Tomasky: Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?

[pat_k]

129. It happened so fast.

I was mystified when on a visit about 6 months after she had moved she started saying things that were totally at odds with what I knew of her (how unions had destroyed the country, how welfare killed all ambition, and worse).

My partner (her son) got it immediately and asked her if she watched FOX down there (this was 2006 or 7). She had been. We were in NJ (where she and her husband had been big in the local democratic club years before, when they had such things.)

Anyway, he had the patience of a saint (He was Senator here on DU before he died in 2011) and listened carefully and asked questions that seemed to sort of reconnect her the core person who had spent a life coming to a world view that was completely inconsistent with what she was spewing. It seems she was deprogrammed, at least a bit. But no. Every visit the awful notions would slip through, but generally she kept those thoughts to herself, perhaps to escape seeing our pain and having to talk about it. I came to the conclusion that it wasn't just watching FOX in isolation. The whole community where she lived did. And she was connected to those people day-to-day. We're social creatures. I think she knew her family would never shun her, but this new community might if she didn't fit in. I don't think that piece was a conscious choice. Just my theory anyway about our wiring as social creatures. (The community there was pretty much a bunch of nice prefab homes on a golf course on a little lake.)

Anyway, I suspect this kind of tragedy has played out in so many families and groups of friends. We can't dismiss them as evil or lacking humanity. I am very frustrated with, and saddened by, the blanket denigration.