"Dear Dad..." A letter upon the anniversary of your death
In which I attempt to explain today's world to my father who died 18 years ago today
Dear Dad,
18 years ago today you shuffled off this mortal coil, at the tender age of 56 — only ten years older than I am now.
Your absence has been felt keenly, and by many. Overall, I’m doing ok, all these years later. Losing a parent as an adult, though very painful, does allow a person to maintain some equanimity. Because, unlike the death of a spouse or a child, at least there is some natural order to it. Of course I miss you, even if I don’t think of you every day. At the risk of being maudlin, the thing I regret most is that my son never got to meet you. It is with some relief that I say I don’t think he realises how much of a loss this is to him. Why burden him with knowledge of such a lack?
One of the great things about being your daughter was the training you gave me in debate. You encouraged my natural inclination to be argumentative, in fact you revelled in it. But you also challenged me on my opinions. I’m not sure if you made a habit of letting me win, but any time I did win the argument I could tell you were pleased. I was immensely lucky to have had a father who encouraged his only daughter to be so independent-minded.
Which brings me to what this milestone really makes me mourn: that you are not here to see how crazy the world has become since you left it.
Basically, the US and the UK have become like scenes from one of your favourite movies, Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. Remember the bit when one of the anti-Roman revolutionaries confesses he wants to be a woman? And the only woman of the group tells him she supports his right to be a woman, uterus or no uterus?
Remember how we laughed? Well, now that’s more or less what they teach kids in kindergarten. I know this is going to be hard for you to believe, but the newest United States Supreme Court justice tried to pretend that she couldn’t define what a woman was, because to say that a woman is an adult human female is now a highly controversial political opinion.
And the scene where Brian is walking through the market and passes one religious lunatic after another? Something remarkably similar happened last week, in New York, on the steps of a Catholic Church.
The blasphemy and stoning scene is basically Twitter. Oh, and Twitter is this website where people fire random sentences into the ether. Then other people get really, really, really angry about it. Twenty four hours a day.
In 2016, this really crazy thing happened: Donald Trump (yes, that Donald Trump 😱) got elected President of the United States. I was so upset when it happened! But after a few months I noticed that liberal-left learned nothing from his cataclysmic election. Quite the contrary. They seemed increasingly nuts, and before long, they seemed worse — as hard to believe as that is. Reasoned debate was vilified as apologetics for literal Nazis. Trump definitely seemed dodgy but the opposition started to look like a bad high school theatrics. And the next president — a Democrat — was elected despite it being public knowledge that his family was getting paid millions by foreign governments, with his out-of-control crackhead son acting as bag man. And thus began my political homelessness. Six years later, I’m still wandering in the desert, an apostate.
Eighteen years ago you had just finished your last book, on misogyny, and after you died your editor dropped it. You would be proud to know that Mom was undeterred by this betrayal and bought back the rights. We found a smaller publisher two years later. And I admit, during the most hysterical, self-indulgent moments of #MeToo I was tempted to see misogyny as *not* the biggest threat to women. But the last few years of gender-identity insanity have proven your thesis absolutely correct. Misogyny is pervasive, protean and pernicious. It shows up today as men claiming the mantle of womanhood and being given it, no matter what risks some of them pose to women and society, or how invasive their demands.
The thing that would upset you most, I think, is just how much your beloved science has failed us — to a criminal degree. You were in the mould of the 19th century gentleman scientist, with your dearly held faith in reason, objectivity, and natural law. Your heroes like Isaac Newtown and Copernicus and Giordano Bruno… well, they wouldn’t know what to make of today either.
Basically, the world caught a bad flu two years ago and in response governments everywhere threw reason and logic and common sense out of the window. We started doing things like make little kids put cloth over their noses and mouths all day. For their health! Oh, and the US government tried to mandate that everyone be injected with an experimental medication! And it turns out it was quite dangerous! But The Science (Peace Be Upon It) said was safe! And we Trust The Science. So we call it a big success! And all dissenting experts are called conspiracy theorists! Oh, and the government that did this considers itself liberal!
Turns out The Science (Peace Be Upon It) pays its holy men quite well:
It was deeply disconcerting to watch as all the so-called liberals lost their damn minds over other people’s health decisions — as they cried out in unison to the state: “Regulate me harder, Daddy!” The video below must be seen to be believed.
