There is a trend on TikTok: You post a picture of your dad or your uncles from the ‘70s or ‘80s with a caption saying, “This is why I don’t take shit from anyone.”
The men pictured in the trend are usually outside with a beer and a cigarette wearing a trucker hat and faded 501s with a plaid shirt or something similar. The music that goes along with the photo is Waylon or Willie or Johnny.
That’s my dad. He is the reason I don’t take shit from anyone.
That is one of my favorite pictures of my dad because it makes him look like he was a tough guy. He wasn’t. He was a teddy bear.
I don’t mean that he was the least bit sensitive, because he wasn’t and would deny it if accused of any sort of vulnerability, but he always thought about me and my sister before he thought about himself.
Daddy died a MAGA, but before that, he was the only man I could trust and the only one I loved.
I am who I am because of my dad.
I have loved several men since. My husband, my sons, my nephews, and extended male relatives. But my dad was a big man with a big personality and he took up a lot of space in my head until I was an adult myself.
He was a Navy Seabee — a carpenter after his service. He played the guitar and read fantasy novels (he introduced me to Stephen King) and loved music. He had a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on his forearm and he collected guns. He bought old cars and rebuilt them so he could embarrass his daughters by roasting tires in downtown Kansas City as soon as the light turned green.
He flirted with every waitress who ever waited on him and even proposed to one. One of the many women he proposed to…I think four or five accepted his request, though he only married three times.
Only…
Before his MAGA costume arrived with its hate and discontent and general MAGA orders to follow, Daddy was a man who didn’t listen to anyone and made his own rules. Before MAGA ate away at his morals and his sense of right and wrong, he helped the marginalized, and poked holes in religion that his father forced on him.
He left home his senior year of high school because he wouldn’t cut his hair after his dad demanded it. My dad wasn’t exactly a man who followed rules.
He was a free spirit and a free man. He worked because he had to, but he played music and fixed carburetors and smoked pot and fished and read because he wanted to. He was a good provider and a guy who liked to stick it to the man whenever possible.
When cell phones started to be the norm, he swore them off and said he’d “never be on a leash” for his employer. That he was available to his employer from start time to end time, but don’t dare encroach on his personal time.
Healthy boundaries.
He taught me those boundaries, but he folded, and his phone became the gateway for conspiracy theories he thought were true. The cell phone he had always sworn away was now taking him to places he’d never dreamed of and telling him lies he couldn’t get away from.
I was a teacher and Daddy started to speak negatively of the Department of Education. He thought teachers were “indoctrinating” students. I was hurt when he started tirades against teachers and he told me he wasn’t talking about me. He was talking about liberal teachers teaching too often on women or racism or equity or diversity. He was talking about teachers who were teaching kids to question authority. The same authority he had always questioned.
He didn’t see the irony.
We talked on the phone often and he ranted against “illegal immigrants” while working construction and knowing and being friends with “illegal immigrants.” I talked to him about those friendships and he swore the MAGA movement held no hostility toward the folks he knew and loved. He was talking about “criminals” and “rapists” coming over from other countries, not the immigrant workers he worked with day in and day out.
He didn’t see the irony.
He was particularly upset about abortion while dating dozens of women throughout his life. While having two daughters who would need reproductive care throughout their life. While knowing I needed care for two miscarriages myself. While knowing that the D&C I received in the ER would one day become nearly impossible to obtain. He knew his vote was for the “unborn” and refused to understand that the women all around him needed the care he voted against. He wasn’t talking about us when he ranted against abortion — he was talking about women who “used abortion as birth control.”
He didn’t see the irony.
My dad was a reader and a thinker. He was social and funny. He was a musician and a craftsman.
MAGA killed most of it.
He started simplifying big ideas and concepts. He started making the people he loved the opposition without even meaning to — he forgot the gray areas. He forgot nuance.
Things were right or wrong. Everything was good or bad. He compartmentalized. He put things and people into boxes.
He became the person he had always rebelled against. The authority he had always raised me to fight. He couldn’t see the irony he had always pointed out to me.
Daddy taught me to take no shit from anyone and then he reversed course. He looked the other way while absorbing all the shit from all of the right-wing media and the Trump regime. He willingly swallowed lies and conspiracies and hate.
Daddy died before Biden was elected or Trump won a second term. I don’t doubt that he would have voted for him again, because as I have said over and over again, it’s nearly impossible to break someone away from a cult.
But I would have tried.
I would have tried to be a better daughter to the first man I loved and the first I lost. I would have tried to break the death grip MAGA had on my dad.
I would have tried harder had I known he didn’t have a long time to live. I would have tried harder because his memory is now tainted with bigotry and hatred and an irony I can’t unwind in my brain.
I miss him and who he was.
I am angry at the MAGA movement for being so effective in marketing hate to the exact demographic my dad represented. I am angry at my dad for falling for it.
Daddy. He made me who I am and then he taught me who I never want to be.
But I also know that I take no shit from exactly no one because of my dad.
I miss him every day.
~Jess
Good grief Jess, that is a lot to carry. What a big heart, what a objective perspective you gained to see both men in your father. Carry on and continue to be brave and honest.
Your pain and disappointment are shared by so many people. Getting out of this mess is going to take years. Some days, I think we can. Others, I wonder if we will. Thank you. You honor your Daddy very well.