David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

Partisans defend every kind of evil when it’s done by their own allies

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A child who is put into a cage doesn’t care whether his jailer is a Democrat or a Republican. He just wants out of the cage and he wants to return to his parents.

I haven’t had anything to say about the obscenity of ripping children from their parents and putting them into fenced cages — literal cages — because if you know this is evil, I don’t have to explain that to you. And if you don’t know this is evil, I can’t help you understand something so obvious.

The problem with political partisans is that they are willing to see evil when their enemies do it, but are blind to such things when their allies do the same things.

In the last week or so, pictures such as this one have been shared all over social media in order to attack the border policies of Donald Trump’s administration. The only problem is that the mostly progressive left folks who were sharing it didn’t realize the photos were taken four years ago — when Barrack Obama’s administration was in control.

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When you can’t call one you love, silent phone just taunts your need

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Who do you suppose was the first person to look at a telephone and desperately want to call someone — but know he can’t?

Before the telephone, two people were either in the same place or they weren’t. After the telephone came along, time on the phone — and later other forms of live conversations such as chat and FaceTime — became reasonable facsimiles of the real thing. Not as good as touching someone, of course, but far more satisfying than nothing.

As more and more people got telephones — and the sound quality got better over the years — there had to come a point at which someone looked at his or her phone for the first time and wanted to call someone that he or she couldn’t call. I wonder when that was.

I didn’t have periods such as this early in my life, but it’s become common now. I want to hear her voice. I want to hear her words. I want to listen to her thoughts and emotions. But I can’t.

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After his death, I can finally see good in narcissistic father again

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This is the first time in many years when I haven’t felt a horrible sense of dread about Father’s Day.

My father expected to be honored and acknowledged on Father’s Day, but I quit doing that a long time ago, because I decided I couldn’t continue to be that dishonest. Instead, the day became an annual reminder of the tension between the praise he wanted and the reality of what I needed to say to him.

When I kept trying to get him to talk with me about the past — and how he treated me in that present — he used to get angry and say, “Nobody gives me any credit for all the things I did for you children.”

That wasn’t true, but when you need to get someone to look at the abuse he’s inflicted on you (and continues to inflict), you’re in no mood to recount anything good about him. Now that he’s dead — and no longer stalking me online and showing up at my door unannounced — I can finally allow myself to look at his positive side once again.

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