Entering my mom’s Boca condo, I snuck over to the living room end table, picked up the remote and changed the channel from Fox to CNN.
Since Mom was cooking in the kitchen, I thought I had a chance of making this change without being noticed or caught.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mom yelled.
“Well Mom, I changed the channels because I wanted you to see Kanye West and his Holocaust revisionist friend, Nick Fuentes, hanging with your dude at Mar-a-Lago. Fuentes is a white supremacist who wants to make America a Christian nation.
Your clown seems to get his kicks by hanging out and breaking bread with well-known anti-Semites.”
“Son, please just put Fox back on,” Mom requested.
Then she added, “Don’t you know that CNN is a left-wing propaganda network.”
“But Mom, Fox won’t show Kanye and Fuentes schmoozing with that schmuck.
“How long are you going to keep drinking that charlatan’s Kool-Aid? You’ve been sipping it for years. And watching Fox is like pouring Coke on an old car battery, it corrodes your brain.
Damn, you’re so stubborn, I doubt that my words will ever have the power to open your mind or your eyes.”
My mother shook her head like I was the crazy one.
“Mom, do you remember seeing all those dead bodies sprawled on their bellies across the Jim Jones compound in Jonestown, Guyana?
Jones, that charismatic, sociopathic, conman got his cult members to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid.
Mom, do the words, charismatic, sociopathic, con man remind you of anyone?
You got to stop drinking that loser’s poison-infused Kool-Aid?
I hate to tell you this but you need deprogramming.
And a bunch of guys I know have hired professional deprogrammers to fix their broken parents. There’s this deprogramming center, right down the road in Boca. They specialize in your malady.
And my friends said that that deprogramming center has a 50% success rate.”
I watched as Mom’s eyes reddened and her hands shake.
“Well, what do you think Mom?
Are you willing to take a chance and admit yourself in for rehab?”
I observed Mom close her eyes and bite her lip.
“The first few days you’re in a locked facility with no access to TV or the tabloids. After that initial period, if you have made sufficient progress, your counselors will decide if can spend nights in your own home.
And then they set up weekly monitoring meetings to make sure you haven’t regressed.
Well Mom, what do you think?”
Mom looked into my eyes and said, “Get the hell out of my condo and don’t you ever return!”
Hearing those words, I walked out of condo’s front door.
I realized that I had crossed some imaginary political line.
And I wondered when she’d invite me back.
