Edwin Lyngar wrote a ridiculously partisan article for Salon masquerading as insight. The poor hunchback can’t see his own hunch.
Here’s my fix. The link goes to the original.
Old, twisted, nostalgic and angry, they are slipping from polite society in alarming numbers. We’re losing much of a generation. They often sport ponytails or other clothing, some marking their status as subversives, or “ the real patriots” of some kind or another. They hold burning flags, have dozens of bumper stickers and an unquenchable strange combination of rage but self-anointed pacifism. They used to be the students who took on America’s traditions, marching on the wrong side of the Cold War, apoplectic by the Nixon years — but now many are terrified by the idea of slightly less central-planning and enraged by what they say is a very moderate Democrat in the White House.
We’re losing people like my father to the despair of MSNBC, and it’s all a manifestation of lifelong dissatisfaction with… life.
My dad is 67 years old, one 1/1000th of the amount of MSNBC viewers, according to Nielsen ratings. I’ve read accounts of people my age — 40 or so — losing parents to cancer or Alzheimer’s, but just as big a tragedy are the crops of grandmothers and grandfathers debilitated by crippling MSNBC depression.
I laughed at MSNBC for many years, and was a frequent viewer, just for the kicks. I used to share some, though not many, of my father’s values, but something happened over the past few years. As I educated myself and became more responsible, the pony-tailed, liberal left veered into incalculable levels of progressive stages of despair, arriving at their inevitable destination with the creation of the mass entitlement and parasite movement.
When I finally reluctantly pulled the handle for Romney in 2012, my father could not believe how far I’d fallen. I have avoided talking politics with him as much as possible ever since. Last week, I invited him to my house for dinner with the express purpose of talking about politics and most especially his MSNBC /NPR/ The Nation news addiction. Since he officially retired (he figured out he could quit his job and he’d get subsidized, just like Nancy Pelosi said) , he only watches news that reassures him of his long-held leftist beliefs. As we started chatting up politics, I repeated one mantra over and over: “Please, please, consume a less slanted source of information.” I repeated my plea a dozen times. He defended with stridency his choices, citing his favorites, like Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart and the great Al Sharpton. When it came to any other source of information he was emphatic.
“I don’t care to see any more of that neocon bullsh!t,” he said in one form or another all night.
We rehashed some issues, starting with his absolute hatred for the Koch Brothers and anti-union forces. “Civil unions and religious marriages are not the same thing,” he said in a weird non sequitur. And, “we are going to bust up the church and all that Jesus stuff” he added.
I’m educated in engineering, so I’m an imperfect ambassador for faux high-brow dead-end liberal arts. I don’t respect over-education, perpetual college enrollment and fear of responsibility and adulthood. When I tell my dad his obsessions are purely emotional and meaningless on a meat and potatoes level, he gets really mad.
“Man made global warming is real,” he says.
Because I inhabitant the world we live in right now, and he’s a citizen of a fictitious world of climate models inputted by agenda driven leftists, calling me a denier is the worst insult he can summon, so he uses it often.
My father sincerely believes that activists hiding behind the imprimatur of science is not at all corrupt. Atheists are America’s most persecuted minority and The TEA Party is full-blown racist. He supports the use of force without question, as long as it’s aimed at conservatives, particularly Christians. He thinks the right are all stupid, ignorant fucks who hate non-whites.
I don’t recall my father being so hostile when I was growing up. He is a kind and generous man when he’s high, and a good father because he is one of the few on the left that has stayed married, but over the past five or 10 years, he’s become so “progressive” that I can’t even find a label for it.
What has changed? He consumes a daily diet of nothing except leftist “news” arms of statism. He has for a decade or more. He has no email account and hates sports, calling them hurtful and obsessed with “winning.” He refuses to so much as touch a keyboard if the site is not a “dot org” and has never been on Drudge, ever. He thinks private education destroys people because I drifted right during my stint at a vocational school.
I do not blame or condemn my father for his opinions. If you consumed a daily diet of left-wing fury, erroneously labeled “news,” you could very likely end up in the same place. Again, this is all by design. Let’s call it the indoctrination effect. Take old hippies and feed them a steady stream of demagoguery and repetition, all wrapped in the laughable slogan of “leaning forward.” Even watching the commercials on MSNBC, one is treated to sales pitches for leftist books, movies, organizations, politicians and initiatives – the product cornerstones of the statist. To some people the idea of old hippies yelling all day may seem funny, but this isn’t a joke. Neighbors are getting annoyed.
