Floating the River

TWO DAYS AWAY from my fifty year high school reunnion, I am ambivelant, but mostly excited,indeed more excited than I have beenin thinking about it over the past severl years.I have atendedalthe other reunions, and I enjoyed each one slightly less than the previous. I would like to reverse that trend. WE are now reaching the stage where each reunion is a lengthening list of the previous decade's deceased. Sad though this seems, so be it; the cyclce of life must be embraced, not feared or resented. When I was informed that one of our most popular classmates, a girl with an implacably effervescent personality, is struggling with Alzheimer's,it really it home. Damn, it seems like just yesterday that she was singing and dancing onstage in the school plays, and crakcing us up with her light hearted jokes and laughter. Another bittersweet concession to the river of time. My friends now consist of the folks at the senior center in a small town about two hours drive from my mid sized hometown. My high school classmates are no longer my closset friends, as they were for the first decade or so after graduation. When I moved away from our hometown to attend graduate school, and did not return, the gold coin was pounded ever thinner, as Andrew Marvel metaphysically poeticized. Some of them are alienated from me; I have resolved to never be alienated from them, and I have kept my pledge. Like so many American friendships, ours was truncated by Trump. As Goethe said: "We are united by sentiment, sundered by opinion". My opinion is that anyone who supports Trump post insurrection is, like Trump, a traitor, and this opinion is the reason why several of my classmates now resent me, and have ended our friendships. Well, so be it. I tend not to end friendships, for I consider them sufficiently valuable to nurture and sustain them under even the most difficult circumstnces. I am perfectly willing to remain friends with someone I consider a traitor, but few if any people seem willing to endure a friendship burdened with such a serious accusation. I will not pretend that a traitor is not a traitor for the sake of friendship, nor anything else. They know my opinion, because I purposely shared it with them. They deserve honesty from me, even though they have lost my respect.The senior center is overrun with traitors, which again I define as post insurrecion Trump supporters. Even close daily proximity with Trump suppoters gives me no help in understanding their reason for supporting a man of such obvious low character and criminality. Denial, I think, plays a part. Also, Trump enables the emergence of one's basest, pent up values and beliefs. Hatred of blacks, LGBTQ folks,socialists, et al, becomes easier to accept within oneself without any vestigal guilt by supporting Trump. I have several close friends at the senior center who are Trump supporters. We simply don't discuss politics. They know that I do not support Trump, but they do not know the depth of my hatred for him and his supporters, nor do they know that I consider them, like Trump, traitors. If the subject ever came up, if they ever asked, I would tell them. Telling them would likely end more friendships, friendships which would not by ended by me, but by them. Again, so be it. They deserve honesty from me; everyone does. If they cannot tolerate my honesty, they are probably better off without my friendship, and I am probably better off without theirs, even though I would gladly continue it. I cannot help but believe that their loss would be greater than mine.