My father isn't exactly a fascist, but.... (uspol, end-of-life, ~430 words)
My spouse and I visited my parents recently. After about two decades of health scares and general decline, Mom is now clearly in endgame, completely bedridden in the main room of their house. I won't get into medical details other than this example: Over the course of our three-day visit, she went into brief respiratory failure twice. Her time is nigh.
This is relevant because while Orrery and I wanted to be there to comfort Mom, there was a hell of an elephant in the room to work around. Dad spent slightly over twenty years in the US Air Force (it's a lot like the military), took a brief break to earn degrees in architecture and landscape engineering or whatever it's called, briefly attempted to brave the private sector, and now he's a civilian working under military contract. With this comes a devotion to the US military that the two of us find... distasteful at best, and chilling at worst.
I mean, he's got a large poster in his office of the Commander-in-Chief. (That's the POTUS' official military rank.) He voted for that motherfucker. He always votes straight-ticket Republican. They've got him convinced that they're the ones keeping his veteran's benefits from being yanked away. He was "terrified of what Hillary Clinton might do". (So were we, but for very different reasons.)
Mom laid down the law some time back. She emphatically did not want to be a captive audience for arguments about religion or politics. It's bad enough she has to put up with Dad; their politics differ widely. (She's a Mormon, but the sort to value Christ's message over church doctrine; this puts her politics a lot closer to ours!) For the duration, we did our best to dance around the burning issue of just how far Dad's loyalty to the current regime went.
It turns out that he's no fan of the current administration's march toward fascism. He explicitly stated that he's not voting for that guy again. Why is that poster up? Military indoctrination, of course – he doesn't agree with the guy, but he considers himself obligated to respect the office. Sure, he'll grudgingly acknowledge that so many people's lives are being ruined, but he's gotta respect the office.
So I guess Dad's technically not a fascist.
But it was only because Mom was there that I didn't inquire during dinner how he could taste anything over all that boot leather.
My father isn't exactly a fascist, but.... (uspol, end-of-life, ~430 words)
@ElectricKeet 3) the respect a soldier could have towards civilian government is not absolute and, if you’re going with “connected to our well being,” there’s VA stuff, a waste of materiel, the treatment of military trans folk and Latinos, and a botched SEAL operation this president can be blamed for; it’s only sheer luck that he hasn’t been able to squander uniformed lives for the sake of avoiding impeachment. So far.
re: My father isn't exactly a fascist, but.... (uspol, end-of-life, ~430 words)
@Leucrotta Thanks, and... yeah. In the grand scheme of things, he's merely one more person okay with voting to fuck over others' lives just to end up working against his own best interests. But in the personal scheme, he's my dad and I can still see the parts of him that aren't tainted by all that. At a distance, anyhow. Difficult as it is, I sure don't intend to see much of him in person during the span between Mom's funeral and his.
My father isn't exactly a fascist, but.... (uspol, end-of-life, ~430 words)
@ElectricKeet 1) I’m sorry that your mother is at this point.
2) I’m sorry that when she passes you won’t have any insulation to avoid not going at it full tilt with your father and