This was our Destiny

 

The 1984 movie Red Dawn, now considered a cult classic, was about a group of small-town Colorado high school students who become guerrilla fighters against a Communist invasion of America. The letter jackets in the photo look almost the same as the ones of my old school. Even I got awarded a gold "C". Back then, all of us would have asserted that we would have been among the ones who fought back. A couple years ago I jokingly told Heather that she and I, and presumably her husband, would be among the only ones among our friends in the resistance.  Her grandfather, I think, was a master sniper in the Finnish Army who fought the Russians in World War II when they invaded Finland.

Among the few people I know among my old friends who shares my political views is Heather. She is also among those who were more resolute than four years ago, and spoke about the this election the way I spoke about 2020. 

No doubt this was partly due to Trump's embrace of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, in particular because of RFK's stance regarding childhood vaccines.  Fighting against mandatory vaccine laws for her children has long personal crusade, long before COVID. It caused our mutual group of friends to shun her,.  Unlike me, she is still in regular contact with them. because of her husband Randy, whom I consider to be like a brother, and who serves as a point of universal neutral contact among all of us. It is from Randy I still get my news of the people I once considered almost like family members. 

I last saw many of them in May for the wedding of Randy and Heather's eldest son. Even then a few were missing---not invited because they have said hateful things to Heather on Facebook regarding her politics. One declined the invitation because of bad feelings regarding COVID. Another of them lived only a hour away from the wedding in the Bay Area but was purposefully excluded from the invitation list because of hateful comments of Facebook. This is exactly why I left Facebook---I saw it coming, and I didn't want to see old friends saying the things I knew they were going to say, wishing death and violence on others, all in the name of (ugh) "love is love". Some things cannot be unsaid.

I have long since realized that this separation was my choice and preference, but it is too late to go back, even if I wanted.

 It is probable I'll see Randy and Heather again, but as for the others, I thought in May that maybe it could be the last time I would see them all. It is hard to see such an occasion arising. They were cordial and friendly to me, but I know they do not think of me anymore and my name does not come up when planing mutual get-togethers. I am not invited to any of their personal events, and have not been so for years. I will not be invited the weddings of their children. I will hear of them only through Heather. Lately she communicates to me mostly through the Telegram app. Now her grown (and married) son communicates with me using Telegram as well.

After Jessica and I went to see RFK and Trump in Glendale right before the election, I was excited to tell her about it via Telegram. I was happy to tell her the biggest applause line of the night was when RFK said he hoped the new Trump administration would prohibit pharmaceutical ads. Everyone in the audience knows that the mainstream media basically lives off Big Pharma money.

The morning after the election she sent me a follow-up message: "It was a glorious day, thank God!"

I replied that my favorite factoid of the night was that the only age cohort to vote for Trump was not Gen Z, or Millennials, or Boomers, but Generation X. They did so with such a margin as to offset Harris's victory among all the other age groups. She gave me a "heart" on that comment and I immediately followed up with: This was our destiny.

Her: "Agreed. Interesting that so many of our friends did not join us."

Me "It is a source of great sadness to me"

Her: "Agreed".