Will, California
My father had always been a bit of a chameleon. As a young man in late-1960s San Francisco, my mother said he strived to be the best hippie he could be. Or the most extreme, contracting Hepatitis C by sharing a needle while shooting heroin with another hipster. A choice that would have ill effects later in his life.
After my parents divorced, he moved to Tennessee and then Texas becoming a Reagan Republican as part of his new role as a cowboy/country music singer and songwriter. My father was a proud liberal as a young adult akin to my mother and her progressive family. When he got together with his third wife (he was never single for long), he became a staunch conservative as well as a Catholic, mirroring the new family he was soon to marry into.
Nothing appeared too ominous over the years until the invasion of Iraq. Even after it was commonly known that there were no WMD, my father refused to acknowledge that fact and became furious when he'd see anyone on TV speaking out against the war, although he himself had once actively protested America's involvement in Vietnam. When I reminded him that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, my father eluded that I had been brainwashed by "the California newsletter" and declared that the WMD had been hidden in Syria, which turns out was the Fox News conspiracy theory of the month, straight from the mouth of Sean Hannity.
As with many stories about loved ones turning a corner, my father began his true trip into the abyss with the election of Obama. When I posted a celebratory pic of the newly elected president, he demanded that I remove it from my social media page. And I was in my 30s at that point. Another time when I told him that I had felt slighted by a situation at my job, my father immediately blamed Obama as well as ACORN, which was a get-out-the-vote organization vilified by Fox. This is when I knew the talking heads had their claws in him and he was fast approaching the right-wing event horizon.
My father then began to message me Fox News clips, which resulted in us having ongoing political debates via email. At one point, I suggested that he take Fox News and conservative talk radio with a grain of salt, which garnered a very angry response from him. After a few more rounds, he proposed a truce that I happily accepted. We were again at peace.
Or so I thought.
When I saw my father again in person, I was on a break from school, as I had decided to return as an older student to wrap up my bachelor's degree. The money I accessed wouldn't get me to the finish line but I told him I'd figure out how to pay my bills during the last semester. Maybe get a loan. Without skipping a beat, my father looked at me and said that I wouldn't have to worry about it if I was Black. He then added that I'd only have to call Jesse Jackson or the NAACP before scoffing in disgust from hearing himself mention the people he now despised.
I reminded him of our truce to not talk politics, which he denied he was doing. He then begrudgingly agreed to skip social issues as well. That was our first conversation since not seeing each other for over five years.
To make a very long 10-day visit short, my father had fully transformed into someone I didn't know and wouldn't want to know. He was a completely different person. He was now an angry, bigoted, and resentful Fox News and talk radio zealot who loathed anyone who didn't fit in his bubble. What didn't help was the Hepatitis C he contracted earlier in life was now giving him serious health problems and his chances for survival were looking far from certain. I had vowed to not argue with my ailing parent no matter what my father said. And he said a lot, disregarding our truce and testing my commitment to a peaceful visit.
In hindsight, the true end of our relationship occurred a week into my father demanding that I sit through daily angry right-wing political lectures. Even casual conversations or watching movies would remind him of something he heard from a talking head and set him off. I was almost 40 years old and had been yelled at more in that short period of time than my entire four decades of being his son.
On day 7, a fateful short car ride broke the camel's back. My father was once again complaining about Black people then switched his ire to "Mexicans" and Cesar Chavez. I'd had enough. I snapped back that we should change the subject if that's where it was going (and had gone to). He absolutely exploded with rage.
"I'm a Mexican, I can talk about it!", screamed my one-quarter Hispanic, 75% White father. When I said that I didn't want to talk about it, he shrieked at the top of his lungs that he doesn't like when people tell him he can't talk, which I guess was the excuse he made to himself for stomping on the no politics agreement that he had called for. After cursing and yelling at me some more, I gave the immature bully my father had become an insincere apology, one I still regret caving to. His health was declining after all and this was possibly our last visit. As he was getting out of the car, I wanted to again remind him of our truce. After I said the word "But...", he jumped back in the car, got directly in my face with wrath in his eyes and snarled "But what?"
Our relationship was over.
I literally hadn't been in that kind of situation since middle school, and like what is expected in the Lord of the Flies culture of Republican World, I resigned myself to tolerate this alternative reality until I could escape three days later when my flight was booked. And it was a long three days.
For the rest of the time I was there, I sat silently as my father carried on and on about all the different groups of people he reviled. Brown and Black people, poor people, women who considered themselves equal in society, labor unions, and liberals in general. Pretty much all the folks he was told to hate by his political overlords. When he picked me up on the morning I was set to fly out, he turned down my offer to come inside while I finished packing and instead sat in his car to "listen to the news", which was Glenn Beck's radio program.
The hour drive to the airport consisted of my father giving me a recap of his newfound resentments and all the people they encompassed, as well as the type of conservative he considered himself to be. It was a long trip. When we mercifully made it to the terminal, he declined to get out of the car to see me off because he was packing a pistol. Unbelievable. I vowed to myself on the spot to never return unless his health failed. I then headed back to California, thankful that the 10-day nightmare was finally over.
He died roughly 12 months later. We barely spoke during that final year, and when we did communicate, it was awkward short exchanges of pleasantries by two virtual strangers. No more funny and entertaining phone conversations. Just a shell of a person who had ruined his relationship with his son and who seemed utterly uninterested in repairing it. Fox News and talk radio were far more important to a dying man. Me and my neighbors had become the enemy in his eyes and it was going to stay that way. Forever.
I sometimes wonder how he would have reacted to Trump's ascent to power (and his abuse of it). I would like to think something like that may have broken his fever. But when Trump came down the escalator and started into his xenophobic tirade in 2015, I remember thinking that dad would have loved it, which speaks volumes. Radicalized people like my father existed before Trump. He just gave them a slogan, merch, and a messiah. I'm sure my father would have believed all of his lies and cheered on January 6, only to deny that Trump did what he actually did, which was launch a violent coup attempt.
But extremities and shape shifting were my father's calling card. He wanted to be the best hippie as a young adult and then the best conservative as an older person. Taking things too far decades earlier wound up killing him in the end and going to the extreme on the other side of his life killed his relationship with his son. It's just too bad he could never be content with a happy medium.