Blood Isn't Thicker Than Propaganda

From my primary "I Protest" Substack (April 2022) at donaldjeffries.substack.com

Note: The election of Trump a second time has only exacerbated the national division, and further fragmented already squabbling families. Family dysfunction has now reached warp speed levels.

I’ve commented for years on the disgraceful way most Americans treat their elderly parents and grandparents. Nursing homes, despite being acknowledged cesspools of abuse and neglect, became increasingly popular during the post-WWII era. No more Waltons style living arrangements. Goodnight John Boy.

Until nursing homes became a real thing in this country, multi generations lived under one roof. When Grandma and/or Grandpa got old, they lived with one of their children. I’m sure that children in those households benefited greatly from cultural enrichment; with their grandparents around to advise them, tell them stories from the distant past, and provide more love and encouragement. Three of my four grandparents died long before I was born. My Dad’s mother died when I was twelve. It was a typically “modern” distant and not especially loving relationship.

In other cultures, the elderly are treated with great respect. Go into any traditional Asian home, and see how the oldest members are waited on hand and foot. Their words are given great weight, and the younger relatives listen to them. In America, our elderly are almost always discarded in nursing homes, or retirement homes, where they can be with “their own kind.” It’s almost an Apartheid system. The ones who never married or had kids, experience a form of loneliness that must be heartbreaking. But perhaps even worse are the old people with families, whose children and grandchildren seldom or never visit them.

Of course, what I’m describing was pre-COVID. Pre-unconstitutional lockdown. Pre-mask wearing, social distancing madness. We still don’t know how many elderly persons in nursing homes died without seeing a single relative for a year or more, except for dystopian “visits” through an outside window. Who knows how many even got that; a brief bit of waving back and force through glass? Perhaps able to catch a few words, or communicate by reading lips? But considering they probably were all wearing masks, that wouldn’t have been possible. Just wave with great emotion.

Our mistreatment of the elderly in America didn’t happen accidentally. As Franklin Roosevelt, one of the all time great conspirators, reminded us, nothing happens that way in politics. And this is indeed political. Years of intense programming, via television shows and movies, indoctrinated young people into thinking a strained relationship with your parents was perfectly normal. How many sitcoms featured the plot line about an adult woman dreading a visit from her mother? A mother she obviously didn’t see regularly, and thus should have welcomed with loving arms.

That is one of the most persistent themes throughout media; friction between children and parents. Throw in the unsentimental sex-crazed, bohemian grandparents, who aren’t really interested in their children or grandchildren either, and you have the modern dysfunctional mix. No kind little old ladies need apply. No Ward Cleaver-type wise patriarchs wanted. No polite children grateful for, and anxious to please, their loving parents. Life imitates art. And we have reached the point where America 2.0 mirrors those “values” instilled in them not by their mother and father, but by soulless corporate elitists.

I have yet to discover a truly functional, loving American family in all my experience. Many appear that way on the surface, but all that’s needed is a closer look; peel back the layers, and dysfunction will invariably be there. Every family with multiple siblings that I know of features at least one usually frivolous feud that has caused them to be estranged for years or even decades. Or parents alienated from adult children. This isn’t a one-sided thing- I know of too many parents that have abandoned their grown children who are struggling and need them more than ever. The old redneck philosophy of “you’re out of the house when you turn eighteen” is still popular.

Now, economics have made it hard for young people to leave the nest at all, let alone when they’re still teenagers. The American Dream of home ownership has become a nightmare for Millennials, and probably is an unattainable fantasy for Generation Z. In my area, rent for a one bedroom apartment in a nice location, with good security, is going to be at least $1500 a month. To comfortably afford that, one would have to make $60,000 a year. I don’t know any young people with that kind of income. And the unconstitutional lockdown, destroying small businesses, has only made things worse.

So combine the collapsing economy with the insidious propaganda, and you get the present mess. Ugly people created by an ugly culture, and ugly disparity of wealth. Looking beyond the obesity and tattoos, modern America is filled with unattractive personalities. Empathy is hard to find. Compassion is reserved for animals and whatever media crusade is being promoted. Black Lives Matter! Stand with Ukraine! What little charity there is in these dark hearts doesn’t exist, let alone begin, at home. They are far more likely to donate to some big charity that spends almost all proceeds on executive compensation, than to help out a family member in need.

All this is on my mind, as I deal with my own family dysfunction. The absurd COVID narrative has fractured my extended family far more deeply than I thought. My brother’s memorial will be held May 7. At this point, I’m not sure one of my sisters will be there. Apparently her kids won’t be, either. While dysfunction existed before in my family, exacerbated by alcoholism that was at the center of most pre-COVID family squabbles, The Greatest Psyop in the History of the World has created a brand new strain, if you will. Call it the Black Death of dysfunction.

Basically, because I’m unvaccinated, many of my family members want nothing to do with me. These feelings are undoubtedly even stronger because I don’t hesitate to talk or write about the subject. The old saying about blood being thicker than water used to be a truism we all recognized. As some of us used to say, “We’re family, man!” What exactly does it mean to be “family” now? Even before the Great Jab was launched, parents were ostracized from children, siblings had become strangers, grandparents were left to rot in depressing facilities, etc.

With the vaccine issue driving a deeper wedge than even Trump did, a Grand Canyon of ideological division has split not only the general population, but even almost all families. Uncle Bill will not be welcome in my house until he gets vaccinated! We were already at “Don’t mention Trump at Thanksgiving.” And we’re beyond even, “Wait outside and we’ll pass you your presents and Christmas stocking.” Ricky’s service is at the gravesite- outside. Evidently, that’s still not enough for those who are clinging to this media-fueled fairy tale.

