Red and Blue Estrangered Families

Dear Siblings Three, I was reading a story in which some siblings became estranged after their parents died, while others moved toward greater solidarity. This is a variation on a diaspora story. But, here growing physical distance is seen more as a geographic effect than a political cause of growing estrangement on one side, and solidarity on the other. Emigration out toward others of like faith systems and re-immigration of siblings back toward each other, circling our tribal wagons, for now it is our turn for that Great Transition into mere grandparent mortality, to go out toward this mortal threatening night better informed together than estranged alone. I thought of how true this is for me, with my three siblings; an older brother and sister from whom I feel estranged, and a younger sister whose mind and heart, spirit and nature, have always been and yet still become as resonant Sacred One. If I used speed dial on my smart ginger phone, she would be first on my contacts list. My African-American husband would be a slightly distant second. By contrast, if older siblings ever called, my screen would only show Michigan or Texas because I have never put them in my contacts list. This, for me, defines estranged as contrasted with extended family solidarity. Why we are as we are we have never discussed. And I wonder if I will regret this should any one of you fade back into MotherEarth before I do. I suppose this sibling divide may have to do with competing faith systems, straight deductions v gay transgendering inductions, rather than exploring cooperative, and mutually appreciative, multiculturing polypathic faith systems. But I have no idea whether Elders would agree with this hypothesis of prime underclass women cause, or might include this in a larger bag of history and patriarchally divine enculturation I have not thought of, or perhaps have not yet learned to distortedly see. So, when I was compiling a list of Republicans I know well enough to ask who they voted for in our most recent Presidential selection, and how are we feeling now about those choices, two of the four people I could imagine asking, and yet not without some fear and terror, wonder and awe, risk of more negative opportunities, are my own estranged elder siblings. This leaves me wondering how we will grow healthier as Earth's #1 consumer of fossil-based dwindling nonrenewable energy and #1 producer of global climate pathologies, per capita, if we don't even talk about this as families estranged from each other's health-wealth faith systems sharing one red-reductive/blue-seductive national, and preferably green-civil reborn citizenship. Faith systems, if they are about good healthy faith, should produce our own lives of growing integrity and faith in healthy well-grown futures for our resonantly happy children and resilient EarthTribe committed grandchildren. So it is, I am asking both two older and one younger grateful graceful peers, Who did you vote for President last year, or who would you have voted for, in case you didn't bother? And how are you thinking/feeling about that preference now, approaching one year later? I'll start, and invite each of you to respond in kind, rather than writing in response to my story, or to each other's. We can move toward compare and contrast later, as a second cooperative stage in a national dialogue, if we each survive this familial competition first. I would have voted for Hillary if I had found my new polling place before it so rudely closed, right after I finally wrestled my egomaniacal daughter into bed. During both the Obama and Clinton administrations, Hillary was the primary architect, or at least one of just two or three, of diverse attempts to actually pass what would ideally have become universal health care legislation through a typically constipated bicameral Congress. It also seemed to me that she extends her economic and political investments in health care giving and receiving to environmental health care giving and receiving issues, concerns, and ecological opportunities to explore WinWin bicameral solutions for both Republican conservators in defense of humane physical, and mental, and spiritual health; and Democratic libertines of equal health and thrival opportunities of and for all species. I erroneously thought the Republican candidate was unlikely to win because he ran against all of the above, so at least the large majority of women voters, traditionally strong on family and community health care issues, would find Donald John to be predative anathema, both ecologically and sacred matriarchally. So, how I am feeling now, as a Green Connecticut State resident, is angry, and terrified that what was Presidential campaign promised continues to be my nightmares of cosmological disaster and monocultural nationalistic threat, And therefore compelled to do everything I can to facilitate all of us WinWin learning as much from this competing WinLose economic and ecological and political miscalculation as possible, as quickly as possible, seeking 2020 critical certainty before 2020 reaches its ultimate November selection. We are a two BlueState, two RedState family, although Michigan is more ambiguous, I doubt our Michigan Republican experience is peculiarly ambiguous. If we can talk about this in a mutually appreciative way, a cooperative integrity potential which can only last through all four lifelines, perhaps we can help set a more harmonic bicameral tone for and with our other increasingly estranged States, and 2020 bicameral families.