A Spectre In
My Home
by Nicole L. Murph
I remember feeling anxiousness and dread when news circulated at work of the possibility of a lockdown in early March 2020. I was going into my third month working as a library assistant at an academic library, my first library job, and in my second semester attending an online Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program in hopes to be a librarian.
What does a lockdown entail? For how long? One week? Two weeks? A month? The campus community was receiving ongoing updates from the university as news unfolded of a pandemic. No one really knew.
It's been a little over three years since the lockdowns and supposedly we’ve reached "the end" of the pandemic. The other day, I looked at photos I still had on my phone that I took during the lockdowns. The photos reminded me of the stress I was under, the dark circles under my eyes, the anxiety, and the tension felt in my home. I saw selfies taken of me with my mask on while waiting for my parent, who was in line for seniors to go inside a store such as Costco, before their actual opening hours so they can have first dibs on limited goods such as paper towels, toilet paper, disinfectant wipes, and water. Other photos I had were empty shelves in stores, walks with my dog, and DIY home projects. This was the extent of my life outside the virtual world. In the physical world, a spectre was in my house as I was experiencing a lockdown with a Trumper.
Masked shoppers waiting outside to enter a store.
In the cleaning and tissues area in a Target store. A man is looking at shelves that are empty or near empty during the early half of the pandemic.
Since 2016, I witnessed a personal transformation of my parent, which has been disconcerting and heartbreaking. A part of me was losing someone I once knew. This wasn’t a typical “we have some political differences.” This was different.
I searched the internet to see if other people were witnessing what I was witnessing. People downplayed it when 45 got elected in 2016. I found little information from the few who were searching for answers to the same questions I had. The word “cult” came up a few times, but people were in disbelief at the idea of a full-blown cult, specifically a political cult, happening in America.
But by 2020, when I searched the internet, I saw people posting their experiences with spouses, adult children, parents, friends, and relatives falling for a political cult. In my house, the spectre would show its full presence and when it didn’t, it was still felt. This spectre has control of my parent whom I take care of. My loved one is a woman of color in her seventies, a former Democrat, now consumed by Trumpism and far right-wing ideology since 2016. The followers range from those who agree with the racism, misogyny, and queermisia to followers like my parent who are deceived and in denial of this ugliness and cruelty. When confronted by the truth, they overreact and lash out in defense.
I’ve observed changes in my parent's behavior, reactions, and worldview over the last several years. Before the lockdowns, leaving the house and going to work was my sanity to reconnect with the actual world compared to the specter’s heavy influence I was experiencing in my home. What I observed before the pandemic, I experienced all day and night since all aspects of our lives went remote under one roof.
Throughout the day into early evening, I can hear Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Lauren Ingram, Sean Hannity, and Alex Jones, whether I was helping to clean the house or on the computer working or attending my classes. For nearly five to six hours a day, I hear the authoritarian rhetoric coming out of my parent’s television in their room, volume up high and, like an invisible road, traveling throughout the house. I remember working on my homework learning about prison librarianship and adult literacy and my shoulders would tense up when I heard their voices. Fox News would rile up their followers and later on I would be on the receiving end of my parent’s increasingly projected fears and ignorance. As Octavia Butler (1998) wrote in Parable of the Talents, “Beware: / Ignorance Protects itself. / Ignorance / Promotes suspicion. / Suspicion / Engenders fear. / Fear quails, / Irrational and blind, / Or fear looms, / Defiant and closed. / Blind, closed, / Suspicious, afraid, / Ignorance / Protects itself, / And protected, / Ignorance grows” (p. 206). There was always a tinge of arrogance on my parent’s part in these moments. They never had that arrogance before. Each time, it was mental gymnastics for me in finding ways to handle them in response.
I learned more intimately about the far right-wing information ecosystem, as I constantly looked up my parent’s information sources to check on the quality of information they were digesting. As I took classes which focused on the importance of people having access to information to make informed decisions (which is critical for a democracy), here I was shredding political materials or quietly unsubscribing my loved one from far right-wing sources to prevent them from consuming this sort of information. Sometimes I stood over the shredder wondering if I was wrong in preventing a person from having access to information based on their beliefs or if I am pushing back on that spectre that had control of my parent as a tool to undermine democracy.
A question I ask myself is, "Why? Why her?" How did my parent get played on this scale by those who inflict cruelty on the populace including their own followers while making her think they are there to "protect" our rights and freedoms? New faces would come on the scene in the MAGA Republican Party, such as William Barr, and they would attract my parent. "I like him. He tells it like it is." I would hear that every time. One time at Sprouts market while waiting for our sandwich to be made, my parent shared with me about a "rising star" in the MAGA Republican Party, a Black Trumper. She listened to his speech during a Trump rally on Fox News. She really liked him. Moments such as this, my parent attempted to appeal to me through identity politics. "He's a Black man raised by a single parent growing up." I am Afro-Latine raised by a Latine single parent. Thank goodness for masks. A silver lining to the pandemic. It helped cover half my face while I mentally rolled my eyes, then I stared in a distance thinking, "Why my mom?"
