The Brainwashing of My Dad: How the Rise of the Right-Wing Media Changed a Father and Divided Our Nation—And How We Can Fight Back

by Jen Senko

receive stories all the time from people who claim their parents have Fox News on in their homes 24/7, often even playing on TVs in every room.

Thank god I don’t have that at least

In 2018, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was ordered by President Trump to make Fox News the only station permissible to have on in their facilities, and they complied.

Wtf?

Pew Research found that 47 percent of conservatives tightly cluster their choice of news around Fox News rather than seeking out a diverse array of sources.

One good example is the Republican Party’s obsession with Ronald Reagan’s administration and trickle-down economic policy as a high point for America, despite the fact that trickle-down economics has been proven to widen economic disparity, not to diminish it.

McCarthy? Liberals lied about him. He was a hero.

He is a marketer and a public opinion guru (i.e., pollster) and consultant who was first hired by Newt Gingrich to come up with the messaging, slogans, and language to help the Republican Party sell what would normally be considered unpopular policies or, in reverse, to make what would be popular policies held by Democrats seem bad.

Yes, like persuading people, many who themselves have college degrees and graduate degrees, that college is a waste of time and money for their kids, and that their kids should do “a trade,” which, in actuality, more often results in the kids gaining *no marketable skills at all*.

so-called death tax, his reframing of the estate tax.91 It was a brilliant revision to get middle- or lower-income people on board for a policy that would only benefit the uberwealthy.

But in reality, this law is only relevant to very wealthy families and collects a tax on inheritance money when the sum totals over $11.8 million.92

Like any good marketer, Frank Luntz keenly understands that what you call something affects its message and the emotions we experience when we hear about it.

Absolutely accurate

George Lakoff, the director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society. Lakoff has written many books about how language affects our feelings and opinions, in particular about political issues.

“Framing is about reclaiming our power to decide what’s important. Framing is about making sure we set the terms of the debate, using our language and our ideas.

The term’s use has become so widespread that I have occasionally heard other Democrats unwittingly use it, unaware of the fact that they have integrated into their vocabulary what is essentially a Republican epithet specifically intended to denigrate Democrats.

Fox News, until Don introduced him to it sometime in the early 2000s.

My dad started watching Fox in the morning at breakfast and at lunch in addition to listening to Limbaugh.

Don told my father he could listen to more extremist conservative talk shows by bringing a small radio to bed and wearing earbuds.

Oh no

kept her awake, so my dad solved that issue “for my mom” by moving into the spare bedroom. For years, he fell asleep listening to volatile words and conspiracy theories, letting them even penetrate his dreams.

it was like completely losing him to a cult. He was obsessed. This was his new identity.

There was no downtime.

Visiting my parents became a huge source of stress for me. Would Dad again try to convince me how wrong I was to be a Democrat? Would an argument spring up between him and my mother or between him and I? Would he lose his temper?

try to be patient against his denigration of my own beliefs.

he would have a cocktail in the coffee cup holder of his little Toyota. I would tell him, “Dad, you shouldn’t drink and drive,” and he’d get angry at me. “Why not drink and drive? Who says you can’t? The damn government can’t tell me what to do!”

My mother had brought up more than once that she thought Dad was brainwashed.

He even forwarded them to my friends and their family members. The sometimes subtle and sometimes not messages were always targeted against Democrats, liberals, or some Democratic institution or policy.

This is what my boss was doing when i first worked there, until he sent the one “joke” video about words that supposedly terrify liberals, among them “American flag” and, most importantly, “work”. I told him I did not like the “joke” and asked him if he thinks that is true of me? Am I a shirker? Do I try to escape work? He absolutely does believe I am a committed worker. That was the last mocking joke-meme he sent me.

The purpose of this particular email was clearly to discredit class action lawsuits and stifle consumer rights and civil justice.

mom, who hated getting these emails, started to learn how to research and fact-check them and would send my father rebuttals debunking these stories.

Everyone in my family begged him to stop sending them, but he was on a mission. He believed he had to warn everyone about how evil and unpatriotic Democrats were.

My mother also threatened to block my dad but never did because she was compelled to debunk the outrageous claims and lies.

my mother emailed me and said that she couldn’t take living with my father anymore.

always having to tiptoe around subjects for fear she’d stir up Dad’s wrath,

Eventually, she decided to stay.

don’t remember everything Dad said during this conversation, but there was an angry outburst and some arguing. I tried to remind him of one of his old principles: to each his own. Being gay didn’t hurt him or anyone else.

just a few minutes, he had disavowed everything I thought he stood for. And unfortunately, things would continue to get far worse before they got better.

I gently told him that I thought the feminists might have a point (about objectification) and asked him why that bothered him. He got so flustered and angry he threatened to pull over and have me hitchhike back to their house! I was stunned.

The one thing I thought would never happen was that he also started knocking college. He was being told that liberal professors wickedly turned all kids into liberals. My dad had flipped 180 degrees.

The Hunting of the President is a 2004 documentary directed by Nickolas Perry and Harry Thomason and narrated by Morgan Freeman that

For some reason, I said to myself, almost as a joke, “Oh, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists must be bombing New York.”

Holy hell!

But the media, both corporate mainstream and right-wing conservative, had been hyping up the threat of such an attack for months. That’s the power of repeated media messages—they get burned into your subconscious, ready to influence you at the most unexpected of times.

One of Kerry’s strengths as a candidate was his Vietnam War heroism.

Rove’s plan was to attack the opponent’s strength, to take out the one thing that could really tip the scales.

These POWs were called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Plenty of people who saw the smear ads on TV and in books bought the false message. Because, well, who would lie that blatantly?

I remember that so vividly and yes I completely believed it.

Kerry’s military record detailed his service and backed him, and major media did some reporting on it. But he acknowledged that right-wing funding got behind these “alternative facts.”

Once again, the polls showed Kerry won but they were explained away by saying that people didn’t want to admit they voted for Bush.

Interesting. I never knew this because this was during my Republican-voting, FN-watching, Christian days. But that’s what people say about exit polls with Trump “people are reluctant to say they support Trump”. Just what we all want: a President people are embarrassed they voted for.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also reported that “a consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.”

I’m not inclined to believe any of this, though, because this is literally exactly the same stuff Trump & co. Said Democrats did in 2020.

My frustration was turning into hopelessness.

This right-wing extremism had affected the thinking of my father, some friends, and a lot of my relatives. It was no longer something just preying on my retired dad;

It had in turn affected my relationships with these people, some of whom I loved very much. They would often repeat the same talking points during the same periods of time.

We engaged in this activism for about two years, until the focus of the group shifted. Gradually, we turned into a documentary-watching group. For about three years, we watched documentaries every week and discussed them. And all the while, I was getting ideas for the documentary I hoped to make someday.

My dad nodded thoughtfully and said, “I like him!” My mom said she thought she saw a glimpse of the old open-minded Frank Senko when he watched Obama speak.

Wow I never experienced that and my person never saw Obama speak

As a result of the constant Obama bashing by Limbaugh and Fox News and despite his initial positive impression, Dad became convinced that Obama was a far-left socialist, born in Kenya, and a Muslim. Obama was a “radical” out to make the country socialist and steal a third term and become a dictator. Oh, and like all Democrats, he would take your guns away (never

warning me that Obama would dismantle our country “brick by brick”;