Red State Blues Read online

  From its very origins, when Nathaniel Pope shifted the state’s border to balance southerners with northerners, Illinois was never designed to be a monolithic state. We’re not Nebraska or Delaware. In its nearly 500-mile run from Galena to Metropolis, Illinois cuts across multiple linguistic, cultural, and topographic regions. Illinois is Yankee and southerner, Catholic and Baptist, immigrant and native, town and country, Great Lakes, prairie, and foothills. Illinois’s demographics are closer to the national average than any state’s. We’re the middle of Middle America. That’s why “Will it play in Peoria?” means “Will it appeal to the average American?” It’s also the source of Illinois’s unique role in American history, as the proving ground for racial progress. Abraham Lincoln won the Republican nomination for president because he was seen as a candidate who could reconcile the conflicting views of slavery held by the north, the midlands, and the upper south of the country, all represented in Illinois. Barack Obama prepared to sell himself as the nation’s first black president by selling himself to the diverse voters of Illinois—who have elected more black members of Congress than those of any state. Illinois is riven by the same urban-rural animosities that have divided the rest of America, but it’s also the perfect laboratory for figuring out how to overcome them. Chicago and downstate need to stick together, because the rest of the country needs us together too.

  FAMILY IS FOREVER

  BLOOD IS THICKER

  DANA ARITONOVICH

  Uncle George was lying on the floor in his hallway when a friend saw him through the window as she approached the front door. He was carrying a roll of paper towels from one room to another when his legs suddenly weakened. Once his body was down, he couldn’t get himself back up. It was the day before Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump was elected the next president of the United States of America.

  A few weeks later, we learned that Uncle George had cancer. By February, he was gone.

  I never found out if he voted early.

  As a first-generation American who grew up in a politically conservative outer ring Cleveland suburb, surrounded by chain restaurants, strip malls, and plain white people as far as the eye could see, I sensed that conformity was the key to getting along. But I was never one to keep my mouth shut when I had an opinion.

  My grandparents were Democrats from the time they became American citizens. My grandfather thought that choosing your own government was the most incredible thing in the world, and he knew that was what made America great. He was around twenty years old when conscripted into Tito’s Communist Yugoslav Army in World War II. He despised Communism and eventually went AWOL to join the rebel Četniks and fight alongside the Allies. The rest of our family seemed to perceive Democrats as being too close to commies on the political spectrum, and since they could never return to the old country for fear of retribution from Tito’s dictatorship, they wanted to stay away from anything remotely left-wing. But for my grandparents, there was something about the Democratic Party that appealed to them. They thought Republicans were full of shit.

  Serbs are loud and opinionated and eager to start arguments about all the things you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company. During family gatherings, the men are usually yelling about politics over beers and shots while the women are in the kitchen yelling about everything else. When I was in eighth grade one of my mother’s cousins, a staunch conservative and a Teamster, asked me at a holiday dinner whether I supported the Contras or the Sandinistas. Ollie North was in the news every day and Johnny Carson made jokes about Fawn Hall, so I had a general idea that the U.S. government was involved with some sort of shady weapons deal. But I didn’t know how to answer the question. Thank God my mom, well-versed in current events and packing decades of experience defending her views, stepped in to show me how it was done. It was at this moment that I realized I had to study much harder before visiting the relatives so I could talk politics with the grown folks.

  When Michael Dukakis ran in 1988, I was all in right away. He was Greek, so my Serb senses were excited. He was also, to me, super liberal, and that sealed the deal. My parents and grandparents were ready to pull the lever for him that November, and I got into a lot of arguments at school for supporting such a lefty. I excitedly stayed up all night watching the election results, confident that we’d be seeing an Orthodox Easter in the White House for at least the next four years, and I was devastated when he lost. Four years later, I cast my first vote ever for Jerry Brown. I wasn’t too sure about that Clinton guy, but after his acceptance speech at the convention that summer I was excited about him. I worked for his campaign that fall, and saw him—from very far away—speak at my campus a week before the election.

  The Clintons have never been popular with Serbs. Yugoslavia broke up and war began the year before Bill was elected, and it was quite fashionable for American politicians to be anti-Serb. I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for him a second time because of his administration’s ignorant actions regarding the former Yugoslavia. Serbs are not inclined to forgive and forget, and are understandably still resentful. Many have long harbored a hatred for Hillary in part due to her alleged role in influencing her husband’s anti-Serb stances. But it wasn’t until Barack Obama ran for president that I noticed a shift in the tone of relatives who were always flapping their right wings. I don’t remember Uncle George ever saying much about politics except for union stuff (and he didn’t have much good to say), so his political transformation was pretty startling.

  I didn’t really look at anyone differently because of their political views until Obama was elected. (Thanks, Obama!) Prior to that, I would jokingly recoil in disgust when somebody told me they voted for one of the Bushes or McCain-Palin. Not that I never judged anyone by their politics, because I sure as hell did; some opinions deserve judgment. But there was such an ugliness, such an overt hostility toward President Obama. It’s no secret why that was, but not everyone wanted to admit it. But I just knew that all the haters were racist assholes who failed government class and probably beat their wives. Decent people couldn’t possibly hold these views.

