I read an article some years ago where the mentalities, phobias, and motivating factors of liberals and conservatives were analyzed. Conservatives were shown to be fear-based in political philosophy and generally fearful individuals in general. As has been my wont on this site the last fifteen years I have been writing here, I use once more my father as an example. He turned 70 in June and the older he gets, the more paranoid and angry he becomes. He also grows far more conservative and Republican.
His precise phobias are nothing new. They’ve been hashed and rehashed a million times by people here on Kos and by writers ten million times more eloquent than me. But I will use a personal example to explain his level of fear. Late at night, I fixed myself a snack and accidentally dropped a plate on the floor. It would not have roused me from sleep, but he is a phenomenally light sleeper. When I discussed with him perhaps taking a sleeping pill for a little while feel more rested in the day, his response was boilerplate Dad. He was annoyed.
“I’m a light sleeper. I’ve always been a light sleeper. I’d rather be easy to wake up if someone was robbing the house or preparing to physically assault me.” The odds of any of that happening are slim to none. And still he is afraid, even when it is backed by no logic, rhyme, or reason. I do not understand. I do not sleep with a gun under my pillow. He doesn’t either, but he has signed up in the past two months to the NRA.
And as I contemplate what he has just said, I remember Robert Frost’s immortal poem “Mending Wall.”
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
The older he gets, the more miserable he grows. This is a man who would always immediately apologize for the few mistakes he made in my company when I was a boy. Now he rarely does. He is miserable now, dealing with the effects of treated, but nonetheless annoying, painful, and rarely predictable bouts of high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes. So you see, I am not unsympathetic to his plight. My own disabilities and pain don’t always make me the most pleasant person to be around all the time, either.
Most of us don’t want to turn into our parents. I most certainly fall into that category. But Dad made his bed and slept in it. He could never be accused of not knowing what he was getting himself into. My mother’s emotional frailties were well-known from the outset. They began to rear their ugly heads in adolescence, about the same time mine showed up. The last ten years have frustrated Dad, as he has no choice but to care for Mom, whose health conditions have gotten demonstratively worse in the last ten years. I have my bouts, but have been generally well since June (knock on wood) and haven’t been very ill for about a year.
I wish Dad could accept his fate as I have. I literally do not remember a time I wasn’t sick with something, so you can’t miss what you never had. Dad was better during the heady days of the Eighties where he worked in business and made enough money that my mother got to take seven years to spend with my sisters and me. He now bunkers down inside his house and rarely leaves, except for routine errands. I’m sure he resents me and my mother for depriving him of his retirement. He’s been predicting his own imminent demise since he was 45 but knowing him, he’ll probably live much longer, moaning and carping the whole time.
I love him. That goes without saying. But the Dad I once had no longer exists. He is now a Trump apologist railing about Woke culture, the 1619 project, claiming I am ashamed of being white, and believing that I want to institute radical socialism. He’s little more than a Fox News PowerPoint presentation and has lost all objectivity. And he is far from the only one who has drunk that kool-aid. If I didn’t care for him so much, I might chalk him up to just another lost soul, but I still remember him as he was and, no matter how many eggshells I have to walk around him, I figure with enough patience he’ll see the folly of his ways.
It’s easy to dehumanize our opposition, especially during times of war or conflict. I don’t want to dehumanize my father, regardless of how reprehensible his points of view may be to my sensibilities. Part of being a pacifist is to never lose sight of the mortal being inside, to view suffering souls—a view not reduced to think of the “enemy” as little more than target practice or pitched battle. Dad is not my enemy, either. I wonder if he ever sees me in those terms, when his voice grows harsh, bitter, and mean. I would love to know who he truly sees as his enemy, as that would explain much about his point of view.