I have 2 GOP parents, one that voted Trump originally and one that did not. Over the last 9 years, I have watched them both travel down the MAGA pipeline to become visibly fascist. The parents who taught me racism was wrong and to have empathy for others, have become openly hostile about immigrants, Muslims, and even parrot the Nazi “great replacement” theory.
Part and parcel with this, they refuse to have any discussions about the facts – like immigrants not stealing and eating people’s pets. They won’t hear it, they won’t even engage in the conversation…they just get angry and loud the second they hear anything that doesn’t fit into the Fox News narrative. Can you relate? How are you dealing with it in your relationships with your parents?
I guess at the root of this, I realize my parents are deeply selfish people. My dad, at least, includes his children in the things he’s selfish for…that is to say he cares about his kids, and extends the “in-group” to us (but then fuck everyone who ain’t us). My mom doesn’t even go that far. She pretty much only cares about herself. She never hit us, she doesn’t root for the Empire in Star Wars…part of me tries not to judge her too harshly for her behavior. She grew up in a time where women weren’t expected to do much, think much, say much…just be moms…and so even though she’s kind of a shitty mom, she never really wanted more than that, and I think it impacted how much she read or thought about things.
So while I tend to think of that kind of selfishness as a type of evil, she lacks the critical thinking skills to see outside of herself, and at her age, it’s too late to assume she can. I don’t know, I have this mixture of anger and pity, anger that she’s not a good person, and pity because I don’t think she’s able to learn how to become one.
I have thought about this very topic quite a bit over the years. Maybe I’m more judgemental than you but I don’t think anyone who doesn’t have a few specific handicaps is incapable of developing critical thinking skills. The people who don’t develop them simply don’t want to and that’s something I feel more than justified in blaming them for. That may not be accurate in reality but I don’t know how you could prove which one of our views is more correct.