Nowhere near as bad as your mom as far as the level of obsession, but as I see it, my dad fell much further from having relatively good politics (for a lib boomer) to a flat, simplistic "Trump bad" position without much concern beyond it and with a seeming sudden lack of curiosity (let alone understanding) about world events and geopolitics that he used to follow.

When I was a kid in the 90's he would tell me about US imperialism (though I don't think he used that word with me) in South America, how terrible it was, and how much the US lied about all of it. He fucking hated Reagan and Bush 1 (for all the right reasons) and strongly opposed both Iraq wars, attending protests against them, even the second one when most of America was deep in the throes of Islamophobic 9/11 derangement. He got really into learning about the life of Che Guevara for a while, reading several biographies on him, though to my disappointment now, I don't think he ever actually understood the politics, just recognized Che as someone who was genuinely fighting for the oppressed people of the world and respected him for that. I hate to say it, but I'm sure there was also just some glamorization of the revolutionary aesthetic in there too, which is fine so long as you also have an understanding from a materialist perspective and engage with the theory, which is where I suspect he fell short.

He's old enough now that I think actual age-related cognitive decline is playing at least some role in this, but the much bigger factor is that since he has no energy, he just lays around watching CNN and MSNBC all the time, and it is really sad to see. He thinks he's not being affected by the propaganda and still considers himself "on the left" because he also watches and likes the far left radical Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (I know). I was shocked back in 2022 how easily and fully he bought into the narrative for how terrible it was that the big evil Russia invaded poor, innocent little Ukraine just out of the blue. I'm not surprised by it anymore, but now with election season, his politics are centered entirely around Trump. And it's an odd, almost gossipy kind of talk about Trump's latest shenanigans that I know is inspired by CNN talking points. It's not odd in itself, it's actually very typical, it's just odd for him, as he was never like that. He often now refers to the news anchors by first name as if he knows them sometimes, which is so uncharacteristic of the way he used to be that I couldn't have imagined it 15 years ago, or even 5. A few weeks back he was telling me about how he is now boycotting the brand of wine he used to enjoy because the owner of the company is a Trump supporter and how he just couldn't in good conscience keep giving business to a Trumper. I think he was hoping this would impress me. I asked him if he really thought that any of the other multi-millionaire or even billionaire winery owners were any better, and started to ask if he was fine buying from Biden supporters, seeing as Biden was (is) the one currently committing genocide. But I didn't say that because we were getting along well and I didn't feel like it would do any good at this point.

But yeah, it has been sad to see not just someone I care about but someone who was even formative for me on my own path to leftism become so hooked in to the same kind of thing he used to be critical of, and with so little awareness of it.

My mom was just telling me she thinks we should stay occupying Iraq until they stop "calling us infidels", but I can't help but just roll my eyes and say alright then, the troops there are in grave danger and neocolonialism is hurting America too because the exploitation of the base of production by financial interests is increasing at an exponential rate which will inevitably hurt everyone not super rich. Even imperial lapdogs. I just leave out the imperial lapdogs part. I can't bring myself to either lie to or cut off family. Definitely not keen to visit, knowing we would have to listen to that. Hell no!