White men like me are losing our power of privilege. The world will be better for it

We’re not divided just because of election results — Joe Biden received some 6 million more votes than Donald Trump — or because most Republicans believe the pernicious fiction that the election was stolen.

We’re also divided because we’ve gradually drifted apart over our core values: the difference between right and wrong and truth and lies, the definition of patriotism, our personal worldviews about race, gender, religion and other cultural touchpoints.

There are as many causes for our divisions as there are pebbles on Moonstone Beach.

Among the most profound is what informs our own, individual “truth.”

The bedrock source of “truth” informing our individual thinking is family, which helps explain why racism, misogyny, homophobia and bigotry toward our fellow Americans seems so often to pass from one generation to the next.

Take Jason Sysak, son of embattled Cuesta College board president Peter Sysak, whom the San Luis Obispo Tribune’s editorial board has called upon to resign after he was unanimously renounced last week by his fellow board members for posting highly offensive material to his personal Facebook page.

Peter Sysak has scrubbed most of the offensive stuff from his page, making it clear he knows he did something wrong. Still, he’s refusing to admit any fault or accept any responsibility for the ruckus it’s caused throughout the community.

Astonishingly, Sysak claims he’s the victim of being publicly “bullied” and shamed for peddling in hateful rhetoric, so he’s defiantly refusing to step down.

Now comes younger Sysak, who last week sent me unsolicited, insult-laced Facebook messages trying to defend his father.

“Nice little post you have there,” Jason Sysak wrote (quoting verbatim here to avoid overusing the “sic” disclaimer).

“Maybe you should do some research about my dad and how he transformed the college campus public safety of a 8 hr 1 officer on duty to a state recognized 24 hr police department protecting all people. Making all students and staff safe for almost 20 years. Oh ya but your a socialist defund the police and slander someone you know nothing about. Dont go crying to the police now next time you need them … .”

This defense reads: “He’s a cop, so he’s excused.”

That deflection isn’t just irrelevant, it betrays an attitude requiring forgiveness for the trespasses of the powerful, demanding we bow to the entitled supremacy of the privileged.

The use of classic Trumpian insults — asserting that I’m a “socialist,” that I support “defunding the police” — mimics the rancid, right-wing memes from his father’s Facebook page.

Where did Sysak the younger learn this behavior? Take a guess.

Like his dad, Jason Sysak doesn’t understand the discomfit in the community, and he certainly doesn’t seem to realize Facebook creates a permanent record of one’s mindset.

He deserves our pity. It’s clear he’s suffering for his father and trying to help. A son defending his father is timeless — and admirable.

But, like his dad, this son seems incapable of forming his own worldly analysis, so he resorts to common memes and constructs, a modeled behavior.

It’s sad that Sysak the elder remains defiant in the face of public scorn and humiliation over the revelation of his deeply held offensive beliefs, which display distress over the creeping loss of privilege, loss of the way the world is supposed to be according to him.

Unable to form or articulate his own analysis, he grasps at memes conjured by like-minded souls, proliferated by siloed, Trump-sycophantic media.

Sysaks elder and younger seem to be suffering from the inevitable, inexorable and — to them — inexplicable change that’s sweeping the nation and their own cloistered world.

White men, myself included, are losing our power of privilege. Personally, I think the nation and world would be far better off with more diverse leaders, especially women, in charge of things.

To guys like the Sysaks, that makes me weak, deserving of disrespect, scorn and low-brow mockery.

This episode vividly elucidates Trump’s 70 million votes — 5 million in California — and helps explain why “MAGA drags” happen in SLO County.

Rejecting your father’s abhorrent values is hard, but history requires it.

My siblings and I were at war with our WWII naval aviator father in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, until we weren’t. We dragged him along with us, and he loved us harder for it.

Change. We’ll remain divided until everyone recognizes it can’t be stopped.

Tribune Columnist Tom Fulks serves on the San Luis Obispo County Democratic Central Committee.