by eminent domain and throwing these Jeffersonians off their land.

Most took the money. Tenney resisted and burned down his farm and killed himself rather than submit.

This month they cut down the last remaining maple tree from the old property, now a Park' N Ride.

The cutting down of the last tree of Tenney's farm is symbolically the government overreach that allowed Trump to come to their rescue. Even though what he was selling was a lie, when your lifestyle is threatened, and someone is willing to talk to you, you listen.

The danger is that my neighbor and the 70 million Trump voters are lost to democracy forever. With emerging mini-Trump leaders like Michael Flynn and Tucker Carlson, they are fed a never-ending stream of Facebook-Google-enabled messaging that feeds their bitterness.

They will hand over their private information. They will buy the handbooks and banners to state their allegiance to the growing army of disaffected, bitter Americans, while their faux leaders refuse to investigate the Capital riot that killed five people, that erected a noose on the Capitol grounds, that hunted Nancy Pelosi, all to overturn a rightful election.

And that is where we are on Memorial Day weekend.