There have been a number of "Trumper moments" I've experienced with my parent. Each one is unbelievable and, for me right now, unforgiving. Some of these I refer to as "The Shining" moments. Shortly before the 2020 election, in our living room, I was pressured, interrogation style for at least twenty minutes, by my parent demanding me to tell her who I was voting for as President. My parent was riled up and in their MAGA binary thinking, anyone Democrat was equal to being unpatriotic and a traitor to America (This happened again with more intensity during the 2021 California Recall Election. To be called unpatriotic and a traitor from a Trumper whose leader started an insurrection and thinks January 6 was just a group of people wanting to meet with representatives and nothing more, is disturbingly laughable. Thanks, Tucker Carlson).
Afterwards, metaphorically, I felt like a beaten punching bag, and exhausted. I turned on the TV and the movie, "The Shining," was on. In addition to the nightmare we are collectively in, I zeroed in on the hotel as the evil spectre and its impact on the relationship between Danny and his father - his actual father and the spectred-taken-over father. I have my real parent and the MAGA parent controlled by a spectre. I see coldness, lack of sympathy and empathy, selfishness, and a bully that shows when the spectre takes over my parent. It happens in a sudden 180° degree switch. It came out more during the lockdowns until the 2021 California Recall Election and lessened after that. Before 2016, we had a close relationship along with its own complexities. By the end of 2020, our close relationship was near to shambles because we no longer liked the other person. I did not like how my parent became and my parent did not like me. “We use to talk politics with one another.” I did not follow the cult. Our relationship could have been one of many relationships that ended due to one man and his party. The saving grace was Trump lost the election and MAGA could not get control of California. It did not eliminate the spectre; it remains, but its lost helped open up space to give the real parent more of a chance to show its presence.
The spectre continues to loom in the background as my parent is still deep in the rabbit hole in the far right-wing ecosphere. It shows its face every now and then, but not as frequently as before. I continue to quietly remain guarded and to not engage in talking politics. Other people would have been done with the individual and that's valid. I ask myself why I am not able to do so. “Because you care, Murph. And you are learning to set boundaries.” I am angry at my parent and I love my parent. I watch out for her because I know the spectre and the far right-wing mouthpieces are not watching out for her at all. I am also guarded for myself because I know the spectre denies my existence.
The far right-wing propaganda brings out the ugliness in people. Cruelty is its purpose for the sake of absolute power. Followers such as my parent are just foot solidiers, easily used, abused, and discarded for those in power, but they do cause damage. I witness, in one generation, an individual can be on the side in supporting our civil rights and a person’s control of their own bodies and later on, participate in the destruction of those same rights through their votes and clicks. Watching this transformation in my parent, I learned anyone can be susceptible, depending where they are at in their lives economically, socially, and culturally, and where they are at mentally. It's a spectrum ranging from those who are well aware of who and what they are supporting to those like my parent, are told verbatim what to believe in and how to respond but giving them the illusion it is really their own words and thoughts. There were times I thought I was watching Fox News directly when I was actually listening to my parent. For my parent, the system failed us, which is true, but for her, it left a vacuum for "big strong men" to fill it with big promises and simple solutions to complex problems. When in reality, it is broken promises, no solutions, and exacerbated problems.
My parent is stuck in a disillusionment like a drug addict to their dealer. Sometimes, I will carefully drop in seeds of facts to a question they have, making sure I do not fully engage therefore losing her or get myself wrangled in a barbed wire situation with them. Sometimes I see it on my parent's face that she is processing the information. Nothing more is said. Other times the MAGA spectre sees what is happening and takes over my parent and she reacts bitingly. "America is still the greatest country on Earth! If you disagree with me, you can leave." It still shocks and is painful to hear. I can see clearly how and why people, especially Republican voters like my parent, vote against their best interest. It is fucking twisted. The far right-wing propaganda aims for the emotions and rile people up to react as they are the victims, no compassion of other people, and with little or no lens of critical thought of the information they take in.
This is not a small few but nearly half the population. Approximately, seventy-four million people (46.86%) voted for Trump in the 2020 election. I looked towards the past to not only understand the present but also what the future could look like. In 2016, I read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) wanting to learn Butler’s point-of-view on surviving an authoritarian society under Trump or “President Jarret” in Butler’s novels. As a fellow Pasadenian, a woman of color, a writer, and a historian, her writings inspired me. As we neared the 2020 election, I asked: How can society recover when nearly half of its population is programmed to follow a political cult leader? How can we build a new future? How do we show them a better future? In addition to reading works by historians to help me sort through these questions, I referred back to Butler (1998), “We can, / Each of us, / Do the impossible / As Long as we can convince ourselves / That it has been done before” (p. 169).
As an information worker, how do we combat the far right-wing information ecosystem that is entrenched in cruelty, authoritarianism, and antithetical to democracy?
In 2023, I am now an academic librarian teaching information literacy to college students. When I stand in front of a classroom teaching the importance of evaluating information, I see the students’ faces and I wonder if they truly know the importance and responsibility in assessing information and the consequences of unchecked information being dispersed to the public. Having a spectre in my home brought this front and center in my life. It also defined my role as a librarian as an act of resistance itself against the spectre.
Nicole Murph works at the William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) as a reference and instruction librarian. Murph is a Los Angeles native and is a first-generation college student earning a B.A. in psychology and a minor in history from LMU, an M.A. in history from California State University, Northridge, and an M.L.I.S. from San Jose State University. Murph also worked in both the museum and environmental lab fields.