{"id":5626,"date":"2019-12-16T07:19:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T15:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=5626"},"modified":"2019-12-16T07:19:21","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T15:19:21","slug":"trump-table-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/trump-table-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Table Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Every morning an hour after the Zane Gray Coffee Shop opened, old white men from Pistol River gathered around a table to hold court on the state of the nation as they saw it, as they positively knew it with the surety of gravity and the belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Every morning they wore their Trump ball caps, sweatshirts and underwear, drank drip coffee and regurgitated the Fox News red meat gnawed down the previous 24 hours. Every morning they ripped Barak, Michelle, big cities, the homeless, bicyclists, gun control wimps, Deep Staters, NY Time<\/em>s, Pelosi, AOC, Kapernick, liberals, PETA, Hollywood, illegal immigrants, LGBT people, Black Lives Matter, teachers, unions, France, socialism, Europe, tennis, cannabis, the Clintons, asylum seekers, voters, the godless, tree huggers, climate change fools, all scientists except ones on the take from industries ruining the planet, whales, sea lions, wolves, electric cars, Muslims, abortionists and whatever else Fox News invented for them to fear, hate, deride. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every morning they gathered to rail\nagainst the government even though Medicare and Social Security kept\nthem alive. Every morning they were loud and punch drunk on a\ncocktail of bile and certitude. There’s nothing quite so stomach\nchurning as having to digest the guffaws of old white men in their\ncontempt for other people. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every morning they never tipped and\ndrove away customers with their blowhard swaggering. They never put\nchange in the containers to support the animal shelter, food bank, or\nthe senior at the high school who wanted to travel abroad and\nvolunteer at a leper colony. They gathered in the town’s only place\nwhere a few of the county’s progressives met to survive. They wanted\nthe progressives to see them in their numbers, their all knowing,\ntheir clairvoyance, their mastery of facts that everyone was blind to\nexcept the Russian teenagers inventing them online from a warehouse\nin Minsk while swigging vodka and watching pornography. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every morning they farted through their\nmouths toxic clouds that poisoned anyone in the shop. The ants died.\nSo did the mint hanging in a pot from the window. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every morning they all agreed on every\nissue. NO ONE ever questioned the opinion of another because there\nwas only one opinion. No one at the Trump Table ever uttered a single\noriginal idea or insight. They had none. They didn’t think. They had\nlost that ability. Everything was scripted. Everything in their\nbrains had been expertly programmed after 20 years of watching Fox\nNews. Their hearts had atrophied. Their souls were sick. They lived\ninside a vacuum, an echo chamber. They were canned hams as human\nbeings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every morning they managed not to use\nthe word nigger<\/em>, bitch<\/em>, faggot<\/em> or wetback<\/em>\nduring their broadcast and somehow to them this demonstrated their\nsocial progress since the days of lynchings and church bombings. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And every morning, Jennifer the 29-year\nold owner and barista at the Zane Gray Coffee Shop, had to listen to\ntheir vitriol and vendettas, witness their petulance and posturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not this morning, a week before\nChristmas. She was mad as hell and wasn’t going to listen to it\nanymore. She could have just demanded they leave and never return,\nbut in a way, they would have cherished that persecution<\/em>, the\nmartyrdom<\/em> of it all, and Jennifer didn’t want to give in or\ntruck with their delusions of grandeur. No, there had to be another\nway to handle them. She was not without hope that there remained\nsomething decent lurking inside these old white men. If only one\nmolecule. Why did she believe this? Well, it was Christmas for\nchrissakes! Peace and tidings of good joy toward all old angry white\nmen and all that jingle fake news jazz. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What finally pushed Jennifer over the\nedge? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, it wasn’t their screed about\nSatan’s spawns attempt to crucify the Christ out of Christmas. No, it\nwasn’t their belief that the Messiah was actually a blue-eyed,\nblonde-haired white dude who trumpeted the virtues of capitalism in\nhis dusty wanderings. No, it wasn’t their declaration that Die\nHard<\/em> was the greatest Christmas movie of all time. No, it wasn’t\neven them wearing MAGA Santa hats, although seeing that did induce\nnausea. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was: that very morning the old white\nmen had made fun of a kid with Down’s Syndrome after he sang Silent\nNight<\/em> in the coffee shop and butchered it. After the kid left,\nJennifer shot three double espressos in the aftermath, seethed, and\nschemed how she was going to confront the table. How do you confront\nthis kind of reckless, lockstep, jackboot, divisive, diseased, self\ncongratulatory behavior that Hermann Goring would have applauded? How\ndo you confront it if the goal of confrontation is to enact positive\nchange and not just spill more anger into an already angry America?