Homeland Elegies(7)
The eruption of bigoted views I’d never known he’d espoused. That whites were lazy, and all they really cared about were their weekends away and their summer vacations; that blacks didn’t like to pay their medical bills because they still had a slave’s mentality and saw the system as a master to be rebelled against; that women had a deeper understanding of life because they had to give birth and were built to suffer, which is also why they wouldn’t care that Trump said nasty things about them—they ultimately expected it; that Muslims were backward because the Quran was nonsense and the Prophet was a moron; that Jews were neurotic because their fathers didn’t know how to shut their wives up so the mothers drove the children crazy; and that’s just what I remember without having to think too much about it.
For a thoughtful man—at least one who’d evidenced instances of thoughtfulness with reassuring frequency over the years—the man seemed to be turning into an imbecile, his hodgepodge views like mental flatulence, one fetid odor after another. To push the metaphor: it had the logic of dysentery, an infection of his political consciousness occasioning wanton noxious discharge. And further: a child shits on the floor and sticks its finger in the feces, delights in the odor, and relishes the disgust in everyone else. Puerile pleasures, that’s what Father was learning again—we all were—and Trump was our tutor. I really can’t imagine that my father, this man I know and love, whom I still admire in so many ways, I can’t imagine he didn’t sense something was amiss. But somehow, he just kept looking the other way, seeking some worthwhile reason for the widespread abasement. Like others, Father started to wonder if this coarsening of our national life might not be a liberation, a required caustic, the dawn of some new era of political truth telling. Even during the unfathomable October of 2016, which saw the release of both the pussy-grabbing audio and Comey’s letter to Congress, weeks that cemented our status as the world’s laughingstock; even by late October, when Father’s faith in the man appeared to be faltering, finally tempered by Trump’s unremitting intemperance, the haplessness, the evident bad faith, the disgusting comments about women and their genitalia; even as late as a week before the election, I remember him telling me on the phone that Trump, flawed as he was, might still be the better choice. I couldn’t bear it.
“Dad. I don’t understand. I mean, what do you keep looking for in this guy? He’s a liar. He’s a liar and a bigot, he’s incompetent—”
“He’s not really a bigot.”
“Well, he’s got everyone fooled. I don’t understand what you see in him.”
“I told you before. He’s a wrecking ball.”
“You were on Facebook and you read a letter some kid wrote his teacher. I read that, too.”
“Made sense, didn’t it?”
“Dad! You’re not some coal miner’s son from West Virginia, or wherever the fuck that kid was from—”
“Language, beta. You need to calm down.”
“I’ll calm down when I understand why you don’t care that this guy, who is going to make our lives miserable if he’s president, why that doesn’t matter to you—”
“It’s not real. It’s all bluster.”
“How do you know that?”
“You know how I know. I know him.”
“You haven’t spoken to him for twenty years!”
“Eighteen. And would you calm down—”
“You’re counting?!”
“He’s looking for attention. That’s all. They’re saying he wants to start a new television channel.”
“Just answer me this, Dad. Just one thing. Just one. Doesn’t it matter to you that your children might be affected—”
“You’ll be fine—”
“Your sister in Atlanta, the aunties, the cousins—”
“Relax.”
“No, Dad. I want to know what you think. I know you don’t think you’ll have to sign up for a registry—”
“There’ll be no registry. You’ll see.”
“What about the travel ban he’s talking about? Hmm? What about when Mustafa and Yasmin can’t get on a plane to see us anymore?”
“I said, relax.”
“And after that? What comes next? How much longer before they tell you you’re not a real citizen because you weren’t born here?”
“Not happening—”
“Or me? Because I’m the son of someone who they decide should never have been given citizenship?”
“You’re famous. Nobody’s going to do anything to you.”
“I’m not famous.”
“You’re in the paper all the time.”
“Being in the paper in Milwaukee doesn’t make me famous. And I don’t see what that has to do with anything—”
“Besides. He’s not going to win.”
“Besides?”
“You’re smart enough to know that. He doesn’t even want to win. He’s trying to send a message.”
“I thought you said he was trying to start a channel.”
“Same thing.”
“He’s running for an election he doesn’t want to win so he can start a channel to send a message?”