WHITE NOISE

I didn't know that I was traveling through rough waters until I unexpectedly discovered that I was floating down a placid stream comparable to a Hill Country river.

But first things first. Trump makes me sick, but his followers make me sicker. Not the racists. Not the rednecks. Not the religious right. Not the reactionary rich. Their idiocy doesn't surprise me in the least.

The racists and the rednecks see Trump as one of their own. They aren't electing a president of the USA. They are electing a grand dragon of the KKK. The religious right, who once used the Bible to justify slavery, are suckers for false prophets. The reactionary rich worship money as if it were Jesus Christ himself and Trump relishes the role of St. Paul preaching that we are closer to heaven when the wealthy get wealthier.

It is the "normal" people that make me sick. They belong to none of the previously mentioned categories. They might stand next to you at a baseball game. They might teach your children. They might run your favorite bar. They might be your next-door neighbor. They are, regardless, victims of COVID-19 politics. They have an underlying condition that reduces them to morons in their infectious attachment to Trump.

Where does this need for a Pied Piper who has sown death throughout the country arise? How is it possible that they believe that this con man has made America greater? In this enormous divide that he has created between the citizenry, why have they chosen a mad man who preaches hate?

For years I have read their posts on my Facebook page and I have shook my head in disbelief. What am I not seeing? What I do see are angry individuals who believe the sky is falling and are screaming and yelling incoherently while pulling out their hair. From reading their rants and raves, they have become babbling fools.

With less than two months until the election, I decided I had had enough of Trump's trumpeteers. They don't need a horn. They naturally blow cacophonous sounds from their foul mouths. But the noise. It had devolved from a scream into a screech. I decided that my only alternative was turning off the vituperative volume. In Facebook terms, it meant blocking them.

I set a Trump trap by publishing an anti-Trump screed and they would immediately attack like zombies who had surrounded my house and were breaking the doors and windows in order to add another number to the walking dead. But I had much quicker reactions. It took 15 seconds to block each one and they are now out of my life forever.

I didn't think their elimination would make any difference in perusing my site. In fact, I hadn't even given that outcome a second thought. But the change has been dramatic. I'm no longer in the rapids avoiding rocks and logs. It's smooth sailing. No more Trump whirlpools. No more Republican waterfalls. Even if Trump triumphs, I'm going to convince myself that he doesn't exist. I'm going to imagine that I'm in the middle of a lazy flowing stream meandering through a forest and only silence surrounds me. I have no other alternative. Otherwise, I would fall off my intertube and drown.