My father is a bigot.

[GeorgeHayduke]

This is hard to talk about, the dynamics are tough to chew on. My dad, in his youth, was the guy who started the first migrant worker dental program in Washington state. If I had ever been insensitive with respect to equality in my early years, he was the first to admonish me.

Lately, however, his speech is replete with disparaging remarks about "Mexicans" and "bums". He doesn't want to acknowledge truths like addiction, cartels, mental illness or a corrupt legal system.

So, I'll be dragging him into the dank alleyways and shantys later today with food and a quick lesson in Spanish not so much to feed people he can easily identify as "less fortunate" but more as people who are human beings.

He once told me that "Sessions likely wears pink silk undies to chambers, bigots dont change their stripes". Hopefully by communing a bit with the people he loathes provides contrast enough to reveal his self-fulfilling self-loathing.

It would be easy for me to ignore it, but I can't respect him without providing a challenge. He's literally the only family I've got.

At least he absolutely hates Chump. There may be some providence available to him.

Edit: spelling.

[MLAA]

1. Good look reopening your Dad's eyes. 🙂

My dad uses the Bible to justify why non whites are 'different' but he is 'not racist'. I told him what he described was the exact definition of racism. Between evangelicalism and Faux news I have no hope he will ever change.

[Irish_Dem]

2. The intense GOP propaganda targets the elderly and preys on their fears.

Sad to see a man who in his younger years did the right thing, and is now going off the rails.

He is the only family you have, and he raised you right.
Enjoy your day with him.
My mother died last month, once they are gone, they are gone forever.

[GeorgeHayduke]

4. Dad's actually on borrowed time.

Our family is predisposed to cardiovascular disease. Two years ago his aorta crapped-out. He has stents from his arch through both Illiac arteries. During the installation of that mesh, both of his kidneys died. I am his living donor.

Maybe this is more about me, but I keep calling him out at the same time as I try to understand his perspective. I just want to be able to have the same respect I used to have for the guy. I don't get to see him often.

[Irish_Dem]

6. It is quite likely his health problems have caused cognitive slippage.

And personality change. Not uncommon.

George, perhaps if you can see things from this perspective it would help.
In some ways the dad you knew is not there, heath problems have ravaged his brain.

And reassure him that he is safe and no one is going to hurt him.
He seems to see the environment as dangerous now.

We went through the same thing with my Dad before he died.
He turned into another person and everyone one was against him in his mind.

Appreciate your dad for the man he was. And the good things he did.
He obviously raised a good man.

[GeorgeHayduke]

7. Those are the plenary of my thoughts

My real purpose is to let him have comfort in his twilight. He should find a particular catharsis in his kin, but I think that communion with real people might provide him a reveal from his isolation from them.

It may bring some cognitive plasticity to the surface.

Other than that, "hey dad, let's get off the couch and go meet some people" can largely only do some good.

Edit: spelling again. Stupid fat fingers.

[Irish_Dem]

8. I agree, getting him out with others is a good idea.

Will combat the isolation and obsessive negative thoughts.

Usually long term memories are the last to go, so perhaps recount some positive times
from your childhood?

[dawg day]

3. Sorry to bring this up, but is he old enough for dementia?

I saw this transformation in my uncle, who worked for civil rights in the 60s. He started watching Fox News, and it was like a drug for him, like speed-- it rammed him up, made him excited, terrified him. But he was also clearly losing his faculties. So it wasn't just that he started believing that the Jews were making War on Christmas, bad enough- he started using the racial epithets that his parents used, and which he had always been adamant were off-limits.
He got barred from his senior citizen center because he started calling other members and staffmembers racist terms.
It was awful to watch. The dementia was eating away at the part of his brain that helped him inhibit his baser feelings, just when Fox News was riling those same feelings up.

He was hurting the people around him (including the staff who were trying to help him), but also it was all making him alienated and angry. His own grandchildren didn't want to be around him. He was extremely unhappy until the day he died.

I suspect this is pretty common in that generation. As the inhibitions are worn away, they revert to that childhood culture of the WWII era, where open racism was accepted.
Lord, don't let me live that long to end up alienating everyone.

[GeorgeHayduke]

5. He's still tack-sharp for the most part

But, yes, I'm noticing some cognitive faculties are waning. Not memory or temperament necessarily, mostly consideration of other people.

[Jokerman]

9. An early sign of dementia in my dad was a loss of "filters".

My dad was never a particularly nice person. He was always brutally critical and often verbally abusive to me and our family but for the most part he kept those remarks within the family, putting on a kinder face in public.

As he aged he began to drop that filter with the excuse that he was "only telling the truth" when he berated a nurse or decided it was up to him to set straight a couple of young men about their baggy pants and how it reflected poorly on their race. He had never been a racist but he did feel the need to criticize in any way possible. He also became very cruel to anyone he deemed to be overweight.

For many years I thought he was just becoming a bigger jerk as he aged but now I think that this was part of the dementia.

[GeorgeHayduke]

10. Interesting parallels

I see a bit of that happening.