A letter to my dead, white, Republican, boomer parents - by G.M Robertson

Dear Dad and Mom, 

Now that you are gone, it is up to me to carry on your memories in the minds of my children. 

And so, when they ask me why the world seems so horribly cruel and unfair, I will tell them it’s because of you. 

I will tell them about how you sacrificed the environment for…what was that again? Something about gas prices? My kids won’t give any fucks about how much you paid for gas when their world is burning and the oceans, filled with plastic, have swallowed up entire towns and cities, destroying millions of lives. 

I will tell them about how you used your vote to give power to a man who bragged about grabbing women’s pussies—a known liar and narcissist who was too emotionally fragile to withstand the slightest critiques on anything he did or said without throwing tantrums and hurling insults, like a child. I will tell them that your vote, your insistent support of his lies, and your excuses for his boorish bigotry stopped democracy in its tracks and opened the nation’s doors to fascism. 

I will explain to them how you fell prey to fear-mongering and lies, and you could not tear yourself away from them. You fed on them. They nourished you and your fabricated outrage, and, in turn, they devoured your reason and humanity. And then you fed the lies to others. Through your “likes” and “shares,” you spread that poison as relentlessly and as far and wide as you could. And when you were told to stop sharing dangerous lies, you exclaimed, “CENSORSHIP!” and you fought for your right to spread dishonesty instead of fighting for integrity.

I will tell my girls that the reason they don’t have the same rights as their brother and their male peers is because you handed them over to politicians who all but explicitly promised to claw back their freedoms. The writing was on the wall, but you chose to ignore it, and instead supported the diminishing of my daughters’ personhood. And for what? Your religion? My kids won’t give any fucks about your religion when a pregnancy gone wrong could kill them or the childbearing people they love, or when they simply don’t want to bring a child into the hellscape you helped to create. 

I will tell my kids about how you ignored corporate greed because of the slim returns you received on your own investments. My kids won’t give any fucks about your investments. They’ll wonder why corporations and private equity firms own everything, and they don’t have any wealth to speak of for themselves or their families. They’ll wonder what happened to the so-called “American Dream,” which will seem to them like a piece of distant American mythology.

I will tell them about your racism, your selfishness, and your inability to acknowledge your privilege and count your blessings. I will tell them about how you refused to fight for those who were oppressed, and instead you fought to further solidify your own privilege and secure your own entitlements. 

I will tell them how, in your final decades—your Golden Years, when you were squeezing the last drops of security and promise from the withering American social safety net—you never asked, “What can I do to help you shape the world you want to grow old in?” Instead, you screamed, “MY RIGHTS!” even in your dying days, as I was wiping your decrepit ass. 

I will tell them everything so that they will understand how the potential that the American Experiment once held died in your care. I will tell them about the part you played in snuffing it out. I will tell them you helped kill hope for a kinder, fairer world. 

This is the legacy you chose to leave behind, and they will know it. 

I will tell them everything so they will understand why their world feels like such a punishing place. 

I will tell them it’s because of you.

— G.M. Robertson