In which I comment on "'Fox News brain': meet the families torn apart by toxic cable news"

Reproduced in full below so I may interpolate italicized comments; see the original here.

I love my mother. She is one of the kindest and sweetest people you will ever meet and I would be nothing without her. I’ve never heard her say a bad word about anyone, never mind anything overtly terrible, like the type of thing, for example, you might hear from Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity. But I do know, much to my dismay, that she has watched them on TV a lot over the years. As such, my mom and I have agreed to not talk about politics anymore. The cognitive dissonance between this lovely woman finding something appealing in the most xenophobic pundits on TV is too hard for me to reconcile. I don’t want to think about it.

Let me reconcile it for you: your mother, like I'm sure most actual Nazis, is a total sweetheart to those she considers full human beings, and a fucking Nazi towards the untermenschen. Where's the cognitive dissonance? Your mommy loves you...and hates others. This is hard to process? By "not thinking about it," let alone not confronting her about it in some manner, you are literally giving her a free pass. 

That's not love and that's not respect. That's cowardice.

It turns out there are a lot of families across the country who have a similar arrangement, or worse, in which people have stopped talking altogether to relatives they feel have been stolen from them by Fox News.

Fox News--or any media outlet--can't force anyone to believe anything. Fox News is activating a pre-existing condition, is all. Your mom let herself be duped because she wants to be duped. Make her own it.

To be clear, Fox News didn’t invent the white supremacy and racism at the heart of America, but the channel has definitely supercharged it. It’s also important to point out that “My parents watched the bad TV and got racist off it” is clearly a much less serious problem than being someone whose life is put at risk by the type of stuff Fox News promotes. That doesn’t make seeing someone you care about slide into the myopic bubble of right wing propaganda any easier.

Good, at least that much was clear, but Bad TV didn't make your loved ones racist. They are racist. That's a character flaw; and it's ugly as fuck. Tell them so, in some fashion.

I mentioned the idea of losing family to Fox News brain on Twitter the other day, and unsurprisingly, a lot of people had their own similar stories. I asked some of them to share how it felt. 

Here’s a collection of the stories people shared. 

•••

Growing up, my dad was the one person I knew who taught me to be a critical thinker and to educate myself on topics before I spoke about them. But right around the 2008 election, he became a Fox News talking point machine, saying some awful shit I never knew he believed. When I’d press him on where he heard it and how he knew it was true, he’d just shut down.

Daddy hates niggers, obviously, and can't critically think his way out of his own psychological issues. Make him own it.

Maybe he was always like this, but lacked the exhaust chamber to say out loud what he was thinking. I’ll never know. 

Yes, he was. He lacked the GUTS to own it publicly. Now he's hiding behind the skirts of Trump and getting off on the Sadist-in-Chief's insanity. 

It just sucks because I know the people he hates so much are basically the same people as me.

Tell him that. You hate me, now, Dad. You OK with that? Be prepared for at least the functional answer to be, “Yes, I am, because I need this hatred more than I need your love or respect, but what I'll accuse you of is being hate-filled, cuz that how this shit rolls.”

Yeah, he’s racist. I wouldn’t have thought so back in the day, but I guess it was always there simmering under the surface. Like a lot of people, I think old age and his chosen form of media have made him feel more safe about saying stuff out loud.

Correct: they were cowards then and they are crowing about their disgusting belief system in public now because they have cover and sanction from on high. These “lovers of independence and liberty.” Make them own it--these brave, safe-space-hating right-wingers are all about personal responsibility, right? Make them own it.

My only guess is that they no longer recognize the world around them. Instead of acknowledging that it’s just the way things go, they’ve retreated into this fear of “the other” which almost always turns out to be someone who isn’t white.

Who cares? Why are you looking for excuses? They are morally lost and the only way back is you trying to break a few eggs, however you like, with whatever tone or tactic or whatever you like. Not whiny-arguing because you want mommy and daddy to agree with you; this is not about politics. This is about a psychological derangement, at best. Moral derangement might be more like it.

•••

After Obama was elected I thought my dad had turned a corner – he said he stopped listening to talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh, on his long work commute, because he said that Limbaugh had gone off the deep end.

I don’t watch Fox News because of course it warps your psyche, but it must have changed tone after Trump was elected. My dad slowly became even more xenophobic and angry than he used to be.

