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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Jeez. I read this article and could have been reading about my own family. My sister and I have observed the same phenomenon in our parents! Glad we're not alone at least.
Wil:
The Greedy, Know Nothing, Fundie crazies who make up today's Republican party have been getting away with crap because we liberals and Democrats have let them. Bullies will take a mile if you give them an inch. The best approach is to fight back hard, even if they're your family. You can make your points forcefully and logically (hey, the facts are on our side, not theirs) but still with respect. That last part, respect, will drive them nuts (or I should say, further nuts than they already are) since they've been taught by their GOP heroes like Rush and Coulter that respect is for sissies. Next time they yell at you, wait until they're finished blowing out their hot air, and then look 'em in the eye and explain why they're wrong. Who knows, you might break through the fog of the right wing noise machine -- if not today, then tomorrow.
and if you don't agree with me 100% then you're obviously a stupid doody-head who hates America.
I'm sorry, but Ann Coulter is not hot, in an Eva Braun or any other kind of way. Sombody needs to buy her a cheeseburger, with extra cheese.
I hate Christmas. It's a plot to encourage happy people to make fun of unhappy people, and flaunt their happiness, genuine or faked, and shove it in the faces of the unhappy. People are meaner around Christmas-time, not nicer. It's probably because of all that wretched music.
Someone once told me it didn't start out that way, but I'm suspicious.
On the other hand, Wil Wheaton is right about everything. I wish he could do a vulcan mind-meld on Bill O'Reilly, and mess his head up.
Frisco wrote: "So, 33-year old Wil, in spite of his appreciation of his father’s considerable accomplishments and intelligence, is unwilling to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, his father’s wisdom might extend to politics as well. No, dear old dad been taken in by talk radio, which means that Wil can dismiss any ideas that do not conform to his own narrow, liberal world view as espoused by the “impartial” media (NY Times, CBS, et al)."
It's not the point of view that's the problem. It's that his father was screaming it, red-faced, in the middle of his living room. That isn't how "wise" people express their opinions in my family. Is it how they do in yours?
In this case, the medium IS the message. A wise opinion - an opinion to be respected - isn't delivered in a raised voice, accompanied by flecks of spittle and finger jabs, to one's child in a living room during a holiday dinner.
Wil,
That's a terrific story, I'll be sure to share it with my siblings and father (a life long Democrat but certainly conservative in many ways, especially since returned to church with his new wife).
Also, thank you for the AFA link. I wonder how long they will let me stay subscribed to their e-alert mailing list as "hailsatan@[domain masked]". Hee.
Incidentally, it was nice meeting you in person, 12 or so years ago, at a 2600 meeting of all things.
I think that a steady diet of right wing talk radio has rotted my own father's mind, turning him into a 'dittohead' and a very angry hardnosed Republican. He could not hear anything about Bill Clinton without spewing a stream of invective that turned the air blue. I was afraid to tell him that I was selected as a founding volunteer at his Presidential Library because I figured he'd disown me.
Happily, he didn't, but I am not looking forward to Christmas dinner, because he'll find some reason to berate me for my own moderate-to-progressive beliefs, my non-Christian faith, and my nonconforming ways.
If I could find some way to selectively jam the talk radio and Fox TV that he listens to and watches, and that he parrots like the Republican Borg Collective, I would. I blame them, as you do, for the collective poisoning of our American community. I can only wish that the propogators of all the hate, anger, and misery will get their fair and balanced (heh) karmic return- and in public, where we can watch them spin in the wind.
Widget writes: "It's not the point of view that's the problem. . . In this case, the medium IS the message."
The point of right-wing media is not information; the point is to keep their followers in a continual state of outrage and umbrage. Widget is exactly right: the message is that people need to be angry and hateful, despising all who depart from the party line.
In the more extreme cases the right-wing message creates people who exhibit many of the traits of alcoholics -- depressed, pissed-off at life, striking out at family and (former) friends, looking for enemies. This is particularly painful when the relative or friend is a Christian, supposedly a companion of the apostle Paul, who said "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice."
There's nothing wrong with being politically conservative. We need voices on both sides of the issues, and no one has the market cornered on the truth. But much of the right-wing diatribe is like "professional" wrestling: a violent show, in which the world is divided into good and evil, and inflicting pain on your opponent is seen as a virtue.
I would like to thank all those who have contributed their own experiences to this conversation. I have read your stories and they resonate deeply with my own experiences and observations. Wil Wheaton's article struck a nerve, and appropriately so.
I feel so relieved and fearful after reading this piece. I, too, have parents who raised me with a different set of morals and values than the right-wing "morals" that have been fused into their brain through Rush and O'Reilly. I have watched in horror as my parents have turned into the same pod people you describe.
My parents were both raised in very poor, destitute conditions, and have always been the charitable kind of people, giving, literally, the coat off their back when someone else needed it. We have always taken people in under our roof or “loaned” money and never expected anything in return. Now, my mother is arguing against increasing the minimum wage because then things would cost a few cents more! WHAT? Who are you? This cannot be the same person who has stories about eating every other day because she couldn’t afford to eat everyday. I have trouble breathing at the thought that this woman, whom I call Mom, seems to think it’s okay for someone to eat every other day simply because they earn minimum wage.
During the Terry Schiavo case, my mom, who has always been a proponent for living wills, a person's right to die, and has always been against keeping someone alive on life support when there is no chance of recovery, went into a 20 minute rant about how the government should be able to stop a family member from cutting off life support, and she saw no problem with the midnight legislation from the government to interfere. I almost fell over. My heart shuddered. I could not believe my ears!
Another example is my dad. He always told me to question the government because his experience was the government couldn’t be trusted. He was a career military man and he always made it clear to me that the government lies for its own benefit, not the benefit of the people. Now, however, whenever I question the government, my dad freaks out (and is moved to tears) because the Bush administration was "the only one who helped veterans get concurrent payments for retirement and disability benefits". Arrgh! No, that’s not true! But you can’t convince him otherwise, no matter what you bring out to prove your point.
I am so afraid because this is what the hate mongering ideologues of the right-wing media have done, not just to my parents, but thousands of people across the country. I am so upset that there has been this brain-washing to the extent people don’t recognize it for what it is. The same crap running again and again and eventually people start believing it, without question, because it's easier and they can have someone to be angry at. It would be quite different if we disagreed and they could explain their point of view, but that's not what is happening. I swear, in my parent's house, by 3:00pm every day, you know the latest talking points of the right-wing media, because I can hear them being dropped every now and then. My tactic now, because I am stubborn and I am tired of letting it go, is to ask them why they believe something to be one way. "Well, why shouldn't gay people be allowed to get married? What is it going to do to your life if they do?" That usually shuts down their side of the argument because they don't know why. My dad has recently made a new policy that we can't discuss politics in the house (unless he brings it up, of course).
I was beginning to think that the reason he or my mother never listen when I dispute an item on their “news” was because they still see me as a child, not a 30 year-old college-educated person, but after reading this piece, it’s all very clear. It’s not me; it’s the crap they are being brain-washed with. My dad's greatest shame these days is that I am a liberal, but he always hugs me after an argument and he tells me all the time that he still loves me, "even if we don't agree."
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