A weekend in Trump country softened my heart | Moran

My good friend Charlie is a Penn State football fanatic, and he takes a small crew to at least one game every year in Happy Valley, where we meet up with his childhood buddy, Tommy.
This year, Charlie made one rule: No politics.
As it happens, Tommy is a Trump supporter, and Charlie wanted to make sure politics could not wreck the weekend. Fine with me. I was dispirited to see all the Trump signs as we drove through rural Pennsylvania, along with home-made Trump billboards on corn fields and cow pastures. I needed a break.
We never did talk politics, so I don’t know why Tommy voted for Trump. He grew up in rural Pennsylvania, like Charlie, where most people don’t have a lot, so inflation cuts deep. The landscape is beyond beautiful, but the houses are small, the cars are not fancy, and if you want a good strong cup of coffee at a diner, you have to turn around and go back to Jersey.
But let me tell you about Tommy. He’s 69 now, and he has nine grandchildren and a thick black mustache. He lives in a modest house with neighbors close by, and he grows twice as many tomatoes as he needs so he can share with them. He’s volunteered at the local fire department for years, and because he’s too old to climb ladders these days, he organizes the local fundraiser, which took in $50,000 this year. When that was done, he offered to clean the bathrooms.
He helps one neighbor slaughter a cow every now and then and gets a share of the 500 pounds of meat for his freezer. He stops in regularly to check on the 87-year-old widow who lives nearby. “We all keep watch on her,” he told me. “She sprained her ankle the other day, so she needs help.”
Hearing about this was salve to my soul. Because the polls tell us that Americans hate one another across the political divide these days. Just under half of us believe a civil war is likely, according to a recent Marist poll. About half also believe that the other side is not just wrong, but is “downright evil,” according to a Johns Hopkins poll.
Marriage rates between Democrats and Republicans are plummeting, and now amount to just 4 percent of all marriages, according to a survey of 3,000 Americans by the American Family Survey out of Brigham Young University. That will reinforce the divide for another generation if we’re not careful.
We’re never going to get out of this jam and find at least some common ground unless we soften our hearts. I don’t intend to change my views on democracy, or climate change, or economic justice. But I do want to remember that the Trump coalition includes millions of good people who share tomatoes and look in on old widows. That creates some room for discussion, at least.
I had a grand time at the tailgate party before the game, and there’s no doubt many of them were Trumpers like Tommy. We are talking about football fanatics of a breed that a Giants fan can only imagine. Kickoff was set for 8:00, and when we arrived to begin the party at about 2 pm, the parking lots near the stadium were already crowded. I was relieved to see no Trump signs, no MAGA chants, no evidence of politics at all. Everyone needed a break.
Charlie has been coming to the same reserved spot for three decades, so it’s a second home by now. He was hugging old friends and sharing tequila shots, telling the same old stories and wearing a really stupid Penn State hat. His friends had a game of cornhole, and they let us use it for hours. It was one big family.
Yes, there are limits to this. It’s a lot easier to find common ground at a tailgate party than in the halls of Congress, and our differences are profound.
Still, I wish the 47 percent of Americans who regard the other side as “downright evil” could have been there, and maybe share a shot or two with a friendly stranger. In this dark time, it gave me hope.
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Tom Moran may be reached at [email protected] or (973) 986-6951. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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