Pat Buchanan was born in segregated Washington DC in 1938. He wants to know if the country he grew up in really resembled Nazi Germany. The answer is ‘no,’ but it did resemble South Africa during the apartheid era. One of the ways we know that the country has truly changed for the better is that Pat Buchanan’s worldview is no longer seen as socially acceptable and he is now unemployable on cable television. This is primarily because of his views on race, but it’s also becoming true that his views on homosexuality are verboten. He certainly senses this, which is why he’s basically admitting that he’d be more comfortable in Putin’s Russia than he is in his palatial Virginia estate. I suppose he has some kind of beef with the Pope, too, since Francis I doesn’t seem to share Buchanan’s attitude about gay people.
Also, he’s not very fond of Jews. I think this is why he’s always writing books and articles that mention Nazis.
It’s hard to watch your worldview fall out of favor. But the country is changing.
When I first began dating my wife, my parents innocently asked, “Has she ever been married before?” I swallowed hard and said, “Yes, to another woman.”
There was a long pause. Then my 75 years old mom said, “You know, if I were young today, I’d probably experiment like that.” My jaw just about hit the ground. This is the same woman who used to start screaming if two women kissed in an R-rated movie on HBO when I was a kid.
She turned to my 80 year old dad (who used to rail against fags and queers) and said, “Don’t you agree?” He said, “Yes.” I was like, “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY PARENTS?”
My mom said, “You know, we were wrong.” My dad agreed. The world has changed.
I can’t remember my parents ever mentioning homosexuality at all. It didn’t exist as a concept in my household, so there was no negativity about it. So, I’d be surprised to hear them express any kind of opinion about it, especially concerning themselves.
If you’re a fellow member of the tribe, it probably wasn’t the crazy Polish branch. So many memories from my childhood of things that seemed perfectly normal at the time but now seem like something out of a lunatic asylum. Just yesterday, I was remembering a family gathering at which my great aunt was showing off naked photos of her son’s new girlfriend. I was about 7 years old. Made quite an impression. I could tell dozens of stories like that.
I don’t have a tribe. I’m a mutt. English name, with a lot of German and a bit of Northern Italian thrown in. My ancestors founded Berlin, Pennsylvania but I also have three Mayflower ancestors, 2 from one side and one from the other, plus a great-great grandfather who came over from Italy and appears to have been illiterate. I don’t fit into any heritage group.
With the exception of the northern Italians, those are all groups that know how to be reserved. So it’s no surprise that your family would express few opinions on issues others might call deviant. My family was anything but reserved. Everyone would say exactly whatever was on their mind, usually talking over others who were doing exactly the same thing.
There an old joke about how if you’ve got two Jews in a room, there are at least three opinions on any subject. My grandmother was a communist in the 1930s. She met my grandfather in a free-love society. Neither was particularly skilled at being faithful or discreet during their marriage. My mom couldn’t call my grandmother “mommy” because her boyfriends wouldn’t like it. So there was one word that couldn’t be said, but no subject was off limits, and no opinion too extreme, for my family of strippers and third-rate intellectuals.
Northern Italians are nothing like Southern Italians. Also, they regard each other in a manner analogous to New Yorkers and Appalachian dwellers.
True. I’ve spent time in Italy. In the north, people are more sophisticated and refined. But still Italian, still passionate and expressive. The further south one goes, the more expressive and passionate they seem to get. There’s a hard boiled quality in the south, away from the tourist areas.
I’m the descendant of Italian immigrants in a city that mostly had immigration from Sicily and Calabria. Yes, indeed, the hard-boiled quality.
One of the guys I work with was a Chicago Precinct Captain before he got religion and reformed. He fit perfectly – Irish with a Sicilian wife, the perfect combo for yesterday’s Chicago. Today’s might be AA with a Mexican wife.
Complete with Berlesconi’s taste for teenage women. A taste which I’ll admit that is pretty popular in the South as well, judging from the folk proverbs. Things like “Bread of a day, Wine of a year, Woman of fifteen years.”
That’s awesome.
Yes, thanks. My parents are pretty awesome. When I think about where they came from — both uneducated kids (my dad from Brooklyn, my mom from the Bronx) with no decent relationship role models and little education who made a good life for themselves. They argued a lot when I was a kid and were even sometimes violent. They were both unfaithful. One would not expect them to still be married. But they’ve actually have a great marriage now.
At around age 45 or 50, my mom took the est training, decided that she wanted to stay married and said to my dad, “Let’s stop hurting each other.” She suggested they come clean about everything. He refused the latter suggestion but agreed to the first and they’ve been happy ever since.
My dad was a lot like Archie Bunker when I was a kid. Now he’s a liberal who teases his conservative friends about how narrow minded they are. He’s so charming, he gets away with it. I once saw him tell a friend, “Your problem is you need to die off like the dinosaurs.” But he was laughing and his friend laughed too.
Most of all, they’re good people. They taught me to be honest and they always stressed the importance of character. Both have evolved and matured in pretty extraordinary ways.
