Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California, July 8, 2020
After saying just a few days ago that there was no surprise left in the garden, I got two new blooms in a single day: a lily along the path, and these very, very red roses. The rose is an old fashioned variety on an old vine that was bigger when John bought this place 30 years ago, but it has gotten nearly buried by the more vigorous South African daisy that was planted closer to the patio. This winter I followed expert advice and trimmed the vine to make it grow more vigorously upward towards its own little patch of sun. I guess it worked. Now I have to climb in there and free the stem of the morning glory vine that’s threatening to bring the rose back down.
Last night just before I went to bed, a FB friend re-posted a Trump campaign ad that said this: “Overwhelm President Trump and the American people with crisis after crisis until the public is so sick of it that they vote him out of office hoping for a return to normalcy. Everything that is happening now is 100% planned and executed by the Democrat party [sic] as well as their accomplices in the media. They are our country’s greatest enemy and they must be stopped.”
It was only much later, as I tossed and turned in bed, that I thought how telling it was that a) Trump’s campaign admits out front that people are sick of him, and that this is not 'normal', and b) how funny it is that Democrats, who seem to shoot themselves in the foot regularly, can be credited with such brilliance. They invented the virus and killed George Floyd among all those other crises that are occurring under the president’s watch? Wow. That’s amazing. I didn’t think they were that organized or that smart. No, I didn’t think any of that until later; my first reaction was anger, hard, searing anger about being called “our country’s greatest enemy,” and the volume of my anger is what scared me. We’re all on edge and it’s only going to get worse this fall - kids out of school, overrun hospitals, benefits running out, people scared and sick of being home, plus nasty rhetoric around a difficult election. It will continue to be hard and get harder to keep the emotions in check. So what do I do? What do I say? What do we all do? How do we monitor and manage our own emotions that are obviously too close to the surface? If we see red all the time and enemies everywhere, this country is doomed, our democracy will be done.
I know my friend didn’t post the ad to make me mad. Though we don’t know each other well anymore, I’m quite sure that we have more in common than not, and I would enjoy visiting if she ever came to San Francisco. I love seeing her grandchildren on FaceBook. I hope we can stay friends. I’m OK that she’s supporting Trump, even if I can’t understand her reasons. That’s how this country works. Or should.
So this is how I want to respond to the campaign's ad after I've had a little sleep: Yes, I want a return to normalcy. Who doesn’t? No, amend that: I want to come out of this nightmare in an even better place than ‘normal,’ in a country where people treat each other with respect no matter the color of their skin or their political views. I want a government that functions well and makes life better for everyone, where the media is respected and free to do its job, and where ideas can be based on fact and exchanged on their merit without questioning other people’s patriotism.
