The Repair Guy Bares his Politics

 

He was there to patch a crack in our foundation.

It was a tricky job that had, over the course of a year, vexed several other repair guys who were supposed to know what they were doing. The foundation was still under warranty, so we didn’t much care how many tries it took, as long it got fixed.

But our builder, who was ultimately responsible for the warranty, wanted to get this off his plate, so he finally splurged and sent in Bill, the foundation whisperer. Every trade has one, the go-to guy, the hotshot who’s more expensive, but worth it. As Bill was happy to tell us himself.

Fifty-something, loud and gregarious, oozing self-confidence, he looked over the crack, turned up his nose at the previous repairs, then told us he’d have it fixed in an hour and a half. Which he proceeded to do, and apparently quite well, though we haven’t yet had enough rain to really test the repair.

All of which would have added up to a reasonably satisfying experience if we could only stop looking at the Trump cap on his head.

Not the usual red MAGA cap, but a specialty piece of merch, a faux camo motif with a big “Trump 2024” in all caps, next to an American flag that clashed with the camo. We tried not to stare.

It was grotesque on many levels, but we were civil, even gracious, as we declined to tell him what we were thinking. But I sure wondered what he was thinking.

My father was the first to warn me of the perils of mixing business with either politics or religion, and I’ve found that to be sage advice, sometimes the hard way. But this guy was clearly a piece of work.

What sort of person would wear a hat like that in a business where you’re out serving customers? He must know that it attracts attention, so we can only assume he means it to. Either he’s completely oblivious, or he has to know that it’s provocative, especially in a blue county. Apparently being provocative was intended.

So what was that about? Was he testing us? I’m guessing there are homes he visits where the hat is a great conversation starter, where the customer sees it and offers Bill a cold one.

But to a Trump hater — and we are legion — that hat is an instant buzz-kill, a conversation non-starter. It’s almost like he’s inviting confrontation, like he was daring us to ask him to take his hat off, so he could say fuck you and walk off the job.

Not that we were ever likely to engage in such a confrontation. Sure, in a bad movie, I would’ve set him straight, exposed his ignorance, skewered him with my rapier wit, and had him tithing to the DNC by the time he finished the job. But he was holding my foundation hostage, so I spared him. I didn’t react at all.

The thing is, a non-reaction is itself a reaction. Our silence was surely a tell. By wearing his politics on his sleeve, he exposed ours as well. We had no say in it.

But why? Why would he put himself in that position? Why would he even want to know our politics?

Perhaps Trump’s signature accomplishment has been to bring politics into everyday life in a way it was never meant to be. Before Trump, politics was not generally seen as a mark of character, or as something that might intrude on a business transaction.

But the nonstop shitshow of the Trump presidency and its aftermath has painted a bright line between two starkly different realities, governed by two starkly different moral codes. This leaves those of us who are “normal” — or whatever the opposite of “weird” is — uncomfortably wary of any encounter with someone openly on the other side of that line. Which can make doing business more awkward than it needs to be.

I live in Michigan — the swingiest of swing states — so I know there are Trumpies all around me. But as long as I don’t know who they are, it’s easy to be civil, and we can conduct business as usual. Now, because Bill has so intrusively flaunted his MAGA cred, I have to assume that he has marked me as someone from the other side of the line.

But — and this is the disconcerting part — did he also mark me as some sort of enemy? As someone who’d need to be kept track of? As someone who might need to be “dealt with” later, when Project 2025 is the law of the land?

No, I don’t believe that’s what’s happening. But the fact that it could cross my mind — that it sounds like things I’m reading every day — is scary enough. None of us can ignore the violent rhetoric coming from the right these days, or the ways Trump deliberately stokes it. Even if we don’t believe it, it’s unsettling.

It pains me to think of myself as so close-minded, but once I know I’m in the presence of a Trump supporter, my opinion of that person immediately plummets. I have no problem with the work Bill did for us, but his open partisanship effectively ruined an otherwise decent business transaction.

In other words, there was value in what I didn’t know. When you don’t know the guy’s politics, you don’t have to think less of him.