X-Tra Rant

An excellent excellent article by Wil Wheaton at Salon.com. I’m sure many of us have had this experience, but it really meshes with what I’ve experienced with my dad (although, admittedly and thankfully, no screaming match disagreements.)

The thing is, though, I know better than to bring up politics with my dad. Ever since he started listening to talk radio for hours out of the day, he’s slowly lost his ability to objectively look at the facts and draw his own conclusions. If Rush, Hannity, Dennis Prager or O’Reilly say it, my dad believes it as surely as he believes anything.
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I don’t just tune out O’Reilly and the rest of the Republican screaming heads. No, I don’t just tune them out: I hate them. I hate them with the same passion and the same fury with which my dad exploded at me, because before those people got rich exploiting Karl Rove’s (er, excuse me, I mean George Bush’s) black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us fantasy world, my parents and I could discuss issues and amicably agree to disagree with each other.

But not anymore. I thought Tookie Williams was probably guilty and deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. I wasn’t defending him; I was just voicing my opposition to the death penalty. My dad acted as if I loaded the gun for Tookie and helped him aim it at my sister. We weren’t able to have a respectful discussion about the death penalty, because my dad wouldn’t allow it. Bill O’Reilly must be so proud of the world he’s helped to create.

Now here is the terrifying thing: My dad is a really smart guy. He’s so smart, in fact, he should see right through it when these right-wing noise-machine guys throw out facts in favor of emotional arguments to manipulate their audience. He should know when Rush is full of shit the same way I know when Michael Moore is full of shit.

I once had the death penalty debate with my parents. They were both shocked and even bit upset that I am against the death penalty. They hit me with the “What if your sister was raped and killed…” emotional appeal (a sure sign of using GOP Emotional Appeal Arguments and not rational arguments). Of course I’d be pissed and want revenge. But a) That’s why we have a legal system and b) what if it was me that was wrongly accused of a crime, and wrongly put to death? (luckily I’m white and middle class, so the chances of that happening are slim. Another reason I’m against the death penalty - it’s unfair application aimed at the poor and minorities.)

But that’s just specifics. This article gets the overall feel of helplessness when you see a parent, as Wheaton puts it “abdicate rational thinking.” And how despite the disagreements you still love them dearly.

via Wil’s blog.

Wil does somewhat of a retraction. And my linking to that was never meant to associate my parents (especially my father) with a total Talk Radio Repeating Wingnut. Just to highlight that feeling where you see a parent or parents turning against their best interests and occaisionally buying into the talking points that are categorically false. My mind always goes back to the time, right before the war started, where both parents seemed near-furious at me for being agaisnt the war and used reasons like “ties to 9/11″ and “harboring terrorists” and “has WMDs” that have been proven more and more false as the war has gone along (that I argued was false even then). That feeling of helplessness of someone you love and care about dismissing your opinions because they have bought into false emotional appeals that come from the right wing and trickle on down into the everyday media with little opposition.