The atmosphere is so heated, and the statements are getting more and more extreme. Let’s just assume Harris wins the election. After a campaign like this, how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?
I’ve ended my relationship with my father, and the one with my mom/step dad is on shaky ground, though they’ve just swapped their vote for Kamala (it took way too much convincing for that to happen though).
Here’s the issue I have with these people, post the 2024 (and truthfully, even the 2020) election.
Reasons to vote for trump at this point in the game:
- They’ve seen what he’s said and the kinds of actions he’s made and his hate/violent rhetoric/attempted coup/felonies/treason with classified documents/overt Fascism/dictator comments/etc/etc/etc, just the fucking worst a US president, hell even a citizen, can do to abuse their power, position, and hurt their fellow Americans in the process; And they’re for it. They support their brand of fascism. Because for some reason they agree with his message and think they’re going to come out aces after the dust settles from WW3
- They’re ignorant to literally every piece of media, news outlets, cable TV, print, tiktok, fucking Joe fucking Rogan shit, and they genuinely don’t understand why voting for trump is bad.
In both of those cases, they are absolutely not to be trusted. I don’t think there’s too many people left in the second use case, but even so, every single one of his supporters is not to be trusted or respected ever again. They’ve shown their true side, and it’s the worst humanity has to offer.
I didn’t realize we had that many pieces of shit living here in America, but we do. So I refuse to associate with them ever again. I will not do business or have any interaction with them again, if I can help it.
They’ve isolated themselves. I will not fall victim to the paradox of intolerance. I refuse to tolerate Nazi’s living in my country. And at this point, everyone who’s voting for trump is a Nazi.
I don’t give a shit if semantically that’s not a PC statement. This is the truth. Downvoting will not change that fact. If you support trump today, you are a fascist that is most closely aligned with the Nazi ideals. I don’t want to hear the excuses, or what someone is “really” supporting trump for. It’s all noise and bullshit to hide the fact that they are deeply disgusting people all the way through who I do not want in my life, or in power making decisions that could affect me or the people I care about.
I don’t know your situation, but turning from family will only harden their resolve and make them more defensive. I went through this with my mom. She voted for Trump in 2020, after years of me telling her how bad he was. I was angry and didn’t talk to her for 2 months. During this time I heard a podcast with David McRaney, about how to talk to QAnon people. It helped me to understand how they got there, and how to help them out of it. It is a process. They operate on an emotional level, and you have to relate to them on emotional level. After that, you question how they arrived at their decisions. Like:
If I asked what your favorite movie is, could you explain why it’s your favorite movie?
Emotionally connecting with them and then thoughtfully questioning their beliefs, in a non-condescending way can be beneficial. It may take days or months, but once the seed of doubt is planted, it can start a dialogue. Remember, these are people we love ❤️, we owe it to ourselves to be compassionate in conversations.
I sincerely appreciate the thoughtfulness of your reply. It sounds like you’re a damn good person, and your mom was worth it as well.
I left out, but probably should have mentioned that even before the trump/MAGA stuff came into their lives, we had a deep divide due to a lot of trauma and issues they inflicted on me during my childhood. Both of my parents are different types of deep narcissists, with deeprooted religious beliefs that untether them from reality (e.g. they admitted they would kill me, my siblings, their grandchildren, etc. if they thought god told them to; that sort of thing). Neither of them gave me anything in life, didn’t pay for anything really (my dad’s child support was spent to keep my mom’s side able to “not work”, without much spent on me or my siblings), my mom chased a sibling around the dinner table with a steak knife trying to stab him (it wasn’t until much later that she’d get medication to help with these episodes), and just generally all the awful normal stuff that happens between divorced parents that deeply, deeply, hate each other and are willing to burn the world down if it meant the other person wouldn’t have a pot to piss in.
The trump thing was a very large straw that broke the camel’s back. They were already on thin ice as shitty human beings that refuse to apologize for the damage they did to me and my siblings over the years, and continue to do (I have one of my brother’s living with me right now, because of them).
My relationship with my dad ended after he exploded and physically assaulted me in front of his home. I tried to reconcile and work with him through one of our siblings as a mediator and he flew off the handle again accusing me of disrespecting his authority (which was not just taking everything he tells me as “fact” and “morally correct” since I’m considered an “amoral atheist”…), at which point I cut him out of my life. I just don’t need that shit added to everything else on my plate in life. He was never there for me, my friends were my family.
Anyhow, again, not to detract from your kind and optimistic reply. Anyone else in a different situation, I would encourage to take your advice.
