Joe and I had been fortunate enough to have spent 8 days sailing the Oasis of the Seas, a vessel large enough to accommodate about 7000 individuals. We were joining my family to celebrate the marriage of my nephew and his wonderful and sweet bride. Joe, as insightful as ever had a pre cruise conversation with me, reminding me of two things, the first being that I need to get a prescription for a dramamine patch for sea sickness and the second , perhaps even more importantly, that I most likely will have go cold turkey and stop my addiction to reading about and ranting about anything or anyone Trump. From having taken one other cruise in my life I understood the value of the dramamine patch and the wonders of not having to kneel by the porcelain bowl, but the cold turkey cut off of politics, well that was huge UNKNOWN! We had no Internet, and thank goodness the only news cable network was CNN in Spanish. (I took Spanish in high school from Señorita Goldstein and the only Spanish I learned came with a Pittsburgh accent).
But here is the THING: even without the news of the day, I actually learned a whole lot more about the how’s and why’s, the ways by which the average American considers, concerns, and conditions themselves to live this American life; and it was a very scary, scary, did I say SCARY lesson. Gluttony, Greed, Gullible, and Stupid were the dominate personality features of a majority of the passengers. Health seemed NOT to be an issue as the majority of passengers were very overweight, some obese, many needing some kind of wheeled assistance just to get to the next buffet. Smoking was permitted in sections of the ship, and even being in the great open seas, the odor of nicotine smothered the freshness of the air. Like ants to sugar, the passengers would push their way to the shops, where the sale of the century of the latest t-shirt, trinket, tchuckie, grabbing these items as if it was the day after Thanksgiving sale. I now understand how the Republicans can weasel their way out of Affordable Health Care, because in the heartland of the Homeland many of their constituents could care less about wellness.
I want to go on and on and on about the sheer ignorance of self, the lack of empathy for others, the very lack of love thy neighbor, I observed on this trip, but to do so is silly; as many of us have witnessed this behavior in oh too many other environments. But what I did begin to understand is how Trump and his Communist allies, the Republican Congress succeeded and will continue to succeed to reach lower and lower pitting American against American by simply insisting that the OTHER is the enemy. Trump is good at telling Americans that whatever problems they might have ONLY exist because there is an enemy who wants to take away the good life. He never begs the question look at yourself, but instead insists that anyone but you is bad. I am home from the cruise, and the palpitations /anxieties/anger have been unpacked with the rest of my luggage and I am once again ready to resist and perhaps revolt!
