05.19.10
What is a “conservative”?
This is based on a little essay I wrote as a response to a Salon.com column by Cary Tennis, where he was responding to a woman whose intelligent, thoughtful father had apparently morphed into a crazed Beckerhead who fantasized about days of yore when “men wore hats”. I’m not sure if the hat thing is true or significant, but I am presuming that, since she made a point of putting it in her question, that it actually happens.
Conservatism is a philosophy of fiscal responsibility, which includes paying for what is necessary as we go through proper taxation in order to balance the budget.
Believing in conspiracy theories and wingnut talking points that are clearly untrue is not conservative; it has aspects of both a cult and a pathology.
If someone were to insist that they had been kidnapped by aliens and taken to another galaxy to be bred with plants which send them messages daily, we would not indulge them by saying that this is their “opinion”, and everybody’s opinion is equally valid and deserving of respect. We would take it for granted that there was some kind of mental illness going on with them.
And yet we treat right wing talking points that are nothing but lies generated by cynical paid opportunists as though they are a valid point of view.
Denying reality in order to maintain beliefs that are easily demonstrated as false is a characteristic of cultish religious faith. The constant shrill din of hate radio and Fox News voices insisting on ideological purity is typical of a cult – where members are trained to perpetually immerse themselves in their own propaganda in order to keep them from hearing inconvenient questions and entertaining inconvenient thoughts.
It is also intended to alienate them from those, like you, who care about certain cult members and might bring reality into the discussion. The ideology demands that your father force his ideas on you because they are Truth and you need to be converted to the Truth. It does not process the idea that you have already been exposed, examined it, and rejected it. It insists that what is needed is more repetition of the same talking points.
Like any other cult, the constant stream of sound and its demand that he belligerently confront everyone who may disagree with him are also intended to isolate him from those who might introduce heretical ideas into the equation.
I am sorry your father has fallen into this trap. I have lost friends, but thankfully my own father was reasonable and thoughtful until his death. If the two of you cannot reach some understanding about agreeing to disagree and not discussing politics, there is nothing you can do short of limiting your time together.
But one last thing: if your father served in Vietnam, that puts him at about 60 years or older. Unless his age is quite a bit older, he should not be reminiscing fondly about some time during his early childhood when men wore hats. Kennedy was the President who stopped the hat-wearing tradition. My father always wore a hat, but he was probably 30 years older than your father is, and it was kind of old-fashioned when I was a child.
Idealizing a time when men wore hats as a reaction to a President who died almost 50 years ago? Not a good sign for your father’s mental state.
