I was invited to a friend’s home the other night for a small, casual dinner party. I knew everyone there and, (although I didn’t put a watch on it), mere minutes into the conversation around the kitchen island, someone said, not to me, “I can see you and I are on opposite sides of this.”, and the elephant fully entered the room. The speaker, a very successful business man and an active and passionate patron of the arts, was the person there that I knew the least. Maybe I have bad manners. Maybe I’m suffering PTSD, (who isn’t?). Perhaps I just relish lively conversation and the person in question was not particularly large of stature and I thought I could take him if things got out of hand. In any case, I jumped in:
“I guess that means you’re a Trump supporter,” I asked, with uncalled for snide.
“Well, I sure couldn’t have gone with Hillary,” he shot back.
“I get that. But Trump is so unbelievably unqualified. He’s maniacally unhinged. That doesn’t terrify you?” (I know very little about poker so I didn’t even realize I had gone ‘all in’.)
“The alternative was unacceptable,” he continued. “Besides, there are lots of checks and balances to keep him in line.”
“But they’re Nazis and climate change deniers and billionaires who have shown utter disdain for the working-class people that are expecting Trump to be their savior.” (Is there something more than ‘all in’?)
Snicker. “For instance, I think Scott Pruitt is a brilliant choice to run the EPA.”
I had just taken a delicious bite of hand-crafted pizza which I involuntarily spit across the room, where it briefly paused before slithering down the sliding glass door. “Case in point…not only is he a climate change denier, but he’s the guy that sued the EPA so that frackers, responsible for making Oklahoma the earthquake capital of the world, would have even fewer regulations than the virtually non-existent ones in place. He advocates a free-for-all for the mining and oil drilling industries and easing or removing emission restrictions. You breathe, right? I’m guessing your kids…grandkids, take a breath from time to time. Are you really OK with this?”
No snicker. “You’re being overly simplistic. I lived in West Virginia. It’s not OK for the EPA to just shut down the coal industry and put millions of people out of work. Sure, I wish we could have a cleaner environment, but abandoning fossil fuel is fiscally irresponsible. These things take time. And…there’s no proof that man is in any way responsible for the tectonic movement in Oklahoma.”
“How much time? One generation…two? You and me, our kids and grandkids should have to breathe fiscally responsible bad air and drink $5/bottle fiscally responsible water? Oh…and the earthquake proof. How about, before fracking, earthquakes per year in Oklahoma < 5…after fracking, 400 per day.”
“So, you think it’s OK to throw all of those miners out of work? Let’s say we did decide to be the clean energy country, what about everyone else? Why should we be the only ones?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do and because we’re America, damn it!”
I was shouting. My wife was glaring at me. The dog was definitely showing signs of discomfort. I ate more pizza, (swallowing this time), and the conversation drifted to more benign subject matter over dessert.
Funny, I still like the guy, although I’m perplexed by his embrace of our probably next President, who is obviously, to me anyway, a malevolent megalomaniac.
It was snowing when we left. A deer jumped in front of my car…I somehow blamed the guy. Oh, the deer’s fine, by the way…the damaged headlamp will run $1,250.