More liberals need to be able to laugh with conservatives. I swear, some of my fellow lefties are so annoyingly self-righteous that I am tempted to take conservative positions out of spite.
I hear ya. I’ve got a few friends who are Republican and we avoid talking politics (for the most part — none are extreme in their views) because we don’t want to offend each other. My dad’s level of charm is unusual. I wish I could get people to eat out of my hand the way he does.
That’s like me and my older very Conservative buddy. We just each regard each other as terribly mistaken on politics.
We do agree on political corruption. It’s just that he sees it as primarily Democratic while I know Republicans are just as corrupt. He grew up on the Democratic South side of Chicago. His parents were shop keepers that lost their business during the Depression and blamed Roosevelt’s price supports. I grew up in the Republican suburbs (except for a very brief period in the inner city). My parents were the children of immigrants and were working people like their parents (one grandmother was from a farm family in Hungary). Race and Class are big markers of your political affiliation. It also seems one tends to associate corruption with the pols one is most familiar with. The sad truth is the honest ones, if they exist, are as rare as unicorns.
Lefties in general are less charming.
When Prop 8 was first on the ballot here in Calif., I asked my Dad, who was then 91 and a decades-long Republican, what he thought about it.
He said, “Oh let ’em get married if they want to. They’re not hurting anybody.”
His 88-year old girlfriend expressed a similar sentiment when I asked her separately.
I felt quite proud of them.
.
Not fair to South Africa as apartheid was supported by the Dutch Reformed Church and the apartheid regimes after WWII were very comfortable with the Jewish nation of Israel. It’s no secret both nations joined in research and experiments with BW, CW and the nuclear bomb.
The Ku Klux Klan gained prominence with violence against Afro-americans, Jews, Gays and the Catholic Church. It’s been a long retreat for Pat & friends and must realise a feeling of loneliness. How large is this group in the US? What about the potential of the WASP community?
History South Africa and Dutch Reformed Church
Indeed no resemblance to the era of the great depression and rise of the nationalist, fascist state of Nazi Germany. The hatred between Protestants and Catholics can be witnessed in Northern Ireland today.
It’s fortunate (for him) that he made a substantial income spewing hatred when it was in vogue. Now he can ride off into a well-insulated sunset.
In the immortal words of Roger Daltrey: “Let’s forget him, better still.”
Well, Pete probably wrote them, ya know? But Roger brought them to life.
I wonder if hard right-wing Catholics will come to see Pope Francis as somehow illegitimate, simply because they disagree with his rhetoric of compassion. Even though the Francis officially supports the church’s Ratzinger-era hard right issue positions.
The rightwing can’t accept any kind of cognitive dissonance or deviation from conservative rhetoric, lest their house of ideological cards fall apart. So if Francis keeps doing what he’s doing it seems like they’ll flip out and “excommunicate” him (at least from the movement) pretty soon. How long can the likes of Kathryn Jean Lopez pledge their devotion to a guy who thinks gay people get into heaven?
Convenient that Ratty’s still around, isn’t it?
I grew up in Holland in a rural area with distinct villages/towns which were either Protestant or Catholic. When we met kids from the “other tribe” it was always rock throwing and visciousness, whether with neighbors or when we traveled 7 mi. to school. After the Dutch defeated the Spanish, Catholics were persecuted and not allowed to practise their faith. Churches and schools were forbidden until early 20th century. When my parents emigrated to the States in 1957, it was a relief to experience a tolerance between faiths at the local level. Even the priests and nuns were less dogmatic than in the old country. The sixties and seventies changed everything, especially the Dutch Catholics became liberal and progressive with pope John XXIII and Vatican Council II. The US Catholic church became isolated and much more conservative. In the end, the Dutch churches emptied to extreme levels. Let’s hope pope Francis I will remain in good health and change the direction of the Catholic faith. A big step would be equality for women in the Church including entrance to the priesthood. The shame of abusing children must be erased from today’s clergy. Paternalism in religion, culture and society must be subdued.
BTW My tolerance towards people of all faiths has changed abruptly seven years ago. My son-in-law who declared to be a moderate member of the Protestant church, turned out to be a fundamentalist as I have blogged before. I’m back to rock-throwing again … sad but unfortunately a fact of life in The Netherlands. LOL
It’s difficult. All the Abrahamic religions come from historical cultures rooted in patriarchy and/or became wrapped up in one that does and while that’s not the same paternalism, it can walk a similar path.
“He wants to know if the country he grew up in really resembled Nazi Germany.”
One assumes Germany had automobiles and electric street lights.
“The answer is ‘no,’ but it did resemble South Africa during the apartheid era.”
Germany didn’t have street lights? South Africa did?
“he is now unemployable on cable television.”
Did Fox stop inviting his comment?
“his views on homosexuality are verboten.”
It’s actually the pope’s view, and the view of at least some 30% of the American people, about.
Verboten?
Ah, the liberal thought police.