By Terry Manning
A few winters ago, I found myself on one of the upper floors of an area medical center, looking out the window, trying to distract myself from the sights and sounds of the room where I stood.
Down below a car pulled into the circular driveway outside the hospital entrance. A man got out of the driver’s seat and ran inside. Seconds later he returned and ran to open the front passenger door; an orderly pushing a wheelchair appeared. The two men helped an extremely pregnant woman into the wheelchair and rolled her inside.
The beeping of medical devices brought my attention back to the room upstairs. My maternal grandmother, a woman I thought might live long enough to see us all in the ground, lay in the bed, looking as fragile as I had ever seen her.
There it was, I thought, the circle of life. Below, one life coming into the world and up here another teetering on a shaky precipice, poised to depart. I didn’t know the people downstairs. They didn’t know me. We each had our own lives to live, each the protagonists of our own stories.
I think about this when I try to understand people, their actions, and their choices. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I can find ways to extend grace. Other times I am left wondering what was mixed with the crack they are smoking.
The latter is the attitude I take when I deal with a particular reader who delights in sending what are to me dizzyingly deluded missives from Trumpworld. In his most recent email:
“I love watching The Masters. The traditions, quality people, decorum, and a sense of pride. You see people who have been working their entire lives, since 13 or so. From traditional families, educated, paying taxes. … People who don’t have criminal records. People who if pulled over by a cop will do what they are told to do. Trump supporters.”
From an earlier message on Fox News viewers:
“I would bet you a donut people who watch FOX pay their bills, have car insurance, have had jobs since they were kids, grew up in traditional families, raising traditional families. Few if any have ever had a criminal record.”
On a Fox News interview with Black conservative Derrick Wilburn:
“While I don’t know anything about Mr. Wilburn other than what I saw in this brief interview, I will bet you a donut on the following. Mr. Wilburn has three children, and should they have the occasion to interface with the police, they won’t have a problem because they’ve been taught to be respectful of authority.
“If he has a son, the son is not walking around with his pants around his ankles. I would also bet you a donut his children are all in shape and decent students. My guess is he has an incredible wife. While I have no idea what his educational background is, I do know he has common sense.”
Or January 6th insurrectionists:
“Ninety-nine percent nonviolent who got carried away with BLM and Antifa fueling the violence. All bad. Disgraceful and embarrassing for the country, no question.”
On his favorite former president:
“President Trump raises all of his children to be educated, ethical, productive members of society while Joe [Biden] raised a dishonorably discharged, crackhead, pedophile son living off of our tax money.”
On a Black man killed by police:
“I’ll bet this kid had a record, probably a few kids out of wedlock, spent most of his time trying to scam the welfare system. Someone who’s been a drain on society his entire life. Of course his parents and family are all about what a great kid he was, how they loved him, blah, blah, blah. Too bad they didn’t teach him some values.”
And the type of people he didn’t see on television at The Masters:
“People walking around with chandeliers hanging from their ears, … people who seem to be having a contest as to who can have the most outrageous hairdos.”
Of course this reader is a proud MAGA conservative. Of course he’s stuck in a right-wing media bubble. Of course he’s prejudiced. Those are nothing new.
What makes him interesting to me is how he admits he knows none of the people he is describing, but he imagines the ones he likes are good-looking and good (like him?) and the ones he doesn’t like are ugly and bad (like me?).
He exemplifies the amount of projection necessary for him and others like him to maintain the extreme positions they have taken. Facts? Truth? Irrelevant, if they don’t fit the narrative.
Every issue is a battle between light and dark, good and evil. They have to see America and the world as being under siege by lame-brained, socialist, pedophile liberals to justify their support for the supremely immoral man they want to return to the Oval Office.
Otherwise, they couldn’t stand to look at themselves in the mirror — and see what the rest of us already see.
Terry E. Manning is a Clemson graduate and worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.
