Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Jason. She's mining for votes in Texas.

 

A Hussein followed by a Castro. Maybe the Dems can find a Stalin in 2020.

 

Ahem. You've had 25 days to work on your material and that's the best you could do?

Come on, Sunshine. You're too good a player to do that. #CoachKwisdom

 

#ImtiredDamnkids

 

Andrea Mitchell: Trump ‘Completely Uneducated About Any Part of the World’

 

Hillary's camp likes to say that Bernie can only beat her with white voters.

But, who won the Muslim/Arab vote in Michigan, the Native-American vote in Washington, the native Alaskan vote, and the native Hawaian vote?

 

On mellowing as you get older... (on politics...and life).

I haven't written about this yet - anywhere - but I'd always appreciated this outlet and most of you seem to "get it".

I'm in the middle of mellowing about life, other people and the standards you should hold yourself and other people. Recently read this article:

Quit Your Job

... it's about how people in their 40s are generally the most miserable at work, largely because of unmet expectations and dreams from their younger years. I'd say that I probably hit that about five years ago but I've settled into a more grateful place for my career. No, I didn't get to the huge market but I'm making a very good living in a city I love.

Yet the "mellowing" part is coming with life experience. As a younger man, I was a conservative - financially and very much socially. Some of it imparted on me from a young age, some of it I discovered myself in college. Yet, as I approach mid-40s, I'm reaching to point where I really don't give a damn what other people do, so long as they don't hurt me through violence. I wonder if my kids see this as well -- I'm not as rigid on some elements as in the past. Still be punctual but I'm not as protective of foul language or adult subject matter (documentaries, crimes, etc) as I was when they were younger.

This is where I need to let this out.

Some of you may remember the story about the 2014 World Series and the opportunity to re-connect with my father after years of moderate estrangement. The support and appreciation on here blew me away (thank you, all). We watched two of the games together - my dad, my son and myself.

Well...

Within a month of the World Series, it turned out that he was a serial child molester, with victims (family) going back 20+ years. Because I was estranged from him and grew up multiple states away, I didn't know about it but, as a kid, there was always something a little "off" with him. The fortunate part is that my children were never physical-abuse victims, largely because I was a control freak parent who never left them alone with him. That wasn't because of what came out but because I knew that he just wasn't a good parent (from when I was a kid) so I wasn't about to grant that privilege.

Now he is serving a ten-year sentence in a state prison. He's lost everything, except for his finances, which he can't access anyway. Wife (stepmom) divorced him and moved to the West Coast. He will probably die in that prison and I still am uncertain how to explain all of that to our teenage children.

On top of this, it came out soon after his arrest that he wasn't my father to begin with. Apparently, I'm the product of a different guy -- a secret that a nurse discovered the day I was born, telling my mom, and that this was kept quiet until I was six and got into a bicycle accident and needed to go to the hospital. I remember the crash and the hospital but I found out last year that when my blood type was not either of my parents (dad took me to the hospital as mom was out of town that day), that's when my dad "knew" that I wasn't his biological child.

In the middle of all this, the biological father I have died of cancer during this stretch -- a man that I once met as a teenager but had no idea, of course, that I had half of his DNA.

The point as I'm just working through this whole mess that I'm still uncertain how much I'll reveal to my own children and when I'll do it is that... life often disappoints. The people you look up to (or merely tolerate) do have clay feet, whether politicians, family members, spouses, lovers, children. Ultimately, you have to be ready for disappointment and be pleasantly surprised when you're not.

This works into the "mellowing" part for me. Even as a conservative Republican, after the last 18 months where I've seen my family shattered -- through no fault of my own -- who in the hell am I to tell anyone else how to live? While not as dramatic, I think others in a similar political circle probably have that realization around middle age.

Try to be excellent but don't try to be perfect.

And quit killing yourself when you fall short.

 

Not sure what to say other than I'm glad you felt safe saying all of this here.

 

Well, that certainly puts one of the feel-good thread detours in SJ.com history in a new light.

 

Wow, Ex. Like YF said, I'm glad you felt comfortable telling us that.

 

Feel free to go back to arguing about trump or Clinton or Bernie. I won't be offended.

Yet something about mellowing as you age - politically - led to me having to let this out. Outside of a very small circle, I couldn't say anything about this.

He was on the run with handguns for ten days after the abuse discovery and I had cops outside my house for days, hanging out in a church parking lot a block away. Harrowing but I also worked like a dog to keep it quiet. And it was thank goodness.

Carry on and thanks for listening.

 

I don't think you've got anything to worry about when it comes to telling the kids about all this. Rather hear it from you than find out some other way, right? Hearing from you would be better than years from now they decide to do the family tree and find out about grandpa's prison sentence via Google or Ancestry.com.