The best kind of unhinged

In my happy place most everything is broken

We live in a hostile time.

But you know that. We all know that.

Ugh. I wish we didn’t.

Man. Remember when you couldn’t even imagine having to fear that today might be the day when the vicious rhetoric of the guy who used to be President of the United States inspires one of his legions of lunatic devotees to show up at your job, or at your child’s school, and start mowing everyone down with an AR-15?

Remember when you didn’t know what the President of the United States was doing every freakin’ minute of every day? Whatever old guy was president at the moment was off in the White House, doing all the presidential things, and you were off in your regular house, doing all the you things, and the only time you ever thought about the president at all was when he had been caught using one of his intern’s private parts as a cigar clip, or lying to every American so he could send their young men and women into a heedless war, or illegally selling arms to Iran to finance a right-wing rebel group in Nicaragua, or secretly carpet-bombing Cambodia.

I mean, say what you will about Trump, but he’s never secretly carpet-bombed a country.

And that’s something he never would do, too. And not because he doesn’t already make Nixon look like Mother Theresa. And not because the guy is incapable of doing anything in secret; I mean, my god, don’t you wish that id-possessed gasbag would please keep something about himself a secret? And it’s also not because he’ll never again have the power to bomb any country at all, since he’s no more likely to be reelected President of the United States than he is president of the NAACP. (Remember: Trump is the orange goose that continues to crap out solid gold for every media company in America. Every day he’s not in the headlines is a day media rakes in less cash. Do you really think that anyone responsible for the media we all consume every day is going to be okay with any person in America going to bed at night not feeling like IT ALL HANGS IN THE BALANCE?! Of course they’re not. They like their jobs. They want to keep their jobs. And the one sure way to make that happen—to make sure that all that money keeps flowing into their coffers—is to make sure that we all either intensely fear or intensely hope that this November Trump becomes president again. Either works for them, as long as we keep clicking those buttons. But they know—or have talked themselves into not knowing, the way people do—that Trump will not be reelected. Once bitten, twice shy, is why.)

Trump would never start or prosecute a war because he knows that the moment he did, everyone’s attention would turn to his Secretaries of Defense and State, and to his military commanders, and to all the heads of the countries and regions he’d gone to war against, and to all kinds of people and situations that aren’t solely about him.

And Trumpy don’ play that. He must have all the attention always on him, period. He’d no sooner start something that he knows would work 100% against that than he would volunteer to work in an old folk’s home.

Also, a war is a definitive, real thing. Trump hates definitive, real things, because they tend to clarify people’s values. And he doesn’t want to be anywhere near, much less create himself, any situation in which anyone’s values are being clarified. Trump wants people thinking about things clearly like The Wizard of Oz wants people peeking behind his curtain. He doesn’t. His power dissipates that way.

What Trump wants, what he needs, above all—which is why he is always creating it—is chaos. Because as surely as rain results in wetness, chaos results in a power vacuum. And Trump takes to a power vacuum like a cat takes to an empty cardboard box. He just . . . sits in it.

Trump creates chaos; chaos creates a power vacuum; Trump steps into that vacuum—places himself right in the middle of all that chaos—and declares himself the only strong and dependable force there is to combat it.

“America is in tatters. Crime is rampant. Depraved human animals are pouring across our borders, coming for your children. There is no center. It’s all going to hell. But I am here. I am your savior. I, and I alone, can bring order to all this horrible chaos.”

Film at 11.

So much stress. It just keeps coming. And there doesn’t seem to be a solution for any of it.

But here’s the weird thing: I have discovered my own personal solution to all of it. I have found somewhere I can go, where all of my anxieties and concerns about who people are, and who they have let themselves become, vanishes straight away, leaving me with nothing but feelings of affection, if not outright love, for all of my fellow humans.

For real!

And where might this rarified happy place of mine be, you ask? Well, unexpectedly enough, at my job. My job. Like, the place I punch in and out of five days a week. Where I have, like, eight bosses.

I am a Millwork Specialist at a Home Depot here in Asheville, NC.—meaning that I spend my days helping people solve their door and/or window problems. The bottom sash in their double-hung window fell out. Their patio door won’t close. Their garage door is leaking. A strong wind blew their storm door right off its hinges. Someone broke into their house, damaging their front door so badly it needs replacing. Their mother is coming to live with them, and they want to put a good, well-insulated window in the add-on they’re building for her, but they don’t have much money.

They’re old; they’re young; they’re rich; they’re poor; they know what they’re doing; they don’t know a nail from a hammer; they speak English; they don’t but their teenage kid does, and she’ll translate for us; they’re white and black and every shade in between.

Some present themselves as proud woke liberals. Others wear tee shirts or trucker caps with upside-down flags on them. It’s impossible to guess ahead of time whether a person from either of those categories is going to be easy or difficult to work with. Sometimes the woke liberal is needy and shamelessly entitled; sometimes the MAGAnian is the sweetest guy in the world. You just never know.

And I never care about any of that. Because I have no reason to care about such things. Finally, in that place, at that time, right there next to the water heaters, in front of the interior doors, or halfway down the windows aisle, every single person I interact with is all they can ever really be anyway, which is just . . . a person.

Not a person with an agenda. Not a person who wants me to hear their political opinions. Not a person hollering at me on their video or podcast. Not a person who is trying to sell me anything. Not a Trump devotee, or a Biden enthusiast, or a fervid anti-abortionist, or a proselytizing atheist.

No. None of that. It’s always—for at least for that little bit of time we’re together—just a regular, everyday person looking to fix their broken door or window.

And it really feels to me these days like all I want to know—all I need to know—is that, despite all the pressures that are constantly working to pull them down, and to help them transmogrify into meaner or nastier or crazier versions of themselves, people are still just, you know . . . people. And generally kind and good-natured ones at that.

We’re living in such an an angry, crazy-making time. An ex-President screaming about vengeance and retribution. A Justice of the Supreme Court signaling to the world that he’s an insurrectionist. People like Marjorie Taylor Greene actually mattering, in one absurd way or another.

I am so, so grateful to have basically stumbled into a life where, for forty hours every week, I do not have to concern myself with any realm of concern beyond the person who is standing right before me, in the flesh, holding out toward me a broken door handle or an ancient piece of something I don’t recognize, asking if I can help them make right this thing in their life that’s gone so wrong.

These days I take my peace where I can find it. And for me that is a whole lot of peace, right there.

See you next week. Thanks for reading. John