"Daddy died a MAGA. His last words were apologies for how his Trumpism hurt our family" [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article289588568.html

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https://archive.li/ADKjO

Daddy died in August of 2017. It was a terrible and painful death and he was only 61 years old. His last words to me were absolutely unfathomable and embarrassing: He begged for forgiveness for his behavior and his Facebook posts since 2015. The MAGA mentality he had displayed since Donald Trump came down that escalator. The point of contention in our formerly close relationship — the reason we had barely spoken in two years.

He was dying and he talked about Betsy DeVos.

Years before his death, Daddy had sent me several messages through Facebook about “ripping the teeth” out of education departments across the country and I was shocked. I am sick writing those words. I write them because I know I am not alone. I know many of us lost parents and siblings and grandparents and friends to Trumpism. It’s a sad state of affairs and we may as well talk about it, because even though Trump has been out of office for three years, he’s never gone away. We still suffer the loss of our relationships.

Daddy. He was a Navy Seabee. A carpenter. A guitar player. A fast car collector. A good guy. A man who tried to raise two little girls on his own and did it to the best of his ability. A hippie in his pot-smoking, hard-rock youth and a MAGA in his death.

It made no sense. He was never hateful, until he was. He was always caring, until he wasn’t. He was proud of me — the first to graduate with a bachelor’s degree, much less an master’s in education, until he decided the Education Department was a part of a conspiracy. He was always the man who I could count on when I called, but he died a man I didn’t recognize.

What happened?

*snip*