\nTrump people live to lap up more anger! \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer watched the table. The men\nyukked it up. She palmed her face and twisted her long brown hair. A\nstrategy swam to the surface of her mind. It swam like an sea otter\nwho poked his bewhiskered face barely above water and looks ready to\nget into mischief. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She removed her apron, turned off the\nthe Christmas music, and darted out from behind the counter. She\ndidn’t say a word of explanation as she passed three customers\nwaiting in line. Jennifer marched up to Trump Table. She knew all the\nold white men and they all knew her. She’d grown up on the Rogue\nRiver and won a dozen titles in track and field in high school. She\nhunted and fished and grew super dope weed. She’d returned to the\ncoast and her family after graduating from Oregon State with a degree\nin botany and wanted to open the first pot shop in town. But the old\nwhite men who ran the city council like a medieval fiefdom hated pot\nand thwarted all attempts at recreational shops with a series of\nabsurd and expensive ordinances that made it impossible to start a\nbusiness. Jennifer had spent many an evening testifying in vain. She\ngave up and opened a coffee shop instead. It quickly became the most\npopular joint in town, and not long thereafter, the reactionaries\ndecamped there to unwittingly ruin it. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men stopped talking when Jennifer\nappeared at the table. She knew many older Americans weren’t like\nthem. In fact, they represented a minority. That’s why she was\nstanding at the table. She wasn’t giving up on them. She didn’t\nremember old angry men like this in her youth. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGentlemen,\u201d she said, \u201cfor the\npast couple of years I’ve listened to your constant and annoying\nbitching about America. In my shop. Every morning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not bad.<\/em> Keep it rolling<\/em>.\nKeep it calm<\/em>. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut I haven’t heard a single thing\nyou’re doing about it in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone in the shop stopped their\nconversations or fiddling on their gadgets and turned to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer continued. \u201cInstead of\nbitching around this table, I want you to go out today, starting\nright now<\/em>, and perform some kind of random act of Christmas\nkindness. Then come back tomorrow and talk about that. Free coffee\ntomorrow and brownies if you do. Let’s call it the Christmas Kindness\nChallenge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christmas Kindness Challenge!<\/em>\nWhere had that come from?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt only has to\nlast one day. One act.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one at the table responded. They\nlooked at the containers on the counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer saw them looking. \u201cNo,\nthat’s not good enough. Get off your ass. And you can’t know the\nperson, either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That hadn’t been part of her original\nscheme, but it was now. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence settled over the room. It was\nthick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A transient appeared outside the\nwindow, a regular. He was pushing a baby stroller full of cans. He\npassed the coffee shop every morning at about this time. The nearest\nstore to redeem the cans was over a mile away. No one knew his name\nor story, but the table loved to joke about him. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGo give that guy a ride,\u201d said\nJennifer, pointing to the transient. \u201cThat’s a great place to\nstart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the men started to get up, but\nsat back down. Maybe he wanted to act. Maybe he just couldn’t muster\nthe courage and slice a way out the canned ham. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell,\u201d said Jennifer. \u201cDo you\naccept?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing. The men stared at each other. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you accept?\u201d said Jennifer. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer stood there. The rest of the\npatrons watched and waited, waiting for the men at the Trump Table to\nnot <\/em>turn this story into an existential Christmas tale,\nbecause nobody wants to read that. We want sweet transcendence in our\ntransforming tales of bitter Americans and desperately want to\nbelieve they remain a possibility. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every morning an hour after the Zane Gray Coffee Shop opened, old white men from Pistol River gathered around a table to hold court on the state of the nation as they saw it, as they positively knew it with the surety of gravity and the belief that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5626"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5629,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626\/revisions\/5629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}