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The family dynamic in Wil Wheaton's article strongly echos mine. Out of the blue Dad became a right wing caricature.
My dad worked in television for nearly 20 years at Spokane's NBC affiliate. He taught me (by example) to understand the ulterior motives of broadcasters and pundits and commercialization. He literally is the reason I spend so much of my free time following politics and the media. Admittedly leaning Republican but a self-described moderate, his skepticsm of broadcast media results in his almost complete avoidance of television news and a total avoidance of talk radio.
But over the past several years, while continuing to imagine himself moderate, he has become a knee-jerk right wing nut. During the 2004 campaign we attempted to have an in depth, civil political discussion via email. This ended after he sent a message that had him, in the same paragraph, re-affirming his moderate political stripes then stating plainly that no matter what was going on, as long as gays were threatening our way of life he would vote for Bush. (We had a later exchange after the elections that had him acting as apologist for the Bush administration's use of torture at Abu Ghraib)
What happened? Dad wasn't a victim of Fox News or Rush, Hannity, et al. Two things I can point to. First: my dad's skepticsm of the media never extended to newpapers. In the 2000 election I was visiting Spokane and a front page, above the fold story contained several phrases that were openly condescending of Al Gore and one passage in particular that claimed to be factual when, in fact, it was merely innuendo. I pointed this out to him, and he said that it couldn't be a biased article because, "it's an AP story" Well, it wasn't. It was an article from the Orlando Sun-Sentinal. I told him that the local newspaper was cherry picking stories that were slanted towards the conservative side and pointed out a few more examples in that days edition. This highly intelligent, once savvy media consumer wasn't able to grok that.
Second: my parents have long been conservative Christians. They claim, and have for many years, to be aware that much of the political stands that their pastor takes are extreme, and "we don't subscribe to them"; but it has become very clear that my parents, especially Dad, are walking in lock step with the right wing because they feel that they are under seige from secularlists. While largely avoiding the media, they are nonetheless swimming in a community that feeds the beast (or IS the beast), and because these are people they've known and respected and loved for 30 years they are completely blind to the fact that the prevailing perceptions have changed violently since they first checked the box next to Reagan's name in '80. Speaking of blindly, Bush's fervent religiosity is a free-pass as far as they are concerned (although my mother is beginning to wonder if the president is really behaving in a Christian manner--thank God!)
Basically, there is no talking with them. The depth of our love for one another as a family is absolutely not a conduit for open discussion. They are in the dark. And, as is true for all of these nut-jobs, they will remain in the dark until they run smack into situation after situation where their narrow world-view proves to be completely ineffectual in helping them deal with reality. Of course, if they can manage to stay isolated for long enough they will be "lucky" enough to die before they ever have to confront reality.
The main thing we progressives MUST keep in mind is that the religious right is a sizable MINORITY in this nation. The neo-cons hooked their wagon to the Jesus people for political gain and more and more in the coming three years we will see this coalition fracture and cease to be effective because the interests of the radical religious right and the interests of the oligarchs are inherently at odds.
Of course, if the Democrats can't come up with any real policies or any real leadership than we might just have to sit back and watch the end of the great American experiment.
