In the past two days I've had my boomer neighbor tell me all latinx people need to be rounded up and shot. Then I had my boomer dad tell me that humans are disgusting and that Hitler was right -
In the past two days I've had my boomer neighbor tell me all latinx people need to be rounded up and shot. Then I had my boomer dad tell me that humans are disgusting and that Hitler was right -
in putting "useless eaters" in camps and killing them.
Add on top of that a heatwave that won't break until next week and all the general news about Biden and Trump has made me kind of existential dread modeing. What the fuck do we do?
My father is legitimately one of the more outgoing and compassionate men I have ever met. He has raised money for kids with disabilities for most of his adult life, volunteered countless hours. He is very Catholic and spends a lot of time with elderly and the dying, especially people from his parish (this is a very hard thing to do if you have ever done it you know). He took out a mortgage on his house to pay for cancer treatment for my step-grandmother. Anytime any of his kids or grandkids needs money he'll literally go in the red to make sure they aren't put in a bad spot financially. He's not rich, but he has retirement funds from 3 sources. He has worked his whole life being a provider. I see him constantly comfort people who need it, provide for people struggling to provide for themselves, and spend his time in charity and aid to the vulnerable.
But democrats are demon pinko commie f**s, immigrants are dirty and should be shot, and Israel/Palestine should be nuked. Rightwing media has destroyed his brain. It's so gross. It's like a switch inside him from this beautiful person of god he practices to this virulently evil trooper in service to whatever hateful demagogue was feature on the television this week. I'm not asking him to be a hippie but just recognize when the worst elements of the human psyche are being weaponized against him.
I remember someone did a documentary similar to your father, a boomer who used to be a hippy but then turned into a racist fox news grandpa in his old age thanks to well, fox news. Sorry about all this, solidarity.
He's always been pretty traditional with one exception in that him and my mom, before they were divorced, were in a open relationship of some kind with each other. I don't know the details and am not interested in knowing them but I remember enough from my early childhood to know this and also that they cheated on each other outside of whatever agreement they had. So that's a bit "free love" kinda thing but other than that he's conservative in a lot of ways and always has been.
Have you ever seen this documentary? The Brainwashing of My Dad
someone should kill your neighbor and dad
I'll look the other way.
Everybody inputs one digit of their coordinates into a howitzer so it's a group project
My boomer dad has passively nudged me into being his retirement plan. Constantly bemoans the past being better, and blames "kids these days" on things like climate change and inflation (at least he believes in climate change)- ya know, despite the fact that boomers are still in control, I tell him they're in positions of power and he gets upset that I've "insulted his generation who are legitimate people and they'll never be another generation as good".
idk I'm tired and dunno wtf to do either"insulted his generation who are legitimate people and they'll never be another generation as good".
My brother in Christ, not only did your generation salt the earth, you also pulled the ladder up behind you and made sure your kids would suffer even worse in your myopic pursuit of the american protestant dream.
me knowing we're being left with holding the bag- and it stinks
Back when I used to talk with my dad he would get so angry if I called him a boomer (even though that’s what he is). My kids and I call each other boomers whenever we have the slightest problem with technology.
Class matters more but most boomers are bourgeois and vice-versa. At the same time, republicans blame immigrants for the USA’s problems while liberals blame boomers.
My boomer dad can be all over the place sometimes. Like he knows the rich are bastards who'll never give us anything but war and poverty but, then he'll say something like climate change is caused by there being too many people on this planet having too many babies. Then he'll say something like, "If I was in charge, the first thing I'd do is make sure everyone in the world had enough to eat." Just contradictory stuff.
He sounds salvageable, very tame compared to most boomers I've run into.
I think so too. Trump and Russiagate kind of scrambled him a bit. I think his unmoderated opinion is that Putin is an evil communist who's responsible for Trump, ect, ect. But, he has no time to really get emotionally invested the way MSNBC pmc libs do because he breaks his back for a living and the pain kind of sobers him to how much of a dead end being invested in the political process is. It was even more stark for him growing up in Italy, where the NATO-approved party Democrazia Cristiana ruled over a regime of naked machine-style corruption, backed up by the brute force of the local Mafia. Local people who were communists and spoke out were ostracized, he would say, while the DC bribed you for your vote. It makes for a sort of apathy towards the political process that you don't see as prevalent in America. The big inside joke in Sicily is that the government is corrupt.
