Happy Thanksgiving

Today my family–the one in which I married into, are going to celebrate Thanksgiving together.  I am going to be thankful than they are able to come together and do so.  But I will be unable to join with them, for as I have written of late about the undesirable person, I must confess that within that family, I have become that undesirable person who is no longer welcomed in the midst.  Thanksgiving seems to be the proper time to discuss this because it was last Thanksgiving when my behavior cast me into the light of that undesirable person.  This cannot become a diatribe against, but an acceptance, that I placed myself in the position that disrupted the harmony of the family and that it was my behavior and not their behavior that placed me into ostracization. It is however, not a relishment of my behavior or a defense of any kind but a deep personal sadness that not only did I fail to live up to the family’s expectation of me, but to the recognition that I did fail to live up to that responsibility.

I suppose to anyone who reads my column with any regularity,  it will come as no surprise that there are amongst my relatives many of what we know to be “magas”; or strong Trump supporters.  There were always times of debate between myself and them.  I tried to listen enough to understand, though I attempted to not become directly confrontational, but beginning with some of the nonsense about vaccinations and some of Trump’s rhetoric about covid-19, I began to simply choose not to hear it.  Now let’s get this straight.  Vaccinations are not really a choice I believe people should be able to independently make against the community at large.  It is not something I will often say on any subject, but it an area where I do think the individual has such a great responsibility to the community at large that it overrides all individual choice..  And while some of you may disagree, I personally thank our stars that covid-19 was in no way a serious killer in the sense of small pox; or in the sense that cholera; or the bacterium  Yersinia pestis that resulted in the bubonic outbreaks of history.  Had it been, a very much higher percentage of the world’s population would have perished than did so.  And to permit the nonsense that was being spread about covid, should it be allowed to enter into the consciousness as acceptable and should we encounter a diseases that should be able to kill populations at the rate of those other diseases we could face a much more extreme crisis than was presented by covid.  

So while I may not agree whatsoever that Donald Trump is the solution to their feelings of displacement from American society, I understand those feelings, and I am fully capable of understanding the feelings and the manner in which those feelings have been misdirected into their belief that Trump could present a palliative relief from a society they feel has not accepted them into “its democratic” deliberations. My whole purpose for writing this column is to illustrate that those (many) left out need to be included, or need to feel they are included into that democracy. I feel as much as they feel that the democracy has often presented itself to a great many as more of an illusory promise than a practically applied principle that has given correction to many of the poorer classes concerns.  

But just as much do I feel the answers they find are because they have been misdirected away from the actual causes that have been extended and affected their marginalization by leading them to false extensions against those they should ally themselves with by the very members of the society that have led to their feelings of being left out from the dialogue.  But I can hear them out.  And sometimes I can subtly suggest other possibilities for them to reflect upon.  This was actually what I was attempting to do last Thanksgiving.  

But prior to that I had been increasingly becoming impatient and the covid divide was becoming central to that divide.  I was ill that year, my physical body was increasingly becoming wracked in pain from the consequences of what I had subjected my body to; but simultaneously I was now suffering prolonged and severe internal illness.  A particular member of the family had long tried to convince the rest that I knew nothing.  At one point, I remember on a discussion on a point of law, I had looked up a particular statute and had been emphatically informed that the statute was fake because law was what we knew to be the law and what was written was therefore “fake law”because “true law” was not written.    Much as I may sometimes wish that to be true, unfortunately I believed he was incorrect.  But because he would not end the conflicts with our verbal sparring but attempted to undermine me with other members outside of my presence that they would then come to me to question why I was correct and he was wrong, and generally I was the one perceived to be in error. It was not really that I thought that I was correct, was concerned he was being misled by an unscrupulous lawyer over a legal matter that could end up harming the entire family.  Unscrupulous lawyers, unfortunately, do extend beyond the realm of those involved with Donald Trump.  So this began a couple of years before covid.  I was forced to hire my own lawyer to keep checks on the lawyer that he insisted everyone sign a contract with.  The conflict actually began when I contacted the lawyer that was attempting to convince the family to become his clients.  I told him that I thought he was giving them incorrect advice and the lawyer said “Who said I told them what you (I) said was the law?”  I replied that if he had not ,he had led them to form an incorrect concept of the law.  He retorted, “I am not responsible for any incorrect perceptions that others might form.”  That didn’t sit well with me and I insisted that I thought that he was responsible, especially since I had made him aware that such perceptions were being believed  and that he now did have the responsibility to correct those misconceptions.  He replied that he was under no such responsibility to do so.  At which point I stated my wife would not be signing the contract with him.  He followed our conversation by informing the rest of the family that if my wife did not sign he would not represent any of them.  I persuaded (I thought) them to allow me to entertain another lawyer only to interpret the contract and their prospective position their lawyer seemed to be telling them (though he denied he had done so).  While I was visiting that lawyer, they came and took my wife to sign the contract I had not wished her to sign.  So this was the backdrop, and then one day he came in announced Donald Trump had discovered the cure to covid and I didn’t have the patience to listen whatsoever.  I walked  into the bedroom, but he followed with raised voice and I followed by telling him to stop his “stupid nonsense”.  Eventually I found myself force to leave the house and walked as far as my crippled body would carry me ,then sat by a ditch alongside the road for several hours.  Eventually I walked back,but there he was still waiting in our yard.  I decided to keep on going but he saw me pass by and came into the street where a long and very loud confrontation ensued.  Of course he told me how I had no right to call him stupid that he was no more stupid than I.  I countered by agreeing he was no more stupid than I but I had not called him stupid but suggested I thought what he was saying was stupid nonsense and that his refusal to ever listen to another opinion was to a degree ignorant because how could one know if one was correct or not if he never  listened to any but one position.  He said I was calling him stupid again which proved how stupid I was and I was the one who was not listening to his opinion.  I said I often listened to his opinion, but he never listened to mine, etc.   