He needs help. Are you giving him help by confronting him about this mental illness, which is what it is? Are you expending any effort or family-political capital on it? 

Arguing about economic models is not what this is; this is mental illness, plain and simple. Fox News? I could watch it all day long and it would have no effect on me. What is this bullshit?

My wife and I are worried about letting our daughter stay with our respective parents, because their toxic anger and resentment is slowly becoming their entire identity.

Simple solution: “Hey, 'rents: no access to our kid without us around as I don't want this sick example taking root in her brain. Don't like it? Either shut up entirely about it when she's around, or, better yet, look in the mirror and go and sin no more.”

I hate what Fox News has done to almost everyone in my family. 

It hasn't done shit. They did it to themselves.

It’s absolute poison and the only thing I think is worse is that there are people who think that destroying the morals and conscience of multiple generations is worth a few more bucks. I absolutely refuse to believe that people like Hannity don’t know what they are doing.

They do and they don't: never underestimate doublethink. Who cares, though? It's not their fault; it's the dupes', the willing dupes' fault.

I wish I could do something, but who has the time or energy to combat that?

Bullshit. One email or five minute conversation would do the trick; you're afraid. Simple as that: you're afraid. Possibly just of Standing Up To The Rents; probably of what the response will be: essentially, go fuck yourself, I need this more than I need my children's love and respect.

•••

I was raised by a strong pro-choice feminist mother, who now tells me “cute stories” that happen on The Five (the Fox daytime show), loves Trump, and thinks abortion should be illegal after six weeks.

So, mom is a racist asshole. Next.

I grew up in a house where we openly talked politics. Now, it’s noticeably absent from our conversations. She actually said that she hopes my daughter, who is four, grows up to be conservative. When I said “absolutely not”, she seemed truly baffled.

Confront her. End the bafflement.

I will say that whenever she spends time with my minority friends she seems to temporarily soften on the racist stuff, then she goes back to Texas and watches a few hours of Fox and it’s back to “normal”.

She's weak. Yes, mommy can be weak. So can you. So can I. Next.

•••

I pretty much don’t go home anymore – twice in the last three years, only at Christmas – because my family and friends all have broken Fox Brain. I called at Thanksgiving to say hi, which was when my dad called Obama the n-word during the call, apropos of nothing.

Simple solution: "Dad, if you love me at all, you will literally never say 'nigger' again in my presence. You will stop talking about your psychotic racism and bullshit which sickens me and makes me lose respect for you every single time you vomit it up. Comply with my completely reasonable request, and we can move forward. Don't comply, and you obviously need hatred more than me. Choose." 

Five minutes. Handled. Feel free to alter the tone or word choice, but to say nothing is to be a coward.

I’m not totally sure when it started since I haven’t lived at home since 2002. It slowly built, but the rift probably started around 2008, when I was volunteering for Obama. It got the most heated when my mom went to a Trump rally in Phoenix ahead of the 2016 election.

Your mother hates the "niggers." Probably more than she loves you. It hurts, I know, but it's always best to lose illusions.

We’ve pretty much agreed not to talk politics anymore, but occasionally my mom tells me things like “Brett Kavanaugh is innocent because women always lie about getting raped.” Eventually, I just stopped calling and answering texts.

OK, so she's a fucking psychopath. Sorry; it hurts. So is mine--way beyond this kind of crap. Such is life. Grow up.

I can’t necessarily say it all stems from Fox News, but it’s on in the house pretty much 24/7 and I can’t imagine that doesn’t play a factor. 

Reinforcement, is all. No one gets fooled who isn't an active collaborator in the scam. Everyone knows what's right and wrong. Cut the crap with the excuses.

But I probably had MSNBC brain while I was there, as I had it on eight hours a day at work and then watched Maddow and Hayes when I got home.

Most impressive thing yet stated. Yep, it ain't just the flyover Trumpians. 

Since these Trumpers are moral and mental weaklings, the best move is to use your own faults, since corrected, as an example. Then it's OK for them, possibly. You're a human being: you won't have to look long to find out some analog to their horseshit. Then you throw down the confession, as it were, and either by example or explicit statement, you ask, "What's so hard? Why can't you do it?"

•••

I lost an uncle to Fox brain. 

No, you dumped, rightly, an uncle who wants to love Fox's fascist garbage.

