Advice columnist and musician Andrew W.K. slammed a self-proclaimed liberal who wrote to him complaining about his right-wing dad who he said is destroying the world and their relationship with his politics.
“Son of a right-winger” wrote in the letter, published Wednesday on New York’s the Village Voice blog, he “just can’t deal” with his father anymore. “He’s a 65-year-old super right-wing conservative who has basically turned into a total asshole intent on ruining our relationship and our planet with his politics,” he wrote. “I’m more or less a liberal democrat with very progressive values and I know that people like my dad are going to destroy us all.”
The two spend all their time together arguing, he continued, before posing a great question: “I love him no matter what, but how do I explain to him that his politics are turning him into a monster, destroying the environment, and pushing away the people who care about him?”
Andrew W.K. wrote a lengthy response to “Son of a right-winger” basically telling him he’s an idiot who is allowing politics to prevent him from seeing his dad as a human being.
“You’ve reduced your father — the person who created you — to a set of beliefs and political views and how it relates to you,” he explained. “And you don’t consider your dad a person of his own standing — he’s just ‘your dad. … The humanity has been reduced to nothingness and all that’s left in its place is an argument that can never really be won.”
“The world isn’t being destroyed by democrats or republicans,” he continued, “red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist — the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world. … When we truly believe that some people are monsters, that they fundamentally are less human than we are, and that they deserve to have less than we do, we ourselves become the monsters.”
“Love your dad,” he concludes, “because he’s your father, because he made you, because he thinks for himself, and most of all because he is a person. Have the strength to doubt and question what you believe as easily as you’re so quick to doubt his beliefs. Live with a truly open mind — the kind of open mind that even questions the idea of an open mind. …”
Read the full exchange here.