  Uncle George loved The Beatles and The Who, played in a band called The Deadbeet’s (unnecessary apostrophe and all) when he was a teenager, and bought me the first Led Zeppelin boxed set when I was in high school. He shopped at Marc’s all the time and went to Indians games with us for 25 years, never leaving early because he didn’t want my mom and my sisters and me to walk back to the garage without him. When I was fortysomething and having car trouble, he told me to let him know if I needed a ride and he’d get up well before his normal 3:00 p.m. wakeup call to drive the thirty minutes to my place and take me to work. For my parents’ fortieth anniversary dinner, he grabbed the check and paid for all ten of us without blinking an eye. He randomly brought me cases of bottled water when he found them on sale really cheap. A few years ago, I began writing for a friend’s new LGBT magazine, and when I posted my first article my uncle shared it on his Facebook page. One day, he slipped me some cash when I needed it most and told me my dearly departed grandmother wanted me to have it.

  But Uncle George was also waiting for Obummer to take away his guns and enact sharia law across the country. For eight years, he forwarded thousands of emails with patriotic quotes falsely attributed to Paul Harvey, questionable conspiracy theories about President Obama’s secret Muslim wedding ring, and dire warnings about scary illegal immigrants living on welfare and voting for the dastardly Democrats who encouraged them to flood across the border to birth criminal anchor babies. At a three-year-old cousin’s birthday party, he claimed that the Saudi government was paying families $250K a year to move to America and have children so that by 2020 we would be a majority-Muslim nation. When I asked him for the source of this ridiculous claim he hesitated to respond, but eventually sneered that he saw it on “the internet.”

  His Facebook posts were mostly absurd articles from right-wing websites, with the occasional family picture thrown
in for good measure. When I challenged the fake news he shared online, a friend of his would mansplain and call me uneducated, Uncle George never replied. I’d post evidence that proved everything in his various posts was wrong, but still, he never wrote a word in response.

  It was upsetting to see somebody I loved willfully suffocating themselves in such filth, consciously choosing to believe these outrageous lies and obviously Photoshopped pictures. So I decided, for my own sanity, to stop following him on Facebook as the 2016 election drew nearer and his posts grew increasingly deplorable. I would never have deleted him altogether, of course, but I did delete—and block—another older male family member who made a rape joke when the “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape was released. Several other relatives of the Republican persuasion deleted me from their friends list during Obama’s second term, but nothing was ever said about it and nothing seemed different between us when we saw each other in the real world. There were still hugs and kisses and laughter over succulent roasted pig and warm krofne.

  I wasn’t surprised that so many of my relatives were excited about Donald Trump. But I was still disgusted by their support—and amazed at our shared DNA. It hurt my heart to try to reconcile how people I had always known as honorable, hardworking, and family-oriented could cling to these abhorrent opinions. How could such an excellent father and husband praise a man who bragged about assaulting women? Why would an educated, well-placed young lady give her vote to a womanizer who wanted to take away her right to decide what to do with her own body? When did an immigrant from a small village without toilets, a man who, after more than fifty years in the U.S., still sounds like a Serbian Ricky Ricardo, whose citizenship was sponsored by his own brother who came to America as a refugee, decide that his candidate would be the one yelling the most ferociously about refusing entry to refugees and only allowing people who already spoke English or had a college education into the country? What did I not understand about them after knowing them my whole life?

  Uncle George and I never talked politics again once we knew he had that bastard cancer in his body. It felt like a decision we somehow made, silently, together. It was impressive that he didn’t gloat about Trump’s victory, but if there happened to be a Trump story on the news when we visited him in the nursing home, none of us said a word. He was usually watching American Pickers and other nonpartisan fare anyway, instead of the Fox News he had streamed 24 hours a day at home. I wondered if he wanted to argue so we could pretend everything was normal. Could I make a snotty comment to provoke him into battling it out with me? How I wished he had the energy to fight.

  After he died, we realized that he had been sick for a lot longer than we knew. He had grown into a grumpy old man even though he was only 66 when he took his last breath, but he was also very private and independent and didn’t want us to worry about him. He wanted everything to be as it always was.

  Now, I get even more anxious before family events. I pray that nobody brings up whatever political story is dominating the news, but I still study so I can shut down anyone who starts some shit. I’d rather hear about babies and food and everyone’s health problems. How are the new meds are working out? What’s going on with your asshole neighbor? I’d love to hear listen to another story about you beating up a kid in seventh grade! Please, anything but current events. We’re not really who we vote for. Right? Besides, blood is thicker than politics.

  AN ODE TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, THE SECRET JEW WHO DIED OF SYPHILIS

  TRENT KAY MAVERICK

  A few weeks after the election, I’m at my father’s nice house in the suburbs, talking politics over sushi and wine. Fox News blares from the other room, while his wife reads dubious articles out loud from her Facebook feed about Muslim hordes attacking nursery schools with machetes and drinking the blood of Israeli babies. His in-laws jabber in a mix of English and Russian, gloating less over their recent political victory than my apparent loss. And my father, bless his heart, calls me a “liberal cupcake,” having misheard the slur somewhere.

