{"id":25931,"date":"2016-11-17T00:01:22","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T08:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=25931"},"modified":"2016-11-17T00:01:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T08:01:22","slug":"i-decided-to-stop-bad-mouthing-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/i-decided-to-stop-bad-mouthing-donald-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"I Decided to Stop Bad-Mouthing Donald Trump. But Will I?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"I'm<\/a>
I’m going to stop bad-mouthing Donald Trump. Even though right now my world feels like this wreck of a car, which I spotted in San Francisco on election day. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Last Tuesday night, as poll\u00a0results poured in and it became clearer and clearer who\u00a0was going to be the next president of the United States, I made a decision. I decided to\u00a0stop bad-mouthing Donald Trump. I would give him a chance. I’d keep an open mind.<\/p>\n

I decided to do the same for his supporters. Millions of Americans\u00a0have let the world know, loud and clear, that they think both Democrats and Republicans have let them down. This is a good thing, actually. The message is out.<\/p>\n

Coastal, Urban College Graduate<\/h5>\n

And now it’s up to me as a coastal, urban, white, college graduate to listen. I need to<\/p>\n

\"Donald<\/a>
The Winner! Trump gave a gracious victory speech. From now on I, too, will aim for gracious political discourse. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

listen to the friends, neighbors and relatives who somehow managed to convince themselves\u00a0that their candidate\u00a0could be a fit president, that he was \u00a0capable of paying attention to their legitimate needs, that he actually had the chops to get something done . . . . Oops. I\u00a0said I was going to stop bad-mouthing Donald Trump, didn’t I?<\/p>\n

On the front page of yesterday’s New York Times was a story about how some folks are canceling Thanksgiving plans with family because their relatives had\u00a0voted for Trump — or because they hadn’t voted\u00a0for Trump. On CNN just before the election, an undecided voter told an interviewer that one of her relatives would refuse to talk to her if she didn’t vote for Trump. And closer to home, an otherwise\u00a0beautifully open-minded\u00a0friend of mine told me a few weeks ago that he would refuse to speak to anyone who supported\u00a0Trump.<\/p>\n

Huh?<\/p>\n

Election Calamity<\/h5>\n

On election day, on my way home from the dentist, I spotted a wreck of a car sitting outside a body shop in San Francisco. I shot a quick photo, thinking some far off day I might need a picture to go with\u00a0an essay about a death or disaster. Back home I tagged the photo “death,” “bad stuff,” “accidents” and “calamity.” The calamity — for me and millions of other Hillary Clinton supporters — came only hours later.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen worse disasters. I’m old enough to remember the turmoil of the 1960s. It was a time far, far more divisive than the moment we are in\u00a0right now. I was a 20-something living\u00a0in New York. My parents lived in a Cleveland suburb. I was against the war in Vietnam, and I was mad at the establishment.<\/p>\n

My father thought the establishment was just fine. I said something\u00a0sharply political over dinner during one of my daughterly visits to Cleveland. My father said something equally sharp right back at\u00a0me. My blood boiled. His blood boiled.<\/p>\n

Father-Daughter Civility in the Sixties<\/h5>\n

We dropped the subject then and there. In a heartbeat, my father and I were done talking\u00a0politics. My father was way, way more important to me than my opinions. And<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>
Hillary Clinton hugged a supporter following a gracious concession speech. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

he knew it. And I was way, way more important to my father than his opinions. And I knew it. That’s all either of us cared about.<\/p>\n

So, yeah. Today I’m keeping an open mind. I’m going to stop with\u00a0the Donald Trump put-downs. Really. I am.<\/p>\n

Except, is it really a put-down to say something about somebody if it’s actually true? . . . There I go again. I gotta stop with this. I\u00a0am going to keep my mind open, dagnabbit. Honest, I am. I’m going to go back to writing about God and grandbabies\u00a0and wedding dresses and the golden leaves falling from our\u00a0magnolia tree this month. I’m going to stop bad-mouthing Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Hold me to it.<\/p>\n

OK. If you really, really need to hear\u00a0the vitriol I’ve slung at\u00a0Donald Trump in recent months, you can find\u00a0it at “Donald Trump Played Me. Here’s How.”<\/a> But, honest to goodness, I do think\u00a0that we need to abandon that kind of contentious rhetoric, or we’ll never, ever get through the next four years. Believe me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note: Jon broke his ankle\u00a0last night at an otherwise very nice family reunion dinner. I\u00a0spent the day at the ER with him, and the evening burning our dinner. (Jon’s the cook at our house.) So this post got dashed off kinda quick. Pls look kindly upon\u00a0typos and lapses of logic.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"D.B.<\/a>
My father, D.B. Falconer, was a Cleveland food industry executive in the 1960s. Civility is not a word he would think to use, but it’s a habit I learned from him. Barbara Newhall photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Donald<\/a><\/p>\n

Last Tuesday night I made a decision. I decided to stop bad-mouthing Donald Trump. I would give him a chance. I’d keep an open mind. But could I? Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1825,1826,1827,1828,34,1562,1822,1829,55,82,282,227],"class_list":["post-25931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-bad-mouthing","tag-calamity","tag-car-wreck","tag-civility","tag-dont-miss","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-family-stories","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-politics","tag-rhetoric"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}