See my #25. Seems like we’re kindred souls.
I cannot begin to even put into words how incredibly aggravating it is to have self-hating idiots like this in the family. Fortunately, my parents got away from that nonsense, and 2 uncles who were big libs 40 years ago have gained wisdom as they’ve aged. But some of my cousins...no brains at all. One belongs in a rubber room, he’s so off the walls, bat-shit crazy regarding politics.
Jews, particularly East Coast Jews, who revere their parents as Jews tend to do, also revere the obsolete and leftover-from-the-30’s views of their parents. There is a remarkable lack of thinking involved with this; they parrot opinions they have heard relentlessly since childhood. Roosevelt, one step below God himself, even though he did essentially nothing (the classic example being bombing rail lines leading to the camps; though I suspect that would have done little.....) Unions, all the way. Evangelicals, actually worse than Muslims because they want Jerusalem but they want it for their own reasons. Liberals, of course, are great because they believe in freedom, but Conservatives want to control everything you do.
These are people who fancy themselves as being very smart but they are blitheringly stupid when it comes to having thought any of these things out for themselves. They have simply never done so. They are classic bumper-stickerists.
I recently reconnected with an old pal from the 70’s with whom I pal’ed around for years. He had moved to Hawaii in the early 80’s and though I had visited him once or twice, not since 1986. We were very apolitical except for being hippies. Born in Long Island, (me in NJ) his parents were actually members of CPUSA, sub rosa. It was very hush hush. Frankly, I have utterly zero need to convince people, let alone old friends, of anything. I really do not have the patience to battle through lib dogma. I much prefer enjoying the friendship and tacitly avoiding certain topics. I see nothing wrong with that. That’s agreement, that is comity. But after claiming he was very well read and accusing me of being a nutcase because I really do not like the idea of PP selling baby parts, he absolutely would not believe me when I told him that Sanger, the originator of PP, was a fervent eugenicist and in many, many instances advocated for the “culling” of black people. And Jews, by the way.
It came down to a situation of, if I wanted to be his friend, I had to believe and accept a towering pile of crap that was documentably false, while he “didn’t have the time to even consider my stupid views.”
I couldn’t accept that. Back to not being in touch and not caring one way or another.