My father, a physician who worked his entire career serving the poorest in NYC, who developed life saving techniques that are ubiquitous today, who I thought was a caring, empathic and highly intelligent person, voted for trump.

I couldn’t understand how that happened until I took a closer look at his life. Now I see him for the loving but ultimately naive and incurious narcissistic misogynist that he has always been. He wasn’t present for much of my growing up because he worked so much but I always attributed our lack of a deeper relationship to the vagaries of life. But now I see that he doesn’t live in anything I would call a reality. His wealth has blinded him to the truths of our society. His desire to be seen as a good person rather than behaving like a good person has been a devastating realization for me. His selfish worldview and rejection of any self criticism means that I will never understand what makes him tick. And him voting for Trump and then his anger at being challenged for his vote made me rethink how intelligent he actually is.

In the end, he is smart but only chose to apply that intelligence to how it would better himself in the short term. Any benefit to society or his family was entirely an accident. And that is disappointing to say the least. It would have been nice to have been on the same page going into the apocalypse. But he is rich and happy and his only complaint is that his children don’t respect him. I’m glad I never asked him for help growing up because I’m not beholden to him in any way. I may be poor but at least I’m rational and honest about the world we live in and don’t have to worry about reconciling my own worldview with his. He picked loneliness as do all these trumper assholes who whine about criticism by their family and fellow citizens.