I’m writing this column on Tuesday, October 29, as I mentally prepare for the scariest day of the year: Election Day.
This is my last column that will run before the Presidential election, and I feel I should say something about it. But what else is there to be said? People have largely made up their minds, for better or worse. There’s not much point in me talking about the candidates.
Instead, I’m going to tell you about a couple of guys I know.
As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I do freelance pinball machine repairs. A couple of years ago, I got a call from a fellow who lived up in the mountains. He had two pinball machines that weren’t working properly, so I packed up my gear and went to pay him a visit.
I really liked this guy. He was in his 60s, and he was one of those rare people who are effortlessly funny. He had dozens of well-rehearsed one-liners he would drop with tactical precision. He led me out to his massive outbuilding, which he’d fashioned into a bar/arcade, and I started working on the machines.
Hanging from the ceiling of the outbuilding were several Trump flags, including a flag depicting a photoshopped Trump straddling a tank. I didn’t say a word, but as often happens, the conversation turned to politics soon enough. When we were shooting the breeze about pinball and old cars and bourbon, we had a great time. When the conversation turned to Trump and the day of reckoning he would bring to the dread liberals, he grew dark and angry, like a different man altogether.
I didn’t argue with him; I was charging him a fair amount of money per hour and it seemed like a poor financial decision to reveal that I myself was one of those inhuman liberal monsters. Instead, I just nodded occasionally and tried to steer the conversation back to happier topics whenever I could.
There’s another guy I think about pretty often. Without going into specifics, I met him through a friend. I really liked the guy, and I even ended up conducting his wedding ceremony (that’s right, I’m another one of those freelance wedding officiant/pinball repairmen; it’s the oldest story in the book).
At some point, this fellow boarded the MAGA train about as hard as anyone I’ve ever seen. He slowly became a new man, someone unrecognizable from his previous self. His social media posts went from funny, light-hearted jokes to angry screeds about transgender people and our fallen nation and illegal immigrants ruining our country. He was a wealthy guy — he seemingly had everything you could possibly want — but he wasn’t enjoying any of it. He was too busy wallowing in rage and fear.
Both of these men are dead now. The first died of natural causes; the second took his own life.
In the case of the second, I’m not going to claim that his suicide directly followed from his turn toward the MAGA movement. However, I can’t imagine it helped his mental health.
I know a lot of people like these two men. They’re people who had something unlock inside themselves during the Trump era, or even in the aftermath of 9/11. All the empathy and compassion and positivity they once possessed has been slowly leached away, replaced with rage and fear and acrimony. They’re glued to the news channels that reinforce their worst suspicions, addicted to the quick dopamine hits of moral outrage. In the process, they’ve not only pushed away friends and family, they’ve pushed away their own joy, all to worship at the altar of a man who doesn’t even know they’re alive and likely wouldn’t care if he did.
If the two men I mentioned were still alive, I’d ask them one question: was it worth it? If you had it to do over again, would you spend your final years on this planet crippled with anger?
It seems like a hell of a waste of time to me.
