The dark side

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“Satan Mask” – Celastic over clay, circa 2000

A former Carson supporter told me this morning that she’s with Trump now. Reluctantly, but there it is. “He scares me to death,” she said, “but he’s the only person who has the cajones, you know, the business sense to fix this country.”

I asked her whether she’s concerned about the violence at the rallies, and she paused. To consider? To size me up? “No,” she said, “because it isn’t his fault. It’s a bunch of black protesters or activists or whatever you want to call them. I don’t think there should be any activists.” Whether she meant by this that there shouldn’t be any activists at Trump rallies or there shouldn’t be any activists at all, I don’t know. Either seems possible.

She said that Mexico will pay for the wall using money accumulated from the trade deficit. She said she’s more concerned about the volcano under Yellowstone National Park erupting than she is about global warming, because “the Earth has been warming and cooling forever.”

She said a lot of things, and didn’t seem half finished, but we were interrupted by a phone call, so I thanked her for the lovely conversation and slipped away.

Where to begin with somebody like that? A climate change denier who believes the fact that her family never owned slaves lends credibility to her opinion of Black Lives Matter. An intelligent, articulate adult whose core principles are so much at odds with mine. Yet who, for all that, is an otherwise nice person.

Damned if I know.