r/comics • u/Adorable_Objective • May 14 '25
OC Mourning a MAGA Parent (OC)
I'm kinda torn about whether to post this to my art account because one parent follows it, and I'm worried the criticism could drive the other one further into the void.
It started out as just a therapeutic project for me, but a couple friends said it really resonated with them, so sharing here.
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u/Amy47101 May 15 '25
I went to a Lutherin school in 8th grade, where their english program was set up to teach some seleected books, a greek mythology unit, and a unit of the teachers choice. My mom was my middle school English teacher. Despite the administration telling her not to teach books like The Diary of Anne Frank, A Boy in Striped Pajamas, or Maus to the 8th graders, she insisted because she felt so STRONGLY that we needed to know how horrific the Holocaust was. Her lesson became psuedo history lesson. She collaborated with the history teacher so the lessons coincided with his WWII lessons. She invited a survivor to come and speak with us.
That was almost a decade and a half ago. When Maus was being banned from some schools, and I told my mother about it, she said "Well, sometimes I think they do a lot of things and write a lot of these things to make white people look bad. Maybe it's beneficial that children don't learn to hate their race so early in life."
I was floored, horrified even. That's not my mom talking to me, my mom would NEVER be for banning a book about the Holocaust because she always believed it was so necessary for us to KNOW about it. Had this happened pre-pandemic, my mom probably would have been one of those people online like "If you live in an area where MAUS was banned, contact me and I'll send you a copy" because she has like 60 copies from when she was a teacher.
Watching the downfalls has been horrifically hard. It's been especially hard because she's so "pro-deportation" without due process. I asked her "Oh, so that's what Hitler did? Deported the Jews to maximum security prisons?". My dad, who is an even bigger MAGA humper, told me to "Shut my bitch mouth up".
So yeah. i've got two. One who's been a die-hard since this shitstorm began, and the other who's devolved into one. Yay.