Richmond Ramsey penned an excellent essay on Fox Geezer Syndrome, a heartbreaking condition which affects certain older persons later in life. It's a crippling handicap, and it's inspired me to share my own frustrations with this phenomenon.
http://www.frumforum.com/...
I am a woman perilously close to my 45th birthday, and my choices in life are my own. I understand that my political stance antagonizes some far-right-wing zealots. I understand that some of my beliefs even make my more moderate "progressive" friends uncomfortable. But your parents always love you, no matter what, right?
Not so much.
For this 4th of July, I would like to begin my whole Daily Kos n00bie experience by posting a diary I wrote in honor of my missing father, who lives 33 miles from my house, and a million miles away.
My father was a brilliant man who taught me how to think for myself and vote my conscience. A 35-year Naval officer, he taught me that every blessing I had was due to the sacrifices of generations before me who laid down their lives and also battled evils here at home, in defense of the common good. He taught his children that it is every individual’s duty to know the Constitution and to uphold it, not just for themselves, but for the weaker ones who need our defense. He taught me that a blow against one American is a blow against every American, whether it’s dealt on foreign soil or here at home. My father valued intelligence. The adopted son of a small-town newspaper-owner, he understood the vitality of a free and fair press, and taught me that I didn't know the story unless I asked for hard proof. He taught me that every story included a who, why, where, when, and how, and that there's no such animal as a one-sided truth. He taught me to follow the money trail if I really wanted answers to my questions. He taught me that we do America no favors by being stupid and uneducated. He taught that it’s our duty to educate ourselves with hard facts, to ask tough questions, and to never blindly accept any pundit or politician who is telling us something that simply doesn’t add up. In short, my father was a brilliant patriot who believed in Democracy, and taught each of his five children to practice and cherish Democracy, because if we didn’t, we could lose all the freedoms, protections, and guarantees that those before us sacrificed to gain.
That was before he retired, became injured, and turned on Fox News while he went through his physical therapy. That man, that thoughtful, informed, intelligent, patriotic defender of Democracy, that brilliant man no longer exists. Now, he’s a stranger I neither understand nor want to know. He hates me, I suppose, because I’m one of those Liberal Socialists who voted for a Muslim from Kenya who wants to steal his Social Security and my mom's Medicare. You can’t even talk to him about any subject: sports, fishing, the family reunion—without him somehow turning it into an ugly tirade against Liberals or “Barry Hussein Obama.”
It got to the point, just after the Affordable Care Act passed, where I dreaded bringing my children around him. I worried about that for a bit, but my kids spared me the tough decision. They teamed up as teenagers and informed me that they no longer enjoyed being around him and that they weren't going over there anymore and that included, most especially, family holidays.
It makes me feel bad for my mom, who misses her grandkids, but I can’t do anything about that, really. I mean, she married him for better and, quite obviously, for worse. She's always welcome over here, but she hasn't managed to make the trip. I suppose it's probably not worth the earful she would certainly hear from him as he turned any mention of a visit to see us (or our new house, which we've been in a year) inevitably into his usual rant about Liberal scum and how she's a traitor to the flag for consorting with the enemy.
But the kids are right. I'm too old to need my parents' approval, since I'm not getting it anyway. It's time I cut my apron strings, my daughter rather rudely pointed out, because if the relationship were that important, my dad would know how to put the politcs aside and still act like family. And it's true, even at the height of our Reagan debates, my father never attacked me as a human being. He never went for the jugular. He never called me stupid or questioned my patriotism. He never once called me a Libtard. What kind of thing is that to say? My dad always praised my brain, but now, evidently, I'm stupid and incapable of seeing what's glaringly obvious to him and Glenn Beck. He always praised my work ethic, but now I'm all about the welfare? He always elevated our conversations, even when we disagreed. He wasn't a name-caller. And he certainly didn't inject random talk of trickle-down economics or a diatribe on the Stategic Defense Initiative into a conversation about what kind of paper plates to purchase for the family 4th of July picnic, before opining the world would be better off if every Liberal in America could be imprisoned and possibly shot for treason.
Edit. Is it too late too edit? Let me repeat that. Shot for treason. My daddy thinks that now that she's all grown up and voting for scary Muslim-Marxist Obummer, his favorite daughter should be shot for treason. It's like bizarro-world where Glenn Beck is the Red Queen and off with everybody's fucking head. It's scary and it doesn't make any sense and it's peppered with violent references and unveiled threats and hostility. My gay-rights-lovin' daughter refuses to set foot back there and says I can't make her go where she doesn't feel safe. And she's 100% right about that, and that's just how it is. I appreciate nice folks who want me to look beyond all that and try to reach him again or have him checked for depression or whatever for the sake of the family and stuff, but...shot for treason. He actually said that. Which makes my mommy-instincts, and my own well-honed survival internal buzz, gather up the kiddos and stuff them in the car on my way out the door with unseemly haste. It just does. Even if it's "just" verbal abuse, enough is enough. I get it. Family: broken. Dad: unrelenting. Me: unwelcome. Kids: unwilling. Mom: unable. Relationship: untenable. Enough is enough is enough is enough is enough. You just don't get to threaten to shoot me in front of my teenagers and find more left over in the forgiveness bucket. You pretty much tap the well, at that point. That's a boundary, and I'm told those are healthy things. It's time someone set a few, evidently, because my parents no longer do so for themselves.
My children are now old enough to decide they don’t want their holidays ruined by toxicity. So, we’ve started making our own plans, and they don’t include making the 33-mile drive to be insulted at the family barbeque, or threatened beneath the Christmas tree, because somebody on Fox News told my father to hate us.
This year, unless the burn ban holds, the kids and the husband and I will probably go watch some fireworks, or at least a big city celebration, with 100,000 of our closest friends and neighbors. It'll be the second 4th of July since I moved back to Texas in the late '90's that the kids and I won't see cousins and aunts, but my folks' family gathering will be fine without us dirty Liberals stinking up the joint. I've been outvoted by both kids and common sense, so I guess that's the end of that whole extended family thing. We begin new traditions because we must.
I do not imagine I’ll have another Christmas with my parents while my dad’s around; I suffer under no gauzy illusion that inviting them to my home would spare me the scathing condemnation as he sat at my holiday dinner table. That's an insult I would not dream of putting my husband, my kids, nor myself through.
Gotta love those Fox Family Values, hey?
Thanks, Fox News, for stealing my brilliant father and replacing him with a hate-filled bagger whose conversational skills have turned to talk-points by rote, whose mind is deteriorated to a state just this side of pathetic, another of your well-trained fearbots. My mother thinks you all stink, too—yeah, especially you, Hannity.
And Glenn Beck, there's a special seat in hell for you. Good riddance to bad rubbish.