As a generalisation, for expediency, let’s just say that the left and the right have switched places. Can you imagine that? If you have even a whiff of a populist sentiment about you, or true class consciousness, the liberal-left has abandoned you completely. The good news is that, although the right-wingers proudly proclaim themselves as such, they bare little resemblance to what I thought of in the past as right-wing. They regularly decry the heavy use of state power, corporate-state fusion, and discrimination based on race or religion. Here’s a good example of the switcheroo: Liz Cheney, daughter of the Republican Dark Overlord Dick Cheney, is now celebrated as a hero in Democratic media; and Naomi Wolf, former Bill Clinton staffer and feminist, is a hero to the populist right. If you are a true lefty, who are you going to trust more? Liz Cheney or Naomi Wolfe? This is causing painful cognitive dissonance among the left.
To be fair, I now realise that the terms “left” and “right”, as signifiers of political ideologies or alignments, have always been a canard — a clever and well-obfuscated plot to keep the people divided.
As C.S. Lewis wrote in his dystopian sci-fi novel That Hideous Strength:
“Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That’s how we get things done. Any opposition… is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers.”
That’s another thing that will surprise you. I love C.S. Lewis now. I fervently wish I could remember anything you said about your fellow countryman, but I suspect you would have at least dismissed him for his Christian views. Turns out, Dad, he was right. We atheists and materialists were wrong. I wonder if you could hear me say this would you be horrified? Or would you — taking a look around at the chaos and unhappiness and depravity that defines this time — agree with me, with a rueful shake of your head?
For all of our political discussions and debates — including when we used to argue over socialism when I was a socialist! — I realise now I’m not really a political person. I’m interested in politics insofar as it reflects the drama of human existence and Big Ideas such as truth and fairness. I actually don’t care much about labels or sides and I certainly don’t care about parties or ideologies. They bore me to tears, in fact.
I remember you talking about Ian Paisley inciting violence with rhetoric — well, that’s a big deal now. Like everything with the liberal left, this once rational position cut its ties with reality a few years back. So now we have the safest cohort of young people in the history of the world having repeated meltdowns when people who happen to disagree with them say words. I don’t mean things like Kill All Taigs, either. (Which, btw, we still see on walls in Belfast’s working class Protestant neighbourhoods, depressingly.) In today’s world, words like Women Don’t have Penises count as violence. Go figure.
Another thing I’m feeling nostalgic for of late is our erstwhile outsider status. Not fully American, not fully Irish, not fully Italian, our family formed a tiny little bohemian culture of three. And although growing up I longed for conventionality, to be what they call now a ‘normie,’ even then I recognised it was quite easy, as an outsider, to make an impression. And there was a bond with our fellow outsiders, the oddballs and the cultural asylum seekers; and it more or less made up for being outside the Cathedral. Those things were for dullards!
Now, however, every bourgeois dullard with an internet connection is desperate to project that outsider status, and in so doing — is rewarded with status and prestige. Talk about cultural appropriation! Not only has this crowded the genuine bohemians like me out of that oddball, cool space, it has also filled it with the most judgmental, controlling, and bureaucracy-loving bores who pretend to be counterculture while in fact mercilessly enforcing increasingly Maoist cultural norms. The folks who had peace-and-love bumper stickers are now the ones screaming at people for not wanting a government-mandated, experimental, medical procedure.
Basically, all the good intentions of the people on ‘our side’ were captured and weaponised by monopolistic, totalitarian and anti-liberal forces. And of course, there are bad actors on the right. But the bigger problem is that the liberal-left is incapable of having a fact-based, rational conversation about the failings and the corruption of their own leaders and the drawbacks of their world view. Why? I’m not sure. There is no middle ground, because there is no agreed upon reality.
And even after all these words I’ve written to you, Dad, I have barely scratched the surface. You were always skeptical of lefties, even hostile to those who made grandiose claims of fighting on behalf of the downtrodden. So maybe you wouldn’t be that shocked by what I’m telling you.
A few weeks before you died, as your body was being ravaged by cancer and chemo, you said something very out of character for an avowed atheist like yourself. You asked, “What comes next"?” And before I could say anything you answered your own question.
“Unknown territory.”
Is there an afterlife with you in it? I have no idea. But I will end this letter with a metaphor that the amateur astronomer in you would appreciate. You always were, and remain, my North Star.
A lovely letter. You make me wish I could talk to my long-gone parents again.
This is wonderful. My dad died ten years ago, I wish I could talk to him about everything that has happened since then. Thank you for writing.