  I live in Beachwood, a clean, safe, well-off suburb on the east side of Cleveland that’s probably, and no stretch here, 90 percent Jewish. Seventh grade was an endless parade of catered Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties complete with custom-printed yarmulkes, disco versions of “Hava Nagila,” and kosher buffets. My father is a doctor, one brother each a lawyer and a CPA, just as God intended. I can still recite a three-hour Shabbat Shacharit service from memory, and whatever it is, I’m not buying it until it goes on sale.

  My father has been a Republican for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I considered him a curiosity, a political aberration in the overwhelmingly blue county that encompasses downtown Cleveland and its suburbs. When my parents were still together, they would go to the polls every election to cancel out each other’s votes. Growing up I trotted out the line that my pro-choice, professional, educated, Jewish father “voted his wallet”—it wasn’t that my father hated the gays, exactly, it’s that he liked his money more. At least, that’s what I believed.

  My father remarried when I was in my twenties, to a Russian Jew who started out a dirt poor and illiterate immigrant, and now makes six figures as an anesthesiologist. Her parents remind me of my grandparents, with the same thick accents and grooved facial features, the same taste for fermented fish and weak tea. They are traditional and judgmental and gently sexist, nurturing yet patronizing at the same time … and, to my initial surprise, hard-core right-wingers.

  Before the election, I saw my father, smart and Jewish and somehow tempted by the right, as an anomaly. I imagined his fellow Republicans were mostly poor, angry, gun-toting, Bible-thumping, rural and disenfranchised, and definitely, definitely not Jewish. I couldn’t believe there were more conservatives out there like my nerdy, nebbishy father and like his wife and in-laws, too.

  My father was born in Israel in the 1950s, to young Holocaust survivors who met and fell in love in the new Jewish state, then set their sights on America. He is emblematic of the American dream: He arrived in this country at age two, the son of a devout carpenter and a mother who never learned to drive, both of whom spoke Yiddish exclusively in the home. He excelled in school, and though he maintains to this day that he was denied admission to a certain Ivy League university because he was Jewish, he went to medical school and now makes more money than I ever will.

  And yet here he is a few decades later, parroting blatantly ridiculous (and thoroughly debunked) statistics to me about how 25 percent of all Muslims are radicalized or how 80 percent of white homicide victims are murdered by black people, or how outdated voter registration information allowed three million people to vote illegally.

  My father’s wife came to America to escape communist Russia. Now she’s first in line with the Muslim panic. When I go to London to visit a close friend, she warns about Muslims bearing bombs in airports and how it’s not safe for Americans to travel abroad, though I’m statistically more likely to be killed by some white guy right here at home. When she reads that a presidential executive order has enacted the Muslim ban, her mother, who barely speaks English, simply announces, “Goot!”

  The cherry on top is when her father, speaking in his heavy accent, proclaims that “the Mexicans” entering this country should be forced to learn the language or be deported, and his wife responds affirmatively, enthusiastically, in Russian.

  It’s at around this time that, emboldened, he further informs us that Christopher Columbus, zealous expansionist and torturer and mass-murderer of Native Americans, was actually a secret Jew.

  “Hmm, sounds like bullshit,” we all say, and out comes the iPad.

  Now my father’s wife is on the Internet, searching for evidence of this claim. It amounts to a few suspicious symbols in private letters and weird requests in Columbus’s will. It’s a tinfoil theory that a Jewish Columbus pretended to convert during the Inquisition but secretly remained loyal to his faith, and even planned to resettle the Jewish community in the New World. It’s
flimsy and fantastical at best. In fact, the more we read, the more it seems Columbus was very, very Christian. He promoted the conversion of native people, quoted Bible verses in his writings, and even considered his explorations a fulfillment of Catholic prophecy.

  But, “No, no,” the old man insists, despite all evidence to the contrary. He read it on the Internet, so it must be true.

  “What ever happened to Columbus?” I ask, hoping to change the subject.

  In chimes my father, “Everyone knows Columbus died of syphilis.” And we’re back on the iPad. His wife finds numerous articles blaming Columbus for the precipitous spread of syphilis in the New World, but alas, the man himself died of gout. Still my father holds firm. Gout, he says, is clearly a cover-up. I mean, no one wants to say the man who discovered America died of syphilis. Besides, he says, “Everyone in those days died of syphilis.” To my father, the gout thing is the ultimate fake news.

  In the era of alternative facts, here are two intelligent, cosmopolitan Jews refusing to back down from some insignificant nonsense they read on the Internet, holding fast to false claims that seem unlikely in the face of mounting evidence. How are they supposed to now critically analyze and dismiss propaganda about Muslims and blacks and immigrants and those pesky liberals and whatever else is pissing them off this week?