My husband is slowly gravitating this way as he ages. He used to be moderate and open-minded, but now is starting to spew bigoted and sexist crap.
It dates from about the time he started to listen to Rush Limbaugh “just for the entertainment” during his long commute a few years ago. It has changed him into a person I don’t care for very much. Every evening, during the news and other television shows, I must endure a repetitive weary tirade against all that he sees and hates, which is everything.
I call it the “Fred Limbaugh Show”, and I can’t turn it off. And I don’t want to hear it anymore.
Send him an email telling him what you’ve told us. What can it hurt? He’s already lost to you, it seems.
Take your shot. If you were the ‘changed, hate filled, friend losing’ one wouldn’t you want someone to take a shot and at least try to reach out to you.
My mother-in-law is the same way about Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, and the Washington Post. Every morning is about some right wing conspiracy this, or evil Koch brothers that. I try to just keep the discussions as non-political as possible. She really is a sweet lady, but there is not even the possibility of having a rationale discussion about political issues.
I have a few cousins like this. It’s not about having differing opinions, it’s that they live to argue, berate, and insult anything that is remotely liberal, mostly using lies and disinformation gathered from Fox and Rush. My older brother grew up with these people, pretty much raised as brothers. He can even talk to them anymore because they simply refuse to have a normal conversation.
Anyone who thinks these situations are just a difference of opinion have no idea what we’re talking about. You’ve essentially lost a loved one to misplaced anger. It’s like this weird right-wing Alzheimers that has destroyed who they are.
Exactly - different opinions is one thing, spouting vile hatred is something else entirely.
A few examples - on the 4th of July my Dad was watching one of the big symphony shows on TV - I think it was the Boston Pops one but I could be wrong. He saw people dancing along to the music and somehow decided that this was supposed to be a solemn and respectful event for our veterans. He really got worked up over it and the more people celebrated the angrier he got culminating with him yelling at a woman on the screen who was dancing with her daughter “Why don’t you go and take a bullet for your country you moron!”
At Christmas Tom Brokaw had a special on where he featured a veteran who dropped candy on East Berlin. When Tom Brokaw brought the man on stage my Dad shouted “That’s the Hero Tom, too bad you’ll never understand the value of what he stands for!”
On MLK day my Dad chastised me because my generation considers MLK to be a Civil Rights Hero. His opinion is now that all of the troubles in our country started because of him.
And that’s the thing - my Dad was never so vocally bigoted, hateful, and angry. I never knew any of that side of him. But once he retired and started watching Fox News all day every day he changed into the man he is now.
It’s lately become so bad I now avoid to talk with the very people I used to have the most light-hearted or heart-felt conversations with. I had to request some to stop forwarding chain-emails of hate to me, which was beyond awkward as I hate to have to be so direct with loved ones about such blatant ugliness.
That Salon article from the OP really struck a chord. It’s not the politics so much as it is the disturbingly effective spread of fear and hate… Over made-up nonsense.
If you’re on Facebook, you probably know someone who shares all the right wing glurge about Obama. Let’s be clear, I have no problem with people who disagree with me politically. The old Gerald Ford/Bob Dole Republicans were all good Americans who happened to favor different policies. What we’ve got now is a sizeable segment of society who believes in an alternate reality. Some of the stuff is just batshit insane. There’s a Facebook post showing recent presidents in front of American flags and a picture of Obama in front of a gold curtain, which is identified as a “Muslim prayer curtain”. Seriously. Another vented outrage that Michelle Obama billed her childrens’ travel on Air Force One as “senior advisors”. No, it merely identified where on the plane they were sitting. I’m hoping that they’ll stop with the lunacy once there’s a Caucasian in the White House but I’m not too optimistic. These are easily manipulated automatic votes and Republicans are not about to give them up.
Aw, shit. What is it about dads? I just sat through the same thing last Saturday. All I could think was, “I love you, I want to take you out for ice cream an’ all that, but seriously? My generation is waiting for your generation to die already.”
Last night I got an email from my mother, terrified out of her wits because Glenn Beck and The Blaze have been running some story about a girl who was “kidnapped” from her parents by CPS at Boston Children’s Hospital. I am never to take my daughter to that hospital, ever!
I emailed her back and explained that the story isn’t at all accurate and told her that in the future if she finds she is only hearing a story from a single source the odds are it is false. I don’t know what else to tell her though. How can you help someone down off the ledge when their brain is full of nothing but fear and hate?
Is it Fox News that makes them angry, or are they already angry and Fox News just fans the flames?
My Dad has some difficulty figuring out electronics. If everything works well then it’s great, but as soon as something breaks he can’t figure out how to fix it. He gets very frustrated when he sees multiple remotes for one TV and hasn’t figured out how the DVR works yet. When I try to show him how to fix things he gets very angry, but I think the anger is just frustration that he finds something that he knows should be easy to be hard.
