Wednesday, October 5, 2016

My Trip to Feast of the Hunters' Moon or Discussion With A Wall

Last weekend, starting on Friday, I went with an Away Team from the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, journeying for 530+ miles and ten hours (and a bit of change) with four other people in a ten-passenger Ford Van, towing a 14-foot trailer from Minneapolis, MN to West Lafayette, IN. Our destination was Historic Fort Ouiatenon Park outside West Lafayette, where we'd be camping for the next two nights. Once we arrived, set-up was in order: two canvas wall tents for sleeping, cots and bags and gear related to tenting, and gear for two days' worth of activity. Activity which also needed a tent, a 14-foot canvas affair with a full wall to house tables, shelves, seating- everything you need to demonstrate and sell at an event.

The event? The 49th annual Feast of the Hunters' Moon, a re-creation of the annual fall gathering of the French and Native Americans which took place at Fort Ouiatenon, a fur-trading outpost in the mid - 1700s. It is held annually in early autumn on the banks of the Wabash River, four miles southwest of West Lafayette, Indiana.

The 13-hour day was rough, made more so by the fact that I was (and still am) battling an ear infection and bronchitis, but it eased and moderated when we were finished setting up and could relax for a while before the show began the next day. Cocktails were had. Cards Against Humanity was played. Hilarity ensued.

Saturday was busy, as it always is at this event. We wound up hosting some re-enactors, as we always do at this event. One group came in and played Pope Joan, a multi-player game good for filling in spaces between re-enactment. It's historically accurate as well, so they bought a set. One of them came back later to fetch the woman from whom they'd bought it for help - she's a bona-fide people person and a collector of people, and in the course of helping them to refine their understanding of the game, she befriended them.

Jump to after-hours: dinner in our bellies, cocktails in hand, playing Cards Against Humanity again, and one of the re-enactors stopped in to say hi. He stayed for a bit, talked for a bit, then left to refill his own cocktail. Our staff - the one who'd gone to play the game with them - was worried that we'd scared him off with our CAH shenanigans, what with the raunchiness of the game. She forgot about that in the buzz of other activity, and the game went on.

We moved on to other after-hours catching-up pursuits after our game was finished, the rest of the staff and our guests eventually drifting off to bed as it got later. I was up with our camp cook, about to call it a night myself, when our new re-enactor friend came back. We talked for a bit, then he got around to what he'd really wanted to say in coming back: he'd overheard some of our talk throughout the day and he realized that we're not, but he's definitely going to be voting for Trump.

Oof.

For my own part, I can't fathom how anyone can support him. Period.

That in mind, though, it struck me as an interesting opportunity: I've asked a number of times why anyone would, in a number of different settings. The most common response? None at all. I thought I might get a chance to hear a different side.

I was glad that both women who'd made the trip were already asleep, though - the very notion of Trump support immediately shuts them down almost completely, and I fear there'd have been an ugly scene had either or both of them been awake. As it was, the camp cook and I listened to our new friend lay out his reasoning.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not as much a follower of politics as I should be. While I could have refuted his points with "No! You're wrong!", I refrained. Our camp cook is well-versed in many things, political discourse included. He handled much of the rebuttal eloquently and calmly as I listened, but our friend was unswayed. Indeed, he seemed not to be listening to any of it.

Without going into a lot of detail, the re-enactor's support stems mostly from his displeasure with The State Of Things. Fair enough, that.

He interrupted himself countless times to disclaim, "Do I support everything that he says? Fuck no!", which I took to be his way of discarding the most unsavory portions of a disturbing collage of wholly-unsavory philosophy. Eventually his main motivation came out: he and his wife run a cleaning business which employs a handful of people, and he can't afford insurance for his employees or for himself.

Naturally, that fuckin' Obamacare is to blame.

With a $15 minimum wage, he'd have to raise his rates to the point where he'd price himself out of the market.

Naturally, Trump is the answer.

He'd hear nothing to the contrary. Respectful/non-abusive attempts to illustrate problems with Trump immediately shut him down almost completely, and had the camp cook - who'd timed out on our friend's shutdown - or I dug in our heels, an ugly scene might well have followed. As it was, we were still friendly enough despite our differences as he began to beg off, citing the lateness of the hour, but we became as heated as we would get that night when he said, "And that Black Lives Matter bullshit - pull up your pants and get a fuckin' job!".

Then I did dig in, and without making a long story longer, I laid out a defense for my postion: no freedom 'til we're equal.

And it was like talking to a wall - my increase in emphasis and volume had little effect other than what you'd expect from emphatic loudness in an encampment of canvas tents in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. So I pushed in the clutch, we agreed to disagree, and we shook hands.

In the epilogue, I'm struck by his willingness to grasp a couple of vague promises and outright dismiss so much negativity and dishonesty. I'm struck by his willingness to put his own interests before that of 325 million other people. I'm struck by his belief that anyone claiming unfair conditions should sit down and shut up. I'm struck by his refusal to entertain any contrary notion, even briefly.

But I learned something.