Threat

I used to have a friend. I knew him for more than 25 years. We didn’t always agree on everything, but we had a kind of shared history. We lived through key life experiences at roughly the same times. As we drifted deeper into adulthood, our experiences diverged, but we would come back together time and again. I always overlooked certain idiosyncrasies he had because I thought his heart was in the right place. They seemed of little consequence to me. We didn’t have to be the same people. I had my own life and he had his. The older we got, the more we seemed to connect, even though I knew there were things we deliberately didn’t talk about. Even at the best times, our friendship never felt as lasting and as reliable as I wished it could be. The most difficult times were when he tried to include me with groups of his other friends. That was when my doubts would nag at my conscience. His people were never my kind and I always felt out of place. In those situations, I thought a lot about my wife and child. That I had a family of my own significantly set us apart. By his own choice, my friend had no family. He only needed to care for himself. I could feel that there was something fundamentally different in our motivations and world views. It was wasn’t good or bad. It was just different.

Almost ten years ago, my friend began to change. What he would laughingly portray as limitations of his intelligence or ability began to smack of copping out. I started to notice certain things about our interactions I hadn’t before. We talked mostly about his favorite subjects, which were often ones I had no real interest in. We had the best talks when I was indulging his position on anything. It was an unspoken rule, and perhaps that understanding was mine alone, that the volley could only be entertaining when I avoided ideas and concerns of mine to which he couldn’t really relate. We got along very well as long as I could be flexible. I could not afford his friends the same courtesies, which would explain my chronic uneasiness in their presence.

When my friend got sick, he needed a sounding board as he decided what treatments he might pursue for his illness. I tried to provide that for him. He got through the worst of that episode and seemed to savor his life a bit more as result. I understood how a health scare could do that. I could also understand how few of his other friends would even be capable of supporting him with a level head and their own well-considered analyses of such tender subjects. My friend knew it and he would come to me instead.

As I describe it now, it’s obvious that I was navigating this relationship to maintain my footing despite the rumblings beneath the surface. This week especially, they’re bubbling up. Last month we talked briefly about voting and the candidate he was supporting. We never talked about those things, but that day, we did. I broke the rule. He disagreed with me like a pundit. He said that he would vote for his candidate, “because he fucks shit up.” He said his candidate didn’t lie. He didn’t seemed fazed at all that his guy represented the end of the life we’ve known in our country. My friend had taken the bait. He’d been fooled, converted. My candidate was saying things like proceeding with joy and enthusiasm, ending the division that has festered in our country, which as it happens, glows white hot in my friend’s neighborhood. Flags flying from houses. Flags flying from trucks. Flags flying from boats. Blue flags with names on them, yellow flags with snakes, and those black and white replicas of the American flag except for a single blue stripe. I call those “black lives don’t matter” flags. The more I am around those kinds of people, the more nauseous I become. That dissonance has grown to revulsion. Incredulity and revulsion. These people dance to the fiddler while Rome burns as if they don’t live in Rome, and because they think the fire looks really cool.

My friend and I do not simply disagree. I interpret the twisted and short-sighted pseudo philosophies he tacitly endorses as a threat. With his vote, he will contribute to the surrendering of foundational American freedoms and protections. He will support the dissolution of American government for a half-wit monster with an early adolescent’s emotional intelligence. He can be as stupid as he likes. I can’t do anything about that. But I cannot overlook the willful disregard for Americans, their security and dignity, just to “fuck shit up.” I don’t want shit to be fucked up. My daughter needs a chance. I don’t want a bloody revolution. I don’t want to be tossed aside any more than anyone else, but we’ll all have it coming if his candidate is given the White House instead of a jail cell. There’s no way that it will not affect our daily lives. It’ll just be a question of when we all “get ours.” No one will be spared completely. But then it will be too late. The damage will have been done.

He is no longer my friend. His values make me sick to my stomach. I cannot indulge them. He seeks to take things away from people to whom he cannot relate. People like me. People like himself. He is a threat because of his vote of ignorance. He is a threat because of his misplaced confidence. He is a threat because he is so cravenly irresponsible and selfish. I can no more be a friend to him or his kind than I could to someone who drinks himself blind and deliberately drives home in an ice storm. He thinks nothing will happen. He could easily get someone killed, even himself, but he will defend his choice like a religion. I want to be where he and his people are not. My friend is no longer a friend. He’s a threat.

I feel the whole world holding its breath for next week. No matter who wins, and what transpires, I will always remember my friend as one who willingly voted to throw it all away, as guilty as his candidate.