13 November, 2020: Reflections While In Suspended Animation

We're in the UK, in quarantine, for two more days, and then we will graduate and be in LOCKDOWN. WooHOO.  

Being away from home is often surreal, even without pandemic, quarantine, and the US election season, all of which feel surreal as well. Quarantine is painless, and the food is excellent, thanks to the groceries and takeout dropped off by our family, and we have a small outdoor space we can use, when it isn't raining, though, again, the rain makes the tree bark pretty spectacular. 

But I would very much like to say hello to a random stranger, or maybe admire someone's dog in the park. There's a lot of time to play poker and read and rattle around inside one's own head, a perfectly congenial place, but still. 

And here inside my head (or my gut?) I can't land on how I feel about the election aftermath. I feel vastly relieved by the election itself, and would like to have felt jubilant, and we did open a bottle of Prosecco, but there were no parties here where I could go and dance in the street with other revelers (plus it would have meant a £10,000 fine for violating quarantine, plus, we came here from the worst country in the world, COVID-wise, so it would have been rude to go out and expose anybody else if, by chance, we were asymptomatic carriers).

We aren't! We tested negative!

So there's that jubilation of testing negative and the happy anticipation of leaving quarantine, plus relief that we didn't re-elect the Worst Guy, and will soon be free of his entire entourage, please, please. (I'm gifting myself the freedom not to say his name. Goes with stubbornness below.) And don't get me wrong, and please don't lecture me, because I honestly do know that we haven't magically solved even one of our giant societal problems, that the virus is exploding, that people are suffering and we have work to do. I get it. I'm in. 

But about the whole, extended, post-election charade, I fluctuate between disgust-anger-disbelief, and the desire to send messages to various officials (done), and a few moments of landscaping hilarity, and then some stubborn desire to ignore it, to not give the bad guys the satisfaction of ruining even one minute of my precious chance to lay eyes on my UK family, for the first time in a year. 

I could fluctuate even more, I suppose. One of my most sober friends believes the bad guys are going to triumph and overturn the election results, and another believes that nothing is going to get better, regardless.  I could add those reactions to the mix, but I'm not doing it. Again, this may be nothing but orneriness on my part, or denial. But there it is. I do think the prolonged refusal to concede is primarily a fundraising tactic, I do think we'll prevail, and I do think things will get better, even if  incrementally. I think things are better already, just in these planning stages. Sue me.

I don't have a lot of energy for the arguments about reaching out, or not, to people who fundamentally disagree with me, because I don't know many. I live in a carefully curated friend-verse, and I got lucky on the family side of things. My political donations went left, but the apolitical side donated much to the Food Bank and to Meals on Wheels, and they don't ask anybody who they voted for, thank God. 

Both Reaching-out, and Never-forgetting-never-forgiving, are roles that I understand, and they need to be played by somebody; and different people will chose different roles, and good for them. That's why there are so many of us, so that all the roles get filled. (I think it's in The Joy of Yiddish that Leo Rosten says (though he no doubt borrowed this) that in any town with one synagogue, there will immediately be two synagogues, and one will be called the Garden of Peace and the other the Sword of Justice. I'm really close on this, though he said it better.)  

(I came to this "everybody has a role" thing when my wonderful brother-in-law had emergency brain surgery many years ago, and the assembled supporters chose a wide range of coping mechanisms:  We all have to PRAY! No, being SAD is the honest response, and we must all be unafraid to weep! No, we must think only positive thoughts! No, we all need to PESTER the doctors and nurses! It went on and on. None of it helped one bit or changed the outcome, but everybody did their thing, and I do think as a group, we covered all the bases.)

We need peacemakers. We need crusaders for justice. We need satirists. We need people who get angry, and we need people who don't call other people names. I would love it if we all got along better, and demonized each other less, but I'm hoping to be met WAY more than halfway on that, which may be a sign I'm not exactly throwing myself into reconciliation. 

The few people I lost touch with over "politics" over the past four years were on either side of me, politically.  I unfriended a couple of acquaintances on the right (they weren't close friends, more like parents of my friends, and I erased them from my Facebook feed for homophobia - no time for that, goodbye!). 

And then I alienated a very few good friends who found me insufficiently left. I yelled at two of them on election night 2016, because they didn't vote the way I did, and I apologized later, but to no avail. (The apology elicited a "we're fine, you're the one with the problem, take a good look at yourself" message.) I yelled, "I hope you're happy NOW!" even though I knew they weren't happy. They had assumed Hillary would win, and they lived in a blue state, and their votes were in protest. Didn't matter to me - I just went off. I still wish I hadn't, and I still mourn the loss. I can't even blame the bad guys for that one. That was all mine.