Summary
This is not another Trump voter conversation. It’s not an end-point or a neat conclusion to the series. This is Lea crying into her iPhone at 10pm on a Tuesday because she doesn’t know what to conclude, how to mend, where to go. It’s a messy, confessional audio letter about kidney stones, sea urchins, The … Continue reading Dear Diary →
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, sorry I disappeared from our Trump-Land debate on Facebook. I've been really sick with this terrible flank pain, which I don't think I can blame entirely on Donald Trump as much as I'd like to. It's probably a kidney stone, the doctors say, and that makes sense, symptom-wise, |
| 0:21.6 | and also as a kind of metaphor, |
| 0:23.6 | or as a physical manifestation of the difficulty of this whole Trump-land endeavor. |
| 0:29.6 | Because doing this series has felt a lot like passing a foreign, jagged object through a soft narrow space. |
| 0:39.3 | And some nights when I've been awake in pain, |
| 0:42.0 | I've entered a foggy state where these two thorns in my side have become virtually indistinguishable, |
| 0:48.4 | and I've wondered if my entire ailment stemmed from the effort of trying to bridge our nation's divide. |
| 0:56.8 | One source of pain has been the anger I've received from both sides. |
| 1:01.2 | Liberals who were furious with me for, quote, giving air time to those fascists, |
| 1:06.4 | and conservatives who felt that I had revealed myself to be a hysterical, intolerant, imbecile. |
| 1:12.4 | But honestly, that hasn't been the worst of it. Sure, it's things in the moment and there's an |
| 1:16.6 | urge to defend oneself. But Lord knows, our two Trump voters, Alicia and Eugene, have felt plenty of that, |
| 1:23.4 | too. And it's sort of inevitable, given the territory, I think. Plus, there's been a lot of love |
| 1:28.7 | to balance it out. No, the real pain is the pain that prompted me to attempt this series in the |
| 1:33.6 | first place, which is the magnitude of the rift we're in, and my own limited ability to do anything |
| 1:39.7 | about it. Which sounds crazy because who the hell am I that I thought I could mend this? I mean, |
| 1:45.6 | come on. And I don't think I even knew that's what I was trying to do, or I didn't admit it, |
| 1:50.7 | you know, but I'm about to share some really embarrassing tape with you that I think clearly |
| 1:56.0 | reveals how on some level I did think that I could help. |
| 2:05.8 | Music how on some level I did think that I could help. So I often keep an audio journal, right? |
| 2:08.2 | I talk to myself and I record it. |
| 2:10.2 | And in these audio journals, I'm always talking to you guys, |
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