I am sorry if this is offensive to any elderly, but I am getting so sick of my soon-to-pension father who does nothing but complain about other people. They do everything wrong with the undertone, but never explicitly said, that he knows better than them.
Especially journalist, oh he loves complaining about them and how they are hiding the truth because they didn’t report about something that he knows is true in a short news article or clip (often the fact he mentions is true, but it is a really niche knowledge and he has always struggled with the idea that other people don’t know everything he knows).
This has gotten worse and worse as he gets older. We used to always discuss politics and what works and what doesn’t and I enjoy those conversations, but lately he is getting stuck on topics and gets very very repetitive. He is also getting sensitive about it, getting upset and raising his voice when I don’t agree with him.
have anyone else experienced this with their beloved elders? This is common stereotype for elderly, especially elderly men, but it is so true for him! I do remember my grandpa also being like this, although he never talked about politics.
The elderly I expect come from a generation of school students who were not taught critical thinking. The elderly are exposed probably more to the whims of the media than young people are, and coupled with cognitive decline and lack of critical thinking, their brains are easily rewired and indoctrinated. Think about the number of voters you can sway.
The thing is, he is very critical of mainstream media. There is nothing wrong with his critical thinking of other people, it is being critical against his own thinking that is the problem!
If they bring up the perspective of someone who is negatively affected by a policy that he likes, he will say that the media are biased and are bringing it up to try to affect the public, that they have some kind of agenda. I agree that all media have agendas and bias, that is the nature of humans, of course you are going to want to bring in the perspective of someone you sympathize with! But he is getting to a point of thinking it is some kind of conspiracy and only media that reports things he likes are any good and he seems uncritical of their agendas or their agenda is good.