Personal, Or Maybe Political, Blogging

 Like a lot of people, I have slowly stopped talking to my parents over the course of my adulthood, owing in part to political disagreements. My parents are divorced, and my reasons for not talking to my dad involve him not answering the phone and being impossible for me to contact, but my mom has become more conservative over the course of her subsequent marriages, susceptible to the influence of the men in her life to a degree I'm not sure she's aware of. I do not wish to attack her rationale in a way that would make it seem like I am trying to make her choose between her child and her husband, and so in choosing to pick my battles, have elected instead to barely converse with her about anything. It's not a great system.

I am Jewish, ethnically, meaning I inherited this from my mother, who inherited it from her mother. Although my mom converted to Christianity when I was in elementary school, after my parents' divorce, we are pretty inarguably Jews, and this ethnicity has been written on my facial features ever more baldly as I've aged. I'd also argue we are culturally Jewish, me perhaps especially, even if it's largely owing to a fidelity to a secular Judaism of stand-up comedy and inculcated love of books. Although not a Zionist, I did go on a Birthright trip, and while I don't consider Palestinean solidarity antisemitism, I do consider actual antisemitism, of the Nazi variety the Republican party is increasingly comfortable with, alarming. So when, at my grandmother's funeral in early 2024, my mom said she was leaning towards supporting RFK Jr. for President, I walked out of the room, knowing it was not the time or the place to ask if she was retarded.

For over a year, the resentment lingered, as RFK moved away from the explicitly antisemitic conspiracy theories to stick ever-more-firmly to his lane of being anti-vax, and joining up, as so many other grifters had, with the Trump campaign. I read Naomi Klein's Doppelganger, partially in hopes that it might be a book I could lend my mom, but for all that book's skill at evaluating what is going on with the anti-vax mindset and the reactionary impulse, it is not attempting to do the work of cult deprogramming which is what I think my mom actually needs. (My brother and uncle have seen what my mom reposts on Facebook, and know the rich tapestry of her not thinking about things better than I do. My brother has left the site in part due to the discomfort of seeing this material, although ex-girlfriends of his still engage my mom when the content is particularly hurtful.)

The emotional core of Doppelganger is when Klein explains that she herself has an autistic son, that she loves very much, and she contextualizes the pain of the parents who blame vaccines for their children's autism on this narcissistic impulse of the influencer, who want their children to be a "perfect" child, as an extension of their brand, often one of wellness. RFK's anti-vaxxer logic is implicitly genocidal - it posits it would be better if children died of preventable disease rather than be autistic. My mom's becoming anti-vax after COVID and RFK support is particularly galling to me because she has suggested in the past that I might be autistic: High-functioning, of course, but "on the spectrum," having Asperger's Syndrome. Hans Asperger, the pediatrician for whom the syndrome is named, diagnosed autism as a spectrum while working under the Nazi regime, with those he would qualify as having Asperger's Syndrome essentially being "the good ones," who could go on to being productive, and so people don't really say "Asperger's Syndrome" anymore. Still, the reason I called my mom today, with Thanksgiving looming as a dinner invitation, was to confront her with that her own logic was essentially genocidal against her own bloodline.

I should clarify that I am not autistic, just a Jewish person who reads a bit more than the average and thus is alienated from the general culture which often expresses its fellow-feeling through the crypto-fascist pageantry of professional sports fandom. Either way, what I wanted was for her to think about her own logic, its implications, and why that would be a problem for me, that she, without really thinking about it, had basically publicly wished me and people who have personalities like me dead. Maybe this sounds overblown or oversensitive. I maintain my interpretation of the logic, and again, only would want her to think about it, which is to say, be able to recount the points of my argument and how they relate to each other, and if there was some actual flaw in my rationale, point out where it would be.

I wouldn't say the conversation went well, obviously. I got what I would consider a few non-arguments: the non-apology of "I'm sorry you see it that way," "I don't think you have to worry about my beliefs," calling her support of RFK moot because she wouldn't vote for him if he ran for President now (seemingly neglecting the fact that he is in power as the head of HHS), and an assertion that I should still come to Thanksgiving because Thanksgiving is about family and not whether you agree or disagree. I knew going in that her thinking about it, if it is going to happen, was not going to occur on the telephone. I didn't expect I would get the satisfaction of hearing "oh wow, you're so right, I'm sorry" today, or even at any point in this lifetime.

Which raises the question of what exactly did I expect, or what I can reasonably want. This was a conversation I'd avoided having for years. I would like to have a functional relationship with my mom in the years between now and one or both of us dying. In my mind, this requires us to occupy the same plane of reality, which requires agreeing to certain facts about the world as it is so that we be able to relate to each other. This, then, is the great problem of our age, really: How much can two people disagree, and not be pushing worldviews on each other, but not actually be in conflict about the basic facts of what is going on, when there are huge systems of propaganda effectively siloing people into incompatible models of reality? It is the sense that my mom is fully a resident of what Klein calls "the mirror world" that is my bigger problem. That her logic should be understood as something that could be weaponized against me (and of course, the people I love - trans people, leftists, assorted racial minorities - all will be targeted as "enemies from within" by a fascist regime) is something I pointed out largely in an attempt to use a personal appeal to bring her back to common ground. That the conversation should deteriorate into thought-terminating cliches is entirely predictable.

I made the phone call, after so long going without talking, because I felt like a hypocrite. In all of my advice I would ever give to someone else, I would advise people talk through their conflicts. Partly, I see myself as a confrontational person, as this is the way I was in my youth, although I think I have mellowed with time, as so many others have. But it's also true that when I was younger I had more of a relationship with my parents. That's part and parcel of youth, of course, but it might also be something that only exists, for me and my Jewish family, if I am continually confrontational.