(The Full Story)

The Visitor

We had a visitor in Allentown prior to the 2024 election.

Two blocks from The Baum School of Art in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I teach a class about Conceptual Abstraction.

I know the neighborhood well.

It’s not as though I would actually travel to a Trump rally. This was my hometown. Familiar territory. I even had a parking space at the school.

I asked friends to come with me because I was scared to go alone. Would I stand out? Would I be visible as an interloper?

My blue friends said, “No way.” They would not go.

My red friends—that would involve me too much.

I didn’t want to participate. I was there to observe.

So I went alone.

I was surprised by the open-door policy at the rally.

No RSVP seemed necessary. I had one via email, but no one asked to see it. Once inside, there appeared to be virtually no security.

I was glad I had come alone. The lack of restriction allowed me to wander freely, observe, and shoot without attracting much attention. Without a press pass, I couldn’t bring my Nikon, so I was limited to my iPhone.

As I moved through the crowd, I listened to the speeches of his supporters and, eventually, to the voice of Uncle Donny himself.

The crowd was captivated.

They were eating out of his hand.

I had the feeling that he would be the next President.

I was brought back to the dinner table of my 1980s childhood home in New Jersey.

My entire family gathered around an oval-shaped table. My father—God rest his soul—sat at the head.

My dad was a conservative patriarch.

What should the presidency look like in the United States in 2024?

And why, standing at a political rally decades later, was I suddenly thinking about the patriarchal dinner table of my childhood?

We tend to use the familiar as a default setting when making decisions.

Many Americans chose this president.

Let’s hope that disagreement doesn’t mean being banished to our rooms in tears, while he remains seated at the head of the table.

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