He was a middle school teacher in a small upstate New York town, was on the board of the teachers union, and a big labor guy. After he retired he started thinking unions were for lazy people and talked a lot about how the government gives free stuff to immigrants who come here illegally. A couple weeks ago we were talking about my student debt and he said if I was an illegal the government would take care of that for me.

It's a mental illness.

I asked him why he thinks that’s true and told him I thought they just put them in cages, but he just rolled his eyes and started talking about something else. We mostly just don’t talk as much anymore because it’s not worth it for either of us.

Your uncle loves his hatred more than you. Life lesson. It's not uncommon.

•••

My parents came to visit me in LA recently, from my hometown in Illinois. They are the sweetest, warmest, supportive, most generous people on earth – but over the past few years I’ve picked up on distinct symptoms of Fox News brain poisoning.

They are not the sweetest, warmest, supportive, most generous people on earth. They are racist morons. Sure, they were nice to you. Great. I'm sure SS officers dug their kids, too. And? This is the bar for morality, huh? "Nice to me...but supports concentration camps for children ripped from their mothers' breasts. Gee, I can't figure it out. They're such good people...to me."

During their trip we were just hanging out and chatting when my dad, unprompted, says “They say there’s a lot of Mexicans here in Southern California.” Uh, yeah, dad. This actually used to be Mexico, so I think some people of Mexican descent may have stuck around. Then my mom chimes in: “Oh sure, they just come right over.” The implication being that they all scaled a wall, and not considering that most families have been here for generations, descended from people who migrated here for a better life just like our own ancestors did.

It does feel a bit like you’ve lost a loved one to Fox News poisoning.

No, your loved ones lost themselves. Personal responsibility. Make them own it.

It’s a hard thing when the glowing prism through which we view the ones we love is shattered, and there’s no way to put that image of them back together again.

Correct, and I sympathize, but any human being over the age of twelve should be able to see his or her loved ones, and themselves, for what they are, warts and all. Love is NOT blind. My wife and I confront each other about shit that needs confronting all the time. Even if it causes ‘friction.” Because we actually love each other and aren’t abject cowards…at least in that respect. :)

•••

My parents haven’t been broken by Fox News, but what I find almost as disturbing is how even parents who have never watched a moment of Fox News can parrot their talking points – like mine. My mom is an immigrant from Venezuela and she started talking the other day about how refugees are an undue burden on our healthcare system and the reasons it’s bad. She’s an educated person who has never watched Fox News! Part of it is she’s always just been one of those “I did immigration the right way” people, so it doesn’t take much to rub her the wrong way on that front. But Hannity and Tucker have so permeated the culture that their noxious shit can be found coming out of the mouths of ostensibly “liberal” people.

She's a fucking narcissist with no heart, is all. Desperately needs to feel superior to others and so would like to pick on desperate Hondurans. No different from my mother, a European Jew who survived the Nazi holocaust, finally arriving in New Jersey only to get shit not from "the goyim" but from...wait for it...assimilated American Jews. Of course! Told her to go back to Hitler. She was six. Nice.

Because those weak American Jews just HAD to comply with what they took to be THE STANDARD WASP ATTITUDE. They were cowards. Disgusting, nontrivial cowards.

So, yes, it hurts when it's mommy, but, hey, people are a strange crew. Like you and I haven't done something analogous at some level at some point. Please.

•••

For a little counter-programming, we actually got one of my cousins back before it was too late. He listened to InfoWars religiously from 2009-2015 or so and is an avid hunter who lives in the woods, smokes a lot of weed and plays a lot of video games, so I thought he was a goner for sure. But thanks to the infinite patience of his little sister, he actually came to his senses and realized what dangerous crock he had bought into.

That sister loved him and did the right thing. Note the whiner above who's all, like, who has time for that shit, right?

He could see how disappointed we all were, but having his baby sister tell him every day that she loved him but that he was slowly rotting his own brain seemed to do it. 

Bingo. Baby sister has more fucking guts in her little pinky finger than most people who mistake cowardice for "getting along."

There’s part of me that wonders if what sealed it was the fact that InfoWars was going mainstream, and it wasn’t as cool or exciting to believe in Jade Helm or whatever if those beliefs weren’t truly counter-culture.

Could be!

This article has been adapted from Luke O’Neil’s email newsletter.