Over the past year, several of his old coworkers and friends have died. I do feel for him, but they’re rapidly approaching the age of the average lifespan so it’s to be expected. Combine the loss with some recent health scares and it’s evident that he sees a flashing neon sign saying “end of line is near”.
As I think about his rants I realize that the core of them is loss of control. He’s a baby boomer and expects the world to cater to him and the more his views and the worlds views diverge the more he retreats to Fox News. There’s something there that he finds comforting and maybe it’s just the shared anger.
In my view, any person who surrounds himself with news sources who all speak from the same side of spectrum, and friends who all believe and argue the same side of the political divide, is at risk of adopting this kind of blindness.
One of the mail reasons I hang out here is my interest in subjecting my ideas to vigorous dissent, rather than vigorous agreement.
This is good advice. Use the Awareness Wheel - tell him what is bothering you. Tell him why. Then tell him what you plan to do about it. One or two walk-outs and he should get the message.
Unless he has some kind of medical situation which is contributing to the problem.
You sound like a loving and reasonable son and I think if you keep the focus on that enjoyment of his companionship he will be able to hear you.
Too many of us on both sides allow politics to dominate our life choices and, doing so, rob ourselves of healthy relationships with people who are important to us. The first and healthiest choice is connection if it can be achieved.
And the idea that you can’t have a good relationship with someone who thinks differently than you is not the choice of a mature thinker.
The ball’s in your court and dependent upon you setting and keeping loving boundaries. You’ll be glad if you can accomplish this. Good luck!
Agreed, and I know you catch more than enough shit on this board for it, so I tip my baseball cap to you there.
That said, and not to single you out for any other reason than being one of the more prolific Rep/conservatives here, do you feel Fox News, Rush, Beck, etc. to be doing a grave disservice to its demographic by churning out the tedious propaganda, misinformation and distorted incendiary spin they put on almost everything?
There just doesn’t seem to be an equal right now stooping as low and having such a profound, disheartening, and disconcerting effect on an entire generation from the liberal side.
For older people, this increasing rigidity of views and opinions, and the angry reactions to any attempt to change them, can be an early sign of Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. Unfortunately, you cannot reason with dementia, you can only work around it.
Yes, I do have concerns that political discourse is deteriorating because people just listen to news sources (blogs, websites) that validate what they already believe.
There are enough examples of liberals whose views are poorly thought out or liberals being taken in by misinformation. Last election I saw plenty of distortions and emotional rhetoric being shared on facebook by my liberal in laws, and in the old days plenty of liberals (including some news papers) spread around this hoax “presidential IQ” list.
I have to roll my eyes at this comment in the article:
Um, no, the horrors of having parents with poorly thought out political views is not in any sense comparable to people actually suffering and dying of actual illnesses.
Anyone who would make such a comment needs to rein in their own hysteria over political matters.
The more insidious thing about those who have thrown their lot in with Fox News is that they don’t just present a differing viewpoint, they don’t just angry up the blood, but their rhetoric is factually and prove-ably false, contradictory, and in some cases, totally evil.
No one who knows anything about Benghazi or the IRS issue would think its anything but false information.
No one who knows the historical conservative stances on health care can say its anything but contradictory to what they espouse now.
And seriously, legitimate rape? God wants you to have rape babies? Fuck that shit
I have similar experiences with members of my family. My uncles and my step father in law have turned into right wing, hate filled nut jobs. My sister and my father in law have turned into the opposite and believe some truly awful stuff of Republicans and corporations. It is all really tiring and I am amazed at the hateful stuff I hear coming out of their mouths.
I can relate. What sucks is even if you try to avoid politics the conservative members of your family like using you as a punching bag. That is what they do to me. The best ‘defense’ I’ve come up with it just asking them to validate all their opinions with facts and proof. Since they never have any that usually slows them down. Expressing or justifying your own beliefs, or treating it as a rational debate (it isn’t, they invent the evidence as needed to support the conclusion) just makes things worse.
It’s not just old people either…I follow some relatives on Facebook who are very into homeschooling for religious reasons (“I ain’t kin to no monkey!”), and they are now convinced that Obama is coming for all the Christian homeschoolers because a German homeschooling family is being deported. (A very brief site – I had a hell of a time finding one that wasn’t blatantly right-leaning.)
This. I have no idea how a person could continue to back any politician or other figure who spouts such nastiness.
What is it about dads? I just sat through the same thing last Saturday. All I could think was, “I love you, I want to take you out for ice cream an’ all that, but seriously? My generation is waiting for your generation to die already.”