I’ve told you my mother was chair of the local Republican Party for years. My father shared her interest in (or addiction to) politics. Political aspirants called, stopped by the house, seeking their advice.
I have Technicolor memories of those days when I, so young, listened, observed, and little girl interacted. I see my beautiful, stylish mother in the dining room of our house, hosting receptions for candidates. The crystal punchbowl reflected excitement. On Election Day, the phone rang constantly and continued to ring after the polls closed as we sat in the family room anticipating the returns.
When Mother died, we, the Sisterhood, combined her cremains with Daddy’s. Had we not scattered them, they’d be churning in the urn. Perhaps they’re roiling somewhere though, annoyed that I reject their confidence in the electoral process and in the participation they considered an inviolable responsibility.
(Cue Emma Goldman here: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”)
My sons side with their grandparents on the issue. Or they did. During a recent conversation, son J said, “I may have to sit this one out.”
We’d been discussing a faceoff between Hillary and Donald.
The scheme always distills to determining the lesser of two evils. But in this particular contrivance, Hill and Don’s Ultimate Uncoupling, there’s a new consideration. Hillary’s the familiar evil while Trump’s the antiestablishment or unknown quantity of evil, outside the control of Wall Street—at least now while he’s financing his own ride. This ambiguity may be a dilemma for the voter.
Most likely, Hillary thought her rival would be Jeb, and what’s evolved can’t be happening. Just can’t be. Imagine how she’s handling this, the rise of Donald Trump. And then think about working for Hillary. The horror. Being her underling. I’d hate to wake up in the same wing of the Clinton mansion, hate to sit across from her at the breakfast table, any table. Because she has to be sweating drones right now, her entitlement battered by the Reality TV, “You’re fired” tyrant whose who-gives-a-shit (?) ‘tude exceeds Tony Manero’s Staying Alive strut.
Hillary must be feeling scorched. How dare some multi-married megalomaniac upend destiny and orchestrate her defeat with such aplomb when she has been a lady-in-waiting loyalist, working from Wife Of and stand-by-her-man sycophant despite his flagrant philandering to . . . an exalted station, a political force in her own right, a power dealer, pushing mind against muscle, overthrowing heads of state, producing wastelands, breaking lives, tossing human beings into hopelessness?
If it’s Hillary and Donald: He. Will. Peel. Her. Skin.
Back to the voters’ dilemma: opting either for the familiar or the unpredictable. You know precisely what Hillary’s agenda is and will be. Hideous. Violent. And Trump’s? Probably just as insidious. If that’s possible.
Missy Comley Beattiehas written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.
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The Hill And Don Show
Posted on March 7, 2016 by Missy Comley Beattie
I’ve told you my mother was chair of the local Republican Party for years. My father shared her interest in (or addiction to) politics. Political aspirants called, stopped by the house, seeking their advice.
I have Technicolor memories of those days when I, so young, listened, observed, and little girl interacted. I see my beautiful, stylish mother in the dining room of our house, hosting receptions for candidates. The crystal punchbowl reflected excitement. On Election Day, the phone rang constantly and continued to ring after the polls closed as we sat in the family room anticipating the returns.
When Mother died, we, the Sisterhood, combined her cremains with Daddy’s. Had we not scattered them, they’d be churning in the urn. Perhaps they’re roiling somewhere though, annoyed that I reject their confidence in the electoral process and in the participation they considered an inviolable responsibility.
(Cue Emma Goldman here: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”)
My sons side with their grandparents on the issue. Or they did. During a recent conversation, son J said, “I may have to sit this one out.”
We’d been discussing a faceoff between Hillary and Donald.
The scheme always distills to determining the lesser of two evils. But in this particular contrivance, Hill and Don’s Ultimate Uncoupling, there’s a new consideration. Hillary’s the familiar evil while Trump’s the antiestablishment or unknown quantity of evil, outside the control of Wall Street—at least now while he’s financing his own ride. This ambiguity may be a dilemma for the voter.
Most likely, Hillary thought her rival would be Jeb, and what’s evolved can’t be happening. Just can’t be. Imagine how she’s handling this, the rise of Donald Trump. And then think about working for Hillary. The horror. Being her underling. I’d hate to wake up in the same wing of the Clinton mansion, hate to sit across from her at the breakfast table, any table. Because she has to be sweating drones right now, her entitlement battered by the Reality TV, “You’re fired” tyrant whose who-gives-a-shit (?) ‘tude exceeds Tony Manero’s Staying Alive strut.
Hillary must be feeling scorched. How dare some multi-married megalomaniac upend destiny and orchestrate her defeat with such aplomb when she has been a lady-in-waiting loyalist, working from Wife Of and stand-by-her-man sycophant despite his flagrant philandering to . . . an exalted station, a political force in her own right, a power dealer, pushing mind against muscle, overthrowing heads of state, producing wastelands, breaking lives, tossing human beings into hopelessness?
If it’s Hillary and Donald: He. Will. Peel. Her. Skin.
Back to the voters’ dilemma: opting either for the familiar or the unpredictable. You know precisely what Hillary’s agenda is and will be. Hideous. Violent. And Trump’s? Probably just as insidious. If that’s possible.
Missy Comley Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Baltimore. Email: missybeat@gmail.com.