Weasel-y politics

It is endlessly infuriating to watch any sort of politics with my parents. Today instead of the news at noon there was feed from hearings about the recent whistleblower thing - I admit I haven't had the energy to keep up with it.

Mom was immediately frustrated with how the committee kept badgering the guy under questioning - head of the DoJ, I think? Then there was a 'nice' break of being frustrated with random Republican basically using his time to rail against the fact that they're all here having to undergo this FARCE before someone else went back to trying to get a simple fucking yes or no out of the guy under questioning.

I understand her grumpiness - I'm here for excessive reports about the weather with a dash of local shenanigans (and whatever endorsements the mother corporation (the mouse) have paid them to make today). (There's a reason I only watch the local news once a day.) But to me it seemed so clear. The questioner kept asking variants on "if X, then Y, correct?" -- usually "if this information passed on is credible and not just hearsay, it should be investigated, yes?"

And he NEVER. Got. A single. Answer.

Oh, there were a LOT of words, but no answers. It was all "I did my responsibility to pass on the information it's now on the committee to decide what to do with it" -- which is great, but that's not the question. I sat there getting increasingly fed up with "I will not say it should or shouldn't be addressed, because if I do and then I somehow end up implicated in this, my comprehension here means I've gone and hung myself out to dry; BUT if I don't then I look like I'm covering something."

Just...say "in this hypothetical" and get on with shit, dude. You get to acknowledge that ALL it is, is a hypothetical. You get to call out the congresscritter on trying to maneuver you into a corner without committing to an actual stance. But nope, the increasingly absurd dance to avoid looking like a traitor to the administration OR a spineless toady.

I had trouble finding the words to say that, instead pointing out that it was a hypothetical and just answer. Mom kinda got that. Dad disagreed, "but he didn't say that it's a hypothetical." "He just did. IF this, THEN that - that is how a hypothetical works."

Mom doesn't like politics. Dad is a cynic in the sense that he thinks it's all futile anyways. And I'm left just feeling weird, and sad, and hollow. The worst part is that I know Dad thinks I'm being the idiot kid and just blowing hot air without bothering to understand things. I....

I worry. I worry I don't actually know what I'm talking about. I worry that my impression of reality is just some optimistic filter that has very little to do with what's going on, that what I thought had been years of learning by talking with someone who -- while an absolute asshole -- knew his shit about politics and maneuverings was instead all just more drinking the kool-ade. I have no faith in myself or my abilities, and the very fact that this all seems so simple and blatantly THERE while no one else seems to see it just means I'm making shit up from whole cloth.

This always happens when it starts to be about politics around here, and I've lost track of what's real. What's worse is that I can recognize the immediate impulse, which is to duck into the bathroom and hide there as a safe space I can control to some degree. Used to do it all the time with the Ex.

And this is the sort of thing that makes me wonder how much of that was all in my head, too. I'm like, 90% sure it ISN'T, but.

Looks like it's one of those days of venting to the internets and then hiding in fic writing and warcraft, where I DO know what the hell I'm doing.