People talk about the imminent “death” of America because of parasitic entitlement obsessed do-nothings, and they’re right. Certainly the old hippie is graying to oblivion, but it’s a cold comfort to those of us who watch our kids become absorbed by the allure of “free stuff” and the incessant downpour of the “economic justice” mantra fed to people who’ve never worked a day in their lives. We will only see the “End of MSNBC” when my father and his contemporaries die of drug overdoses. I do not want to watch my father and his entire generation spend their remaining years obsessed with utter nonsense.
My cohort, Generation X, is stuck between two generations of suffering Americans. The millennial generation is losing job opportunities and income as the nation is governed by an incompetent. They put off marriage and buying homes. While aging MSNBC News-addicted baby boomers struggle with the guilt of never really having amounted to anything. They fear being ridiculed and the shifting attitudes about their actual contribution, where they are seen as the worst generation. They still think of themselves as relevant when in reality they are a wounded and thrashing legacy of weed smokers, narcissists, convention destroyers. My parents’ generation is becoming fragile antiques, relics by choice, reassured by MSNBC that they are still the only voice that matters because they’re forcing a bakery to make a gay wedding cake and allowing illegal aliens to vote themselves benefits.
I, and people like me, have managed to break the cycle of liberal idiocy. I’ve noticed similar attitude shifts among some of my close friends, who have likewise drifted from the nostalgic rage of our fathers. I only wish I could do something to ease the anxiety of those I love, an emotion that is a cash cow for exploitative left-wing race-baiters and statists. But I have no real solution, other than to give him more pot. Sadly, for some of the nation’s elderly, they seem to have no desire whatsoever to rethink the politics of destruction for the sake of destruction. It’s a criminal waste of retirement.
Hat tip/ illutr8r
Sounds like my mom. I don’t try to discuss much beyond the weather and her health. : (
I like this, it’s quite true-wouldn’t think of reading the opposite take.
Does that make me close minded? Or wisely husbanding my remaining time?
Edwin Lyngar is no Ronan Farrow that’s for sure.
(Great job BFH! Liberal heads to pop 3-2-1…)
“I like this, it’s quite true-wouldn’t think of reading the opposite take.”
True. And if BFH went to all this trouble to fix it, the Prius over there was totalled anyway.
BFH,
This is fantastic. Well done!
The generation X paragraph is gold!
My parents were (and are) conservative, but let me and my siblings find our own way out of childhood liberalism. They never needed to argue or guilt us, they taught us our work ethic and let reality be the better teacher.
Well, I am one of the offending boomer parents, but I never went left. I’m mostly still as happy as I ever was. Sorry about the rest of those losers.
“. . . let reality be the better teacher.”
A good observation; but it’s scary that by the time “Progressives” realize that BO’s a fraud, the way back out of the hole won’t likely be easy. I think I’m gonna read some stuff written by Reagan, then a bit by Churchill (Winston, not Ward), then a few more worth reading. – I’m a bit depressed; guess it’s been this looooooooooong winter. – I’ll stifle now; not much worse than a depressed Twinkie. – Maranatha!
Wow. The salon sanctimony is thick. We’ll done, Fur. Very well done. You have the patience of a saint.
I am far too distracted with domestic issues these days to give more than a passing pffft to these purveyors of preening and tsk-tsk. The writer sounds as if they’ve already considered trying a non-voluntary commitment & realized it wouldn’t turn out well, so the next best tactic is a self-aggrandizing public plea. FWIW, I don’t even bother with FNC much these days, so I’m definitely in thoughtcrime territory.
Staying healthy, living well and outlasting the bastards is my plan. It’s going according well so far ;).
BFH, you should submit this to American Thinker.
It should be shared out there with other conservative sites.
BFH, there’s still hope. My Mom and Dad were card carrying big union members and voted strictly Democrat when I was growing up. However, my Dad managed to tell us kids if we didn’t work we wouldn’t eat, and how he wished the welfare thugs had their dinner plate broke. But it was always strange to me that they voted party line. Then my Dad passed on and my Mom was left for me to convert. And indeed I did, she hates Obama and will never vote Democrat again. She’s 90 and will only vote for whose ever a conservative. So, old people can change don’t give up on your Dad. Something some day will click with him and he’ll see the light.
We should do this very thing more often. I’ve done it a couple of times with Huffington Post pieces and resubmitted them back….. for some reason, they never respond.
I found myself nodding ‘yes’ while reading this. My mother has always been left, but is even more so now, with no thought of the world being inflicted on her grandchildren. It’s amazing that her 5 children are all very conservative. Just my opinion, but it seems that all older people care about is what they want at the moment and whether or not they took a shit today.
I’m proud of you BFH. Dr. Tar is right. Send it far and wide.
At my “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” poker game the other night at our local “Center for the Aged”
I brought up the term “job-lock.” Only one friend, of seven, understood WTF I was talking about.