Once, in the comment section of an article I wrote about Portland politics for the conservative website PJ Media, someone said, “You live in Portland? You must feel surrounded!” I don’t feel surrounded, I am surrounded. My Republican affiliation, long-documented Trump support, and conservative politics puts me at odds with probably 90 percent of the people I encounter every day.
But I don’t feel surrounded. I don’t give a damn what the people around think. I’m not going to suddenly bow to environmental peer pressure and embrace the ridiculous, socialist Democratic Party. I’ll make my way friendless if it comes to that.
I play guitar with a group of senior citizen musicians—we hold monthly variety shows at a local winery. Though the musical director has an informal rule about discussions of politics or religion, I’d bet you a glass of Chablis that not a single one of them voted for Trump. In fact, I gleaned from their stricken post-election expressions and through grapevine reports that they’re shocked over the President’s second term.
I attend Mass each Sunday at a Southwest Portland Catholic Church. Southwest is the more moderate—barely—suburb of the three other progressive sectors of this extremely progressive city. Politics doesn’t rear its head during religious services, but next door in the parish hall, where coffee and donuts are served, if you asked for a Trump vote show of hands I’d probably shape up as the Judas.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is so prevalent here that random people on the street will try to determine a stranger’s politics. Recently in a shopping mall elevator, a middle-aged man in a neon-green parking vest baited me with a comment about ICE activity at the SW federal headquarters. I looked him square in the eye and asked, “Do you work here?” and he shut the fuck up.
At a post-election dinner party, a female guest started in on Trump only seconds after we were seated. Fed up, and wanting to nip the tired bullshit in the bud, I chimed, “I voted for him three times.” To her credit, the woman thanked me for telling her, before she could continue her diatribe and set the gathering on edge.
The problem is, I’m usually the only one at any given table who’s voted for Trump (although there are likely some scaredy-cats too chicken to admit it) so it’s always me everybody has to defer to out of basic civility. Sometimes, when sensing the undercurrent, I feel like saying “Oh for Christ’s sake, go ahead with your kvetch-fest.”
Most of the liberals in my orbit are educated, moralistic people, who strive not to patently reject those who don’t agree with them politically. But there exists an all-encompassing aggrievement in the Rose City over Trump. Demonstrations abound. “NO KINGS” placards will sit in streetside windows for the next two-and-a-half years. Local media—the Oregonian and Willamette Week most prominently—feeds the ubiquitous dismay with a drumbeat of solidarity.
I try hard not to gloat. But sometimes, like right now, as I look out my home-office window at the rooftops of my neighbors, I find myself smiling and thinking, Get over it losers.