Besides that, when you sell him on communist arguments, he'll ask "Ok, what do I do next then", and I don't have an answer because there really is no organized anything in this world that can challenge the power of capital.
Get audio of your dad saying that. When he's no longer able to take care of himself and whines to you on the phone about guilting you into helping him, play it back for him.
I saw multiple people with American flags billowing outside their cars today and it’s really been years since it’s been like that here. There are also flags in so many places and so many houses. This is an elderly purple area of a rural purple state.
Yeah, there's a stretch of road in my town and every few feet is a small US flag flanking both sides of the road. In my liberal days I would day it gives me Nazi vibes.
As a non American, the amount of flags everywhere in america has always given me fash vibes. Hanging your nations flag on your house isn't normal. You're already inside the country, your support is assumed.
Anyone in this thread should be allowed to live with my parents for a week. They're I guess libs, probably closer to socdem if really interrogated. My dad was homophonic when that shit was normal but grew out of it by the mid 2000s like culture in general did and thought I'm pretty sure it was due to his ignorance at the time of considering trans people a subgenre of gay, when people decided to make trans people an issue his updates from me and the fact that he didn't have the wherewithal to compartmentalize his bigotries meant once he found out trans people weren't like...a more permanent drag queen, it was a quick 'oh, gotcha, I was off base'. They now Will absolutely not buy Harry Potter shit for my little cousins who's mom (also my cousin) is an irreparable potterhead/Disney adult. I explained JK to em and they returned her Christmas presents and got new ones. My dad was also too spoiled by his union gig that he got iffy on unions until.the end when he noticed how fucking sweet it was to tell your manager to piss off once he heard about what I deal with. Other than that we play Nintendo games together when I visit and they have been enjoying retirement by becoming gamers. Too cold war brained and out of the game to be full leftists, but are just decent people without a hateful none in their bodies and they also recognize I'm significantly more passionate and well read on these sorts of things and therefore take me seriously and generally will understand that if I say something is bad or good, it probably is. They've seen my nose in books since I was little and I was politically inclined since the 3rd grade and they nurtured it and then got the fuck out of my way intellectually when I surpassed them. I'm sure I didn't turn out how they had thought but they got it pretty early on I'd be hard to control and will be an absolute weirdo and adjusted accordingly. They're also very aware they were among the last to take the money and run regarding neoliberalism and how fucked it is for us and aren't dicks about helping out, they get that their pay was double mine and rent was less than half and that our generation and by extent theirs for those who have the money are being gutted. They're John Oliver level and thsts fine for a parent.
This was actually really heartwarming to read and I hope your parents know how much you appreciate them for avoiding the brainworms that rotted the minds of most of their generation.
They do to the extent considered necessary between us. We're still waspy af and don't do feelings, but the understanding is subtextually there. As a family big gestures or open 'hey, you guys are great and I love you' are corny af and we just don't and gotta be real, that fine by Mr cause I do t have to fake it with extended family when I kinda don't like most of em. My parents are cool and I got along amazingly with my dad's dad, he was the silent Gen version of me, turned down an easy military career post war to be a firefighter, laid down a mutual aide network between rural fire stations so they wod cover each other's assess in bigger fires and when woe.n were ad.itted was the biggest hard ass as fire chief about the dudes not being pigs or they'd get fired ans that was the 60s and 70s. As an old crank he went on to personally boycott any brand who ran commercials he found annoying.
Hope you tell them that you appreciate them!
I've basically come to the conclusion that most people I know are pretty fucking awful, at least in terms of their politics, even if they're nice to me. I really don't bother myself with it anymore, I just live my life and enjoy their company and change the topic whenever politics comes up.
I've basically given up on any prospect of there being an imperial core left movement and it's honestly taken away a lot of anxiety for me. I just grill and wait for Xi to rightfully nuke me and all my shitty cracker friends and family.
I like my boomer dad, he's alright. Sorry about yours. :(
My dad tells me to my face that communists should be rounded up and shot.
He's convinced I'm an Obama lib.
To try to make things more positive, people have much much better opinions the farther away they are from power. I spend so little of my time with white people, and I do like the company I keep. I do have a handful of white friends, but they're the exception.
boomer dad and neighbour
a heatwave that won't break
