Politics spoils my trip

Most of the people I meet ask where I'm from.  Some then ask my views of Trump. I usually say I'm traveling now before he alienates everyone and closes borders for me, or before he starts a war with North Korea.  Of course, I should be traveling in the US, enjoying the National Parks before he turns them over to industries for fracking or other destructive "development."  However, for the most part I stay away from politics, even with like-minded folks. 

When I was in Taos, L was talking about her approach.  She tries to focus on the good that has come out of this mess:  the revitalization of the women's movement, the way certain communities have pulled together.  She thinks that a "resistance" way of thinking will just create the reality we want to avoid, so she focuses on love. 

Since I cannot love Drumpf or the hateful people who support him, I tend to fall into ostrich mode.  When I was visiting in SC,  I sat in a corner with my stomach churning (as my ulcer-prone father used to say) and didn't call my brother and brother-in-law on the racist anti-democrat anti-liberal statements.  They knew they were being offensive, and there was no point in giving them further grist for their hateful mills.  48 hours of ranting.  I took drugs for my back pain and went to bed early. I do love them, but their approach is so vicious I cannot be around it, much less discuss our differences.  Resistance is indeed futile.

I feel like my family is a microcosm of the US in general, and that we are inches away from civil war.  I see no way to bridge the huge gap in our not-so-civil discourse. Political issues could be discussed, but the emotional content of the rants makes that impossible.  And I really hate the personal attacks on Obama and his supporters. So, I get emotional too. Still, while I love the man and his policies, I do understand that there can be different viewpoints.  In my view, he addressed issues that needed to be addressed, and we made some huge progress, both fiscally and socially.  Others see some long-term damage.  That may be so, but I do not think that Drumpf's policy of trying to cancel out everything Obama accomplished is the way to address that perception.

In a way, L agrees with the Obama critics:  she says a kind, civil, literate leader is not what we need to grow and progress.  We need a psychopath to get us on our feet and moving.  Well, this is one ostrich who is not positively affected by this.  I miss our handsome 44th president.