THE GRAUNIAD DISCOVERS ALEX P. KEATON, THE NEXT GENERATION: My son was struggling – then he fell for Trump’s toxic brand of ‘masculinity’. I’m heartbroken.

I’m a 59-year-old progressive and a special education teacher, and I’m voting for Kamala Harris in November. Nick* is 21, and he would say that he holds traditional, conservative values – but he’s conflating those values with radical Maga ideas, which correlate the right with patriotism, manhood, intelligence, independence and honesty. I understand where my son’s vulnerabilities came from, and why this rightwing posturing was able to seep into him. I understand it, but I still regret it.

Nick’s mom and I wanted to teach our son that democracy is an active sport. You don’t just sit back and watch. We lived in Houston, in the belly of the petrochemical beast, and I remember going to a demonstration against Halliburton, the Iraq war, and Dick Cheney’s role in the company. Groups brought puppets – it was almost like street theater – and we rolled Nick along in his stroller. That was the community we were plugged into: artists, musicians, teachers, writers. That’s how Nick came up.

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We had moved to the Bay Area in 2017, after Trump won the election. Nick was 15 or 16 when he said that he liked Trump. I can understand how Trump appealed to a childish sensibility: he’s this clownish figure who does whatever he wants.

I also know that when you come of age, you want to reject your parents’ beliefs. My father was a Reagan Republican who was really old school, values wise. A lot of my political development was a rejection of his values, so I wonder now how much of Nick’s fascination with Maga is a reaction against the way I brought him up.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s the Cliff’s Notes summary:

Somebody should do a TV show based on this story:

As Rob Long wrote at Commentary in 2020, “But by the time Family Ties made it to American living rooms, it had acquired the character of Alex P. Keaton, the blazer-wearing Young Republican teenage son of the loony-lefty parents, brought to unforgettable life by Michael J. Fox. We all know how this story ends: The parents are squeezed to the side, Michael J. Fox is on the lunch box, Alex P. Keaton is the heart of the show. In the end, Family Ties is about Alex raising his parents, shaking them awake from their 1960s brain fog, and teaching them what most Americans who do not live in Brentwood or who do not have tenure already know—which is that capitalism is terrific.”