My cousin in rural Illinois, where I grew up and where most of my family still lives, sent me a nice note on Facebook recently. She saw that she was going to publish a novel and she told me that she was proud of me and that she was looking forward to reading it. I thanked her and told her that I would love to go eat with her the next time I was there. She told me that she would like her very much.
Then he added: “And no politics… I promise!”
I also promised. We will do everything possible to fulfill that promise. But it is getting more difficult. Again.
Families across America that were so divided by the Trump era have only just begun to heal in the last couple of years. —and now they face the possibility of a sequel.
I fear, and I feel that she and many other Americans are fearing, having to go through that ordeal again so soon. Politics has divided families in ugly ways, and I feel like the Biden era, for many, has been an opportunity to try to heal. But the wounds may be about to reopen.
One of the implicit but central sales pitches of a Joe Biden Presidency was that if he did his job well, the average American wouldn’t have to pay much attention to him. The “normalcy” that Biden promised to return the Country to had to do in part with making the executive branch a functional arm of government again, and ceasing to be the (very scary) laughing stock it had become. the Country worldwide during the Presidency of Donald Trump.
But back home, for many Americans, it was about something simpler: getting back to a world where they didn’t have to talk and fight about politics all the time. It had to do with being in your own home, with your own family, and being able to forget, if only for a while, that politics was going on—or at least assume that reasonable people were taking care of it.
The Trump years made this impossible, and the ubiquity of politics, the feeling that you had to be yelling about the state of the world at all times., divided families across the United States. What had once been just a few awkward moments in meetings became constant fissures pitting son against father, brother against brother, generation against generation.
Some of these fissures became rifts, or even chasms: I have a friend who clashed so dramatically with his in-laws over Trump that they still haven’t met his 3-year-old granddaughter.. The constant and inescapable political discourse from 2015 to 2021 frayed every ties in American society, perhaps family more than anything.
But there has been a quiet change in recent years. These disagreements have not gone away: the world is as dangerous and tense as it ever was. But since Trump left office, people have been able to find moments of escape and respite, and even, yes, normalcy. There have been no consistent presidential tweets; there has not been a ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries; Whatever verbal gaffes Biden might commit, one has felt pretty sure he would never refer to another country with scatological vulgarity.
Things have not been perfect, and there are still people desperately trying to fight for everything, but in the face of relief from a planet-shaking pandemic, one has been able to walk the world for at least a few minutes without worrying about it exploding. Maybe you even ironed out some rough edges with the people you love, no matter how much you disagree with them. (My friend’s daughter finally has a date planned with her grandparents this summer.)
You could take those first steps because, for the first time in a long time, politics has not been at the center of American life. But a recent CNN forum with Trump was a reminder of storm clouds on the horizon — and these clouds look all too familiar.
Most Americans do not want to see another showdown between Biden and Trump. Trump vs. Biden? That’s why the Americans just came through. Do they have to do it again?
What if Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida, wins the Republican nomination over Trump? Maybe that will just lead to whole new fights. Though considering how painful any nomination battle Trump loses would be — if it ever ended — I suspect it wouldn’t leave the country in a healing frame of mind, either.
My cousin and I disagreed on many things, and there have been times—like when I saw her on Facebook cheering for the “patriot” buses en route to Washington on January 5, 2021—when I thought our relationship was essentially over. This was shortly after she, someone who grazed the vast fields of Illinois with me when we were kids, called me a “deep state elitist.” It was hard for me to understand how much she had changed: I had gone from mildly disagreeing with her about Mitt Romney, the Republican who ran for President against Barack Obama, to wondering if she had lost touch with reality.
But the fact is: I love my cousin and my cousin loves me. It’s impossible to imagine my life, and who I would be, without her place in it, and I’m sure she feels the same. She has known me forever as very few people have. I enjoyed reconnecting and even thought: “If our relationship can survive 2020, it can survive anything.”
But can that survive twice? I’m not sure. I suspect many families are wondering the same thing.
Americans can avoid talking about it, but here it comes. He lurks, waiting to tear everyone apart again. If you want to know why millions of Americans are so leery of a Trump-Biden sequel, that gathering storm is a big part of the answer.
*Will Leitch is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Time Has Come,” and is a contributing editor for New York magazine. Send his comments to [email protected].
WILL LEITCH
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6732607, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-26 17:00:08
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