One of my favorite things in social media is mining for interesting and potentially useful political memes. The latest thing I have found is memes pertaining to fathers, their benevolence and good intentions.
I believe in the positive role dads can play in our lives. I believe they play that role in many instances. But not all fathers do.
That isn’t in itself a criticism. None of us can always play positive roles. We all have flaws, we all make mistakes.
What do memes have to do with this?
I look at memes relative to one of our more difficult political issues: gun violence in schools, as it relates to paternal love. I think there are many who believe themselves to be excellent fathers, yet vote against all reasonable gun safety measures to try to keep our children safe in schools. Maybe memes can help show that and problems associated with it. Note that I am not a father, myself. I understand that many fathers live quite consistently with the memes presented. Good. This does not apply to them.
What I will do is post the meme, and then post a response to it, for fathers who betray their children, contrary to the feel-good vibes the memes project.
Here’s meme #1.
Yes, Dad, but how can you say you give it your ‘all’ and then vote for arming those who would kill your children in their schools, where they should be safe? How is that doing your ‘best?'
Dad says: Dear children of mine. When it comes to voting, I will vote for gun rights ahead of your life every time. Sorry about that. You’re just not as important. And my voting shows very clearly that I care less about providing you the best life possible, or perhaps any life at all. It’s just something you have to accept: that my love for you is quite limited.
Dad says: I can’t afford to fail, unless it means you being killed in school because of unlimited gun rights I have always supported and voted for. You’re not as important to me as those rights. And it really doesn’t matter to me how many students die, and whether you are among them.
Dad says: One of the things I would do again is vote for the rights of those who kill children in schools over your right to life and a safe education.
Dad says: I will always be there for you, except in the voter’s booth, where I will vote for rights I believe in more than I believe in your right to life and safety in school. And, I won't be there for you in your school, either, if one of those I have helped arm with lethal weapons comes for you. Nor in other venues where public shootings have become so prevalent. If you survive school, those are future risks you will just have to face because of my gun rights choices.
Yes, kids will always remember who ‘showed up.’ And they will remember who voted against their right to live, who voted instead for the rights of those who take guns into schools to kill them and their fellow students. They will learn who DIDN'T show up for them in the voter's booth. They will remember this the rest of their lives: that their parent(s) did not show up when their safety was most clearly under threat. In school, or anywhere else. And they will weigh that against your ‘professions’ of love, understanding it to be the contradiction that it is.
Again, I know that many millions of fathers do not do this, are not hypocritical when it comes to their children’s safety. But all too many are, with their conscienceless, lobby-bought representatives. It is because they prioritize this supposed ‘right’ over the lives of their children, and yours. The memes might as well be used to tell the truth about it, so they can face accountability, even if their kids are not among those murdered in a classroom or other public place. Their kids will understand they easily could have been, and that any of their friends could have been, that they still can be, in a shopping mall, in a club, in church, at their workplace. At risk, for as long as they live. Thanks to you.
But, imagine being a father and hoping your children weren’t smart enough to understand that you prioritize gun rights over their lives! Isn’t that worse? To vote to keep them at great risk and then to count on the child’s ignorance/stupidity/inability to think critically, to assuage their guilt, to try to diminish their shame?
For anyone who is interested, I was set upon this path of memes for political argument by the bumper sticker of a man (and father) I believed to be a good man, though he is a gun rights fetishist. The bumper sticker referred not to just any child but to a crippled one. It is reflected in the meme I used in the picture intro to this diary. (No man stands so tall as he who stoops to help a crippled child.) His son was out of school before the epidemic of school shootings became so common that ‘active shooter training’ had to be employed as a part of their education, as it never was for so many of us.
Active shooter training is a violation of our children, just the same, and is something we never had to go through or imagine. It is a confession of our failure as a society to protect them, to prioritize their safety in places that should be the safest.
When it comes to political representation, remember this: EVERY child is ‘crippled,’ (in terms of political representation) and only those of us who vote CAN stand tall and ‘help.’
So, how do you choose, DAD? Did you mean what you said in the memes, or was it more bullshit to help you feel good, as if you were doing something virtuous? Will you be honest with your children and admit that they don't really come first in your life? That they never will?
One final note: no, I don’t think this diary will be read by very many of those who vote against their children for the sake of supporting gun rights. I do use the idea of memes in conversation I have with them. I’ve seen the doubt in their eyes when they begin to understand that their children may eventually clearly see the choice they have made to throw their children to the wolves. They don’t have an answer for that. Sowing that doubt is important, coming from an advocate for their children that they fail to be, coming from someone unrelated to their children who cares more about them than their parents do. And my hope is that spreading the argument will help the children learn more clearly how willing their supposedly loving parents are to place their lives at risk, and do NOTHING to try to protect them in one of the places where they should be safest: school. Their parents view the dangers they face as SUCCESS.
One last meme, that I just saw.
“You’ll be enough.” Unless, of course, you vote to prioritize your child's life below the rights of those who would kill them. Of those who do kill many of them, every year.
Finally, here’s the bad news, gun-loving DADS. You can support those who ban books, too, to try to keep your children stupid, to try to undermine their ability to think critically. But they will fight you, and find paths to learning and thinking that you can never block. And we will help them. They’re going to understand the choices you have made to prioritize their very lives beneath this bullshit right. Among other things, we're going to tell them, as you’ve been too cowardly to do.
Your kids will know, for the rest of their lives, that you chose perpetual and unlimited gun violence over them. And that will be a big part of your legacy. One you will never be able to duck with feel-good, misleading Facebook memes.
To our more responsible friends and parents on Daily Kos, who understand the dangers of unlimited gun rights, thanks for reading. And for fighting to make our world a better, safer place for the next generations.