I was already down on many family members, after I was fired without warning from a corporation I worked for all my adult life- forty four years. They weren’t exactly supportive when that happened. No, that’s being way too kind. They ignored it. They never called, or even mentioned the subject. In this way, their response mirrored their reaction to my six published books, appearances on television, and many radio interviews, not to mention my own radio shows. Almost since it began, my new, lowly-paid but rewarding career has been the giant elephant in the room. I literally have never received a single word of support or encouragement from any of them.

So, clearly there is a personal motive in writing this. I feel the dysfunction more strongly than ever. And I fear it’s a permanent situation. I’ve already said that anyone who doesn’t come to Ricky’s memorial, whom I feel should logically be there, is an Orwellian unperson to me. I will have no more to do with them. Now I’m sure they’re all distraught about this, given that they already seem to have unpersoned me. I hate to stoop to such levels, but really I cannot bounce back from that kind of snub. It’s a slap in the face to Ricky’s memory, and disrespectful to those of us who loved him.

I don’t know if the state of families in other nations has atrophied to this extent. I suspect it probably has, perhaps not to the American level, in Europe, Canada, Australia- you know, the predominantly White countries. I think that Arabic and Asian cultures still promote respect for their elders. Disrespect and neglect of our elders is a White thing- you wouldn’t understand. The massive amounts of propaganda are directed primarily at White audiences. They have years of research that shows that it seems to work best on them.

My mother considered family to be very important. She talked to her sisters all the time, and worshiped her brother, who died way too young. They tell me that before I came along, she used to go to her parents’ grave every Sunday after mass, and cry like a baby. I used to go to her grave, and I cried the first several times, but I guess I just don’t have it in me to still be doing it, thirty five years later. She spoke reverently of her parents, and her father seemed to have been a drunk mess. But as she told me often, “Remember, your friends come and go. You’ll always have your family.”

That’s why I’m brooding over what Mom would think about all this. She must be crying tears in heaven over the prospect of Ricky- whom she protected and treated better than anybody else did- being the victim of such heartlessness. Mom used to regale me with tales of various uncles and aunts who lived with them before I was born. Different times. In those days, families took in the uncle who was down on his luck and living alone. Even cousins could find a roof over their head, if they had nowhere else to go. They even took in my sister’s best friend for a few years.

My father’s family, on the other hand, wasn’t close at all. If it had been my Mom’s mother who was alive during my youth, I think it’s pretty certain that I would have seen her a lot more. One of my Dad’s brothers lived less than five minutes away from us. The only time we ever saw him was when he’d come over to fix something. He was quite the handyman. I think we went to his house two times in nineteen years. When he died, my Dad hadn’t seen his only sister in nearly a decade.

So I guess we were ahead of our time. Dysfunctional pathfinders, at least on my Dad’s side of the family. When I’m pontificating about the state of the American family, I’m speaking from experience. I’m a big hugger, but most of my relatives just aren’t that touchy-feely. And now, of course, most of them aren’t going to touch me at all, because they don’t want to see me. Or apparently talk to me. They must think the Unvaccinated can infect over the phone, or through email or Facebook messaging.

My wife’s family is very small, unlike my sprawling slew of relations. Her sister is a real Karen, which resulted in myself, and my kids, not being able to attend my niece’s wedding last year. We were given the option of getting vaccinated, or presenting proof of a recent negative COVID test. I was proud my children were offended by that. That’s the only cousin they have on their mother’s side of the family. They were close as kids, but now they will be strangers as adults. Guaranteed. In that respect, they are like the vast majority of cousins in America 2.0.

We are engaged in a spiritual battle. Those of us clinging to some semblance of what was good and decent in our traditions are losing that battle. We cannot contend with hi-def screens and super-cool talking heads, transmitting an entirely different message. About everything. A pro-death, anti-liberty message. Those of us who still value life, who think all life is sacred, can’t coexist with the monsters being created. They loathe the concept of God, and they loathe us for trying to resist corruption.

How can you reconcile the First Amendment, let alone the Golden Rule, with the Cancel Culture that at least half the country has embraced? That has effectively become their religion. Their faith lies in the State, and their laughable “Science.” They don’t believe in God, so how can they support any notion of God-given rights? I don’t know what Sodom and Gomorrah was like, or how bad Caligula really was, but I get the sense we’re coming pretty close to that.

It’s hard to support family values, when the definition of a family has become fractured. The “Woke” mob finds the very words “mother” and “father,” “boy” and “girl,” to be offensive. Heather has two mommies. Men can have babies. Or to be less offensive, pregnant persons. And we thought the explosion of single mothers, and the latchkey kids they produced, was bad. At least we didn’t have teachers advertising their insanity on Tick Tock, or officially sanctioned Transgender Story Time.

One of my good friends used to have a very simple philosophy; “People suck.” Considering his born-again Christian parents abandoned him years ago, knew he was living in a tent in the woods for a while, and wouldn’t even come to visit him when the hospital called them after he attempted suicide, he had good reasons for saying that. His parents definitely aren’t “Woke,” so this is not a partisan issue. People in general have been poisoned by the messages assaulting them for more than half a century.

It’s hard to suck it up and be the bigger man. To do unto others. I will probably not “cancel” any relative that doesn’t show up to my brother’s memorial. Probably. But I won’t feel the same about them again. To those of you with close families, I say count your blessings. I envy you. But I suspect that far more “awake” Americans are as shell-shocked as a PTSD soldier. Disappointed and disillusioned in our loved ones. Haunted by the knowledge that our DNA turns out not to be thicker than water.