2 weeks Ago By Aimee Meade
I’ve been visiting close family in Boston, Massachusetts. It is akin to being wrapped in the flags of the USA and Italy: being fed, nourished, spoiled and fed again. Yet in the week of the US Presidential election, I have been told to not under any circumstances mention politics – and most of all, Donald Trump .
For it is causing many an argument. Massachusetts has a Democrat governor and two Democrat senators. Only one Republican in recent history has won the state in a general election (Ronald Reagan).
This is Kennedy country – and a visit to the JFK Presidential Library proved a poignant reminder of how political discourse has deteriorated. Those first-ever television debates against a sweating Richard Nixon at the library were notable for the candidates’ mutual courtesy and absolute lack of vulgarity. Today, the country is shouty and polarised – and so is my once Democrat shoo-in working-class family.
Not the “olds”, though: my octogenarian uncle is a first-generation Italian immigrant; my aunt, second-generation Portuguese. They have already voted unhesitatingly for Kamala Harris and are exasperated with other family members. They will vote, but they won’t donate – despite the avalanche of parties’ begging messages by text.
“It’s your best friend, Kamala again”, is a family joke aimed at my uncle. “Make it stop!” he pleads. Their lives have been significantly improved by Obamacare.
Of course, they’re voting Harris . But not my 60-something cousin and his wife. They hesitated to share how they had voted, but their frustration with Joe Biden, who they blamed for soaring energy and groceries bills, and being “past it”, has morphed into antipathy towards Harris.
They could never vote for “that clown” Trump, but instead voted (already) for a candidate we hear little of: the Green Party candidate Jill Stein , making her third White House bid. In 2016, some Democrats blamed Stein for hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances in narrow races . Read Next Donald Trump couldn't possibly be worse for the US than Joe Biden One of my nephews would never say how he voted, which means not Trump, as all Trump supporters are seemingly very loudly “Trump”.
The solidly Democrat suburbs in which we ate delicious shrimp and lobster were awash with Trump/Vance banners. My other nephew is belligerent in his support: he is a multiple gun-holding, knife-carrying outdoorsman, who reeled out virtually every current conspiracy theory, from Covid jab chips to debauched, overly-funded immigrants (presumably “eating the cats and eating the dogs”?). I would like to have asked why he was so paranoid, but we were warned by other family members in advance not to “go there”.
Countless family gatherings descend into fierce slanging matches. So we let this grandson of migrants recite Trump’s litany of complaints about immigration, while my uncle removed himself from the table, citing tiredness. I blame social media.
My uncle and aunt watch CNN almost 24/7, my cousins virtually no news, just sport. My 30-something nephews neither watch TV, nor read a paper, but consume endless memes and the brazen doublespeak of the Trump campaign. He “never” said words we all heard him say: about Liz Cheney , immigrants , and incitement to fight the vote if he loses.
“Democrats are cheating”. In news vox pops, Trump fans now say openly they won’t accept a Harris win. Growing up, we were told that Democrats and Republicans were much more similar than our Conservative and Labour parties.
Trump has destroyed that – perhaps irrevocably. No one can call this election, but everyone is predicting trouble whoever wins..
