Seeds

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“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”

That’s a line from the novel, “Long Goodbye”, and it called to mind a subject manner that has always fascinated me.

Our need for self-sabotage.

We build our lives with one hand and burn it down with the other.

We carry the seeds of our own destruction and as life goes along we spill a few of those seeds around out of boredom, out of self-loathing, for some damn reason.

I thought of this and more yesterday as my day began with a string of texts from a friend of mine who I’ve had a weird banter with for years.

He’s a fan of MAGA.

I’m not.

We have had good-natured conversations about it, that have never gotten angry.

I don’t even know how we’ve been able to pull it off, actually!

It seems that each time it gets too heavy one side or the other will crack a joke.

Anyway, he texted me a few jabs about the inauguration and I lobbed the ball back at him.

We made one another laugh with our responses, but then I asked him a serious one:

“How you feeling about all the billionaires in the cabinet?”

He didn’t respond for a long while.

He’s a hard-working guy who doesn’t care for free rides on either end - rich or poor - I know that he loathes rich people getting tax or work breaks.

“Troubling,” he finally responded. “But I’m great at cutting off my nose to spite my face.”

(Another great saying)

And there it was.

A trade-off of sorts.

We didn’t talk about much more than that, but I know this guy, and I was aware of where he was coming from:

He picked his political party on three simple principles:

1). Anti-choice regarding sexual orientation.

2). Anti-immigration - either legal or illegal.

My friend believes that men should be with women and vice-versa. He sees no wiggle room there.

Secondly, he believes that we have enough people in America and that we shouldn’t let anyone else in.

Lastly,

3). His cold dead hands.

He’s willing cut off his nose - so to speak - in accepting mass shootings if that means he gets to buy and keep as many guns as he wants, as his God-given right.

(I often remind him that God didn’t hand out gun rights - but that’s one he won’t budge on),

“Where do I get my free eggs?” I asked him as we played along.

“Egg prices won’t drop,” he said. “But bye-bye Mexicans.”

A trap set by disinformation and fear.

I believe he fell into the trap.

He doesn’t truly care about the price of eggs.

Fascinating to me.

His rights matter.

Others rights don’t matter if they are rights that HE doesn’t believe in.

I was about to craft a more detailed response when he texted this:

“Love you,” with a 😘 kiss emoji.

I laughed.

Going to be a strange ride.

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