the bomb

"You know, we ought to tell the Russians to go ahead and drop the bomb on New York. Do us all a favor and kill a few million liberals," said Grandad one evening at dinner. He laughed, and others laughed for the same or different reasons. He was very conservative. I remember talking to him in early 1991 just after the end of the Gulf War and he mentioned they were having a victory party. I had ridden about 10 hours in a van full of students to Washington DC to march against that war. It was strange to hear about a victory party for this war which I thought was unjust and politically motivated. It just didn't make sense to me to celebrate such a thing. I remember now people spoke of the redemption of the military with this victory after the loss in Vietnam, and wondered if this really meant that much to the conservative mind. I thought back to visiting in the summer and being there on the fourth of July for fireworks, cookouts and parades. I wondered if the victory party would have flags, fireworks and cocktails. It seemed so removed from this remote war that was waged on TV. Recently I remembered this and I wondered how Grandad would have thought of the current administration. I wondered if he would have been a "never Trumper" of the old guard, or if he would have embraced the bellicose America first attitude of President Trump. Previously, I came to the conclusion that being a judge and taking the law seriously, he might have taken a dim view of how the Trump administration did what it wanted even when it might not be within the law. But when I remembered his "drop the bomb" joke, I wonder if he wouldn't have supported the "let's show the liberals" tactics of Trump. I wondered if he would have supported efforts to stop counting votes, or to discount mail-in ballots, or to just sue for anything in any state which is close to get a case before the Supreme Court with its conservative majority. It's easy to make a joke about killing a few million liberals in a stable society where such a thing would never happen.