Well eventually I apologized and tried to make peace, but in gatherings found myself increasingly wandering off to avoid argument.   And he continued to inform everyone about how stupid I was.  I am not generally overly sensitive to criticism, but throughout my childhood by father had continually informed me how I was always wrong and always stupid and I guess flashbacks of having  my intelligence marginalized to the rest of the family, especially my wife, continued to get under my skin, so naturally (wrongly) behaved in a similar manner and told everyone behind his back that I did not like being marginalized by trying to refute everything he said.  

Because of this I did not choose to go to the Thanksgiving gathering last year, but my daughter was hosting it and was cooking her first Thanksgiving dinner and I was eventually persuaded to attend.  And I informed her beforehand that if he said something I would just go out onto the patio and not become confrontational.

The ‘22 election had just occurred, and the conversation between a few of us began to focus on the economy and the high inflation that was still rampant, although starting to fall.  I said that I would like to put forth a question.  I asked why after a new president had been elected because of a bad economy and had taken office it was assumed that by the next midterm it was the new president’s economy.  After all, I said, the first year the new president would have to present new economic policies in the first year, that then would be needed to be voted upon and then phased into the economy which would not begin to have to much effect upon the economy by the first midterm.  I said, “I know it is not generally how voters approach the midterm, but perhaps it is something to consider.”  A couple of persons suggested they had not considered but maybe they should consider it.  Another asked me if I was suggesting that the high inflation were not the consequences of Biden’s policies but were residuals of Trump’s policies?’ At which point my “nemesis” who had been informing everyone of my stupidity for several years but had been engaged in another conversation perked up his ears and heard my reply, “I don’t know.  Is it a residual of Trump’s economic policies, is the inflation going on still part of Trump’s economy?”  Our conversation was interrupted with the loud retort how I didn’t know what I was talking about and was being stupid again.  I yelled back I was querying not stating, but I was in no way certain the inflation was not still the effects of Trump’s policies.  I decided however to say no more, to honor my promise to my daughter and to withdraw.  I stood and began to walk out.  But then I turned back, and asked, “Why I am I stupid because I can read and you are not stupid because you don’t know how to read?”  Upon which my daughter leapt into the fray and told me to stop.  But now the other gentleman who had been impugning me leapt into the fray and stood as if he was ready to strike me. My daughter’s arms are outstretched between us, and she is yelling at me to leave immediately.  But he says he’s going to beat me to a pulp.  “Go ahead, will that make you feel better to beat up an old man.  Go ahead.  Prove how smart you are by beating me up.” He was ready, I think, to do so , but then thought better of it and sat down.

I thought I had been very careful in choosing my words to not call him stupid, and would later attempt to use that in my defense, but of course I had just deviously implied he was stupid because he couldn’t read and I was smart because I could.  Of course no one even heard my remark, all anyone heard was my saying he was stupid.

My kids occasionally speak on the phone but the conversation has been stunted, they haven’t invited me to visit them or visited too much here.  It has taken nearly a year to put together some ability for my wife and I to communicate again on almost any subject.  And the kids emphatically informed me in the aftermath that it had been my responsibility to have prevented the confrontation. But worst of all they believed I had been the one to throw out the macho challenge to fight and he had been the one to restrain himself from the challenge.

While I still have a hard time casting myself as the macho bully, having simply issued the same words I have always used to bullies directing themselves at me or others, and the same words that frequently had others back down from their threats.  Of course in those times  I had been something of a threat by my mere physical interference and this time I was a husk who would have been merely trying to put my intimidator in a bad light had he not backed down.  But they were also right that I had made a fool of myself, of my own ideological positions I had tried to instill in them, and that it was I who was responsible because “we all know how he is.” and I should have not risen in anger to his bait.

And no matter how much I have seemingly attempted to defend myself in this article, it is I who have failed my own arguments and it is I who am responsible for what happened and it is I who have abused the trust of the family that no longer see my participation in this Thanksgiving’s festivities as a viably acceptable.  And there is no alternative but to accept that blame and wish peace and a warm celebration to them, and to all of you.