Quarantine is a word we are all too familiar with in the COVID-19 world. Isolate, distance, stay away, cover your mouth are all concepts the pandemic has drilled down into us.
Yet, for many, we were already there and didn’t know it.
I knew from the moment a former friend living in Portland lost her mind on me over my political view that it seemed disingenous to believe Justice Kavanaugh’s accuser and not Biden’s accuser that something was very, very wrong.
What was going on? How could that wrath go so deep?
I answered my own question with the conclusion that living in a very Liberal city, surrounded by only Liberal friends and listening to only Liberal news had skewed her reality. But, it has altered many of us, on both sides. Never was that more clear than in the weeks and months leading up to the election and most especially the day before.
The polls were wrong. I always knew they were wrong. A lot of people kept saying they were wrong. But, people were taunting, “oh, Trump is toast. It’s over.” My opinion that it was going to be close didn’t come from my wishful thinking or biases — it came from being actually out in the world and living.
You didn’t hear the Millennials (a group both sides COMPLETELY ignored) whispering that they were voting Trump because they wanted some hope and the “Dark Winter” comment and threat of another lockdown scared them to death. They are the generation that are wanting big weddings and to have babies in a hospital and have their family actually be there. They are finally established in their careers and the idea that a shutdown may destroy their progress was terrifying. But, no one KNEW that because they lived in a bubble.
You didn’t listen to the “elderly”. You fell back on scaring them that Republicans were going to steal their Medicare and push them off a cliff because that tactic usually works. But, you didn’t realize that in that group were war veterans and wives of war veterans that remember their friends dying in wars that YOU SENT THEM TO FIGHT “Communism and Socialism” and then you told them you wanted to bring those policies here. When they all buried friends and suffered untreated PTSD to “protect a Constitution” for you politicians? You didn’t hear them crying about that because you live in a bubble of only people that agree with you.
You refused to believe that suburban women like me might vote for Trump because how could I possibly? He’s so abrasive? Yet, you refused to listen that I don’t care. That I was raised by one of those elderly veterans, that I work with and want a bright future for those Millennials and my children and that I am offended, to the core of my being, that Conservative fiscal ideals get me labeled instantaneously as a “Trumpster” or so far worse … a racist. You didn’t get how many of us that are out here who have friends and loved ones that are police officers and watched as you ignored them being scapegoated because you thought it would help you win. You didn’t know … because you live in a bubble.
So, regardless of the outcome that we will have to sit here and wait for days to see … your polls were wrong, your opinions were wrong and half this country does not agree with you. If you don’t want “divisiveness” then step out of your bubbles and realized that.
We exist. And, we matter.
The worst quarantines we will ever face is the quarantine of the mind.
Pretty Political 