a few days ago my dad and I went for a long ride on motorcycles through the hills of Southern Missouri. In a typical town diner we stopped and ate and there in a quieted voice my dad told me his thoughts about the current state of affairs in the use. For all the nonsense, for all the bullshit that came out of his mouth in the hour of far right, conservative extremist radio, MacCarthy era ignorance that he chose to repeat to me he made direct allusion to a social finality that made me want to walk away from him forever, "Civil War." My heart dropped out of my chest and sat burning in my stomach for the remainder of his time in St Louis. Such anger, such insanity makes me want to vomit. Vomit and his hatred, vomit on his closed minded and arrogant foolishness, his condescending manner and hauty confusion. To think, me, his step-son is incapable of stringing two ideas together and yet I am both better educated and more rounded than himself, not to mention that I am young and not blazé like him, nor have I made the conscious decision to live with a woman that I do not love, take care of children that I have no tenderness for. He has become loud and stupid and now, as I come to think of it, he has always been to my knowledge both loud and stupid.
But! don't be fooled, I love my dad, both because he has been my dad and has chosen to remain so for 18 years but also because knowing that he has done the best he could with what he had and that in rare moments he has overcome his pain to show me kindness. I was an impossible child and I had difficulties that he was ill-equip to handle. I do not hate him for that or at all. But! his mention of civil war, his incapability to put aside his own frustration, anger and self-centeredness for the amount of time necessary to consider change repulses me. So I remain repulsed and disgusted and hopeful that he is both wrong and the representation of something that is passing away.