Today is my husband’s and my wedding anniversary. Eighteen years now. Thank you! What makes it last? Love, after all these many years of shared ups and downs, I suppose. And dogged determination to just hang in there … week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after dec—well, we’re not there yet. And then there’s our mutual laziness. Despite arguments and disagreements, we don’t have the energy to actually d-i-v-o-r-c-e. I suppose we stick together because we’ve grown to respect each other, put up with the other’s faults and flaws. Each of us is very aware that nobody in this world is perfect. So we’ve remained married to one another.
Some of you may recall my first Texas Tart blog about my marriage, how my husband and I are as divided politically as our nation. In fact, I started this blog of political humor and social commentary after the 2016 presidential election. I figured we would be living in interesting times, and I wanted to write and laugh about it every week or so. You may wonder how the past three years of political rancor and turmoil have affected our marriage, my husband Mr. Republican and me the bleeding heart liberal Democrat. Well, let me tell you. It has been extremely hard … on both of us. I’d say more on me than him. I mean, my gal didn’t win the presidency. But I’ve lived through Republican administrations before yet nuttin’ like this. The divisiveness has taken an almost evil turn, as if there are political foes chompin’ at the bit to declare all-out civil war. A civil war between Republicans and Democrats, shootin’ people who don’t believe the way you do? How crazy would that be? As we’ve seen during the present administration, there are some crazy people in America, some holding great power and more concerning controlling the money.
From Bush to Obama
When we first married in December 2001, George W. Bush was President, 9/11 was our nation’s tragic sorrow along with psyching up for a long war on the other side of the world, and at home millions of layoffs were taking place. It was hard times for me and Doo, er, I mean my husband. We’d been married only a couple months when he was depressed about the economy, wondering how were we gonna manage to pay the rent. In a tender moment of embrace, I softly mentioned how this kind of thing happens whenever a Republican is in office … and wop! He didn’t hit me, just firmly reminded me to whom I was talking. I thought I was trying to comfort my distraught spouse who was down on his luck. But no, I was scolded for dragging politics, his politics, into bad economic times. Huh? Way before I had married, I believed recessions occur during Republican administrations. Has to do with being tight with the tax money. So my words slipped out while trying to think of an optimistic future (when a Democrat is in charge again).
Ever since when it comes to making this marriage work, I’ve watched my words about a Republican president, not to mention a Republican governor and legislators federal and state, even mayors. Through the years when it comes to political discussion between us, I still call it like I see it. He can handle a sardonic tone. It’s one of the things we have in common, a dry sense of humor, me more on than he, but he’s a great audience. During the election between Bush and John Kerry, my husband exuberantly left for work on Election Day but not before returning to advise me to “Vote Republican.” I laughed out the door. Imagine me voting for a Republican president. I couldn’t wait to press the buttons for Kerry and anyone who would work toward ending those stupid forever wars and restoring faith from the American people instead of calling French fries Freedom fries and scaring everyone with daily color codes to announce the national terrorist threat level.
Well, my guy didn’t win. Nothing I haven’t dealt with and lived through before, four more years of a Republican administration. Then came the John McCain and Barack Obama election. Late that election night after I’d fallen asleep before the final results, my husband walked into the bedroom to announce soberly Obama had won. I was overjoyed because I didn’t think he’d win. Finally, I thought to myself with a giddy smile, there is a God. It’s the same thing Republicans say when they win, isn’t it?
It was a joy living through the Obama years. In my opinion, the guy made very few mistakes. Then again, I’m a singer in the choir when it comes to my party. But my husband … he was like everyone else I know: relatives, majority of friends, co-workers. Sore losers, maybe, but they did not like anything Obama said or did. But funding perpetual wars was over. One war ended. Year after year, slowly but surely, the economy did get better. Even the unemployment rate dropped remarkably low. And tens of millions of Americans were insured through expanded Medicaid, which opponents facetiously dubbed Obamacare. Obama was not just popular among the majority of Americans and people the world over, he was a super star. Among Democrats, he was beloved. In 2016 that half of the nation who didn’t like President Obama for whatever reason along with Democratic policies got together and turned our country back to whatever they thought it should be.
Seriously?
The night Donald Trump was elected President, my husband was as happy as I’d ever seen him. He still is. His man in Washington is A-OK, and there are a lot of Americans who feel exactly the same way. Trust me down here in Texas. I … I try to deal with it best I can. But, um, it’s soooo hard. It’s like living in American Bizarro World. All I can think is this must be how half the country felt during the Obama years. They thought everything he did was so awful. We’ve pulled ourselves to the extremes politically when we used to get along. The reason Americans got along throughout all the previous Presidential administrations, save Nixon, was we never took our politics all that seriously, more important than our families and the people we love and respect and have known all our lives.
A politically mixed marriage is nothing new in America. What are the odds of finding a mate who thinks and believes exactly like you do? When you find someone who thinks politically opposite, that calls for maturity and emotional strength, of knowing thyself. It calls for being open minded enough to understand the other’s points, even change your own opinions, and we both have. There are a lot of issues that can break up a marriage, but ‘he’s a Republican and I’m a Democrat’ would be an awfully silly one. Marriage betwixt the two can be hard for the self-proclaimed politically passionate (and we have that in common, too), but it’s not impossible.
A long time ago, I wrote a newspaper column lamenting being one of the few known Democrats in a small Texas town. I idealized the 1970s when, I thought, it was cool to be liberal. After reading it, a wise old man dropped by the newspaper office to set me straight. “It has never been cool to be a liberal,” he implored. What did I know? I was just a kid in the ’70s, influenced by TV shows like “MASH” and “Donahue” and movies like “Saturday Night Fever,” hard rock lyrics, keep-the-party-going disco, and the scuzzy branding of major U.S. cities like New York. Do your own thing was a national motto. From what I recall, some people took the times and all the freedom too far while the rest never lost their scruples and worked together to improve our world.
When I learned that being liberal is not the comfortable path of conformity with patriotic American clichés; not the road of the masses who believe a universal moral right and wrong with no gray ambiguity found in the human condition; not the group in which everyone looks just like me with not much tolerance for other cultures and religions—that was all I needed to know. Alone or not, I would be a Democrat for life, even in Texas. I like being the underdog, fighting for the disenfranchised. A mixed marriage of sorts was bound to be in my future. After all these years, I’ve come to understand my husband’s stance to make American great again, though I disagree with the premise. And I could be wrong, but by now I think he secretly admires my sincerity, no matter how terribly wrong he sees my politics.