For me though? Hopefully the context I’ve added starts to paint the picture of why that’s a bridge too far. Even if we somehow got through/past all the trump nonsense, we still have all the above, and about 100x that which I just didn’t want to burden a reader with going through all my trauma ;)
If Harris wins, ideally I’ll do all the things I’ve been putting off until after the election. I’ve been meaning to update the address on my driver’s license, the registration on my car, and several other things like that.
I live in a deep red state; I’ve been paranoid about getting them done, for fear of my voter registration “happening” to get lost in the process. And then I’d finally have an excuse to never visit my hardcore right-wing parents ever again, because my mail won’t be showing up at their house anymore.
If Trump wins, I’m not going to update anything. I plan to flee. I don’t have the means to leave the country, but I’ve got friends in blue states who are happy to take me in. That’s better than nothing, I guess.
I’m Canadian and because of QAnon and Trump, I don’t have a relationship with my sister anymore and I see my dad once every few years out of obligation, but not a day goes by where he doesn’t say something mortifying racist or fascistic. He watches Fox News from the US every day. They aren’t allowed a Canadian channel because they don’t meet our legal standards for truthful reporting. American politics always leak into Canada. I hate it.
You don’t.
Exactly. We certainly didn’t after the LAST one.
Oh, that’s easy; we don’t! Every four years, the fabric of our society frays and tears a little more, while our politicians either exploit our divisions or attempt to repair them without making any changes to the material conditions or systemic problems that create these fractures, because fixing these underlying issues would upset the handful of billionaires that actually control our government! But there’s a new Fast & Furious movie every two or three years, so it balances out.
Not only that, but if they fix the problems that they used to get your votes, they can’t use them again next election, and we can’t have that so at most you get a pittance of “fixes” while they just blame the other side for blocking it and then the other side does it with a few of their issues. And we’ll keep voting for them too because A) who else? B) the other guy is worse, and C) this time they really will fix everything they continually run on. Any day now…
It is like any other election for me. I don’t want either of them. I’m guaranteed to be disappointed.
Unless we get a blow-out for either candidate that cannot be challenged, which does not seem likely based on the polls and battle lines, even if we have a Biden-esque victory for Harris, I’m fairly unsure of what will happen next. I personally doubt full on Civil War like in the Garland movie, or the actual civil war, but I would expect all kinds of shitty legal tricks, possible Supreme Court involvement and of course, stochastic and targeted violence, particularly towards immigrants and minorities. In other words, win or lose, I think the US may be in for a bad time. Hopefully I’m working in my assumptions here and it is somewhat more boring.
To better answer your question though, assuming things don’t completely fall apart: the two sides already don’t mix much, which is part of the problem in the first place. We’ll get more govt inaction due to gridlocked congress, probably more defense spending and some states, in the absence of federal legislating, will continue to take a larger role as they have been doing already in the recent era.
So basically more of the same, on a not-great trend line. Something has to give at some point, it’s hard to imagine how you could put the genie back in the bottle now, particularly with overall conditions in the world due to late-stage capitalism and climate change constricting each year.
Those people have proven themselves to not be worthy of a relationship. Those people should be shunned for being inhumane monsters, not welcomed back into society. They will not change. They hate me and the people I love. I, and I assume many others like me, will never forgive, and never forget. And they will not stop. Even if we win the election, we will not have beaten them. This will only escalate until we beat them back and crush their ideology.
You uhh, you don’t.
After a campaign like this, how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?
You’re assuming those relationships survived the 2020 election. For many, myself included, they didn’t.
I was willing to overlook 2016, but after 4 years of horror culminating in a (failed) coup, and those people still supporting him, I just cut them out of my life.
Supporting Trump is no different than supporting Hitler. I find it very easy to cut nazis out of my life.
One side wants me dead, there are no worthy discussions to be had.
That’s understandable. It’s also, in microcosm, the reason your country is so divided. If you want to continue living in a democracy, you’re all going to have to talk - and listen - to each other.
No. It’s called the Paradox of Tolerance. “Discussing” rationally with the intolerant only serves to justify their position in their own eyes and thereby embolden them.
In other words, putting up with them simply gives them more ink
Turning the other cheek only works if the person doing the slapping has a sense of shame. Trump and his ilk have long since proven they have none.
Yeah. Although what if half of the country is intolerant? What then? Divide the country into two?
Yes, it’s our fault that fear-addicted racists have refused to listen to reason for decades and particularly during the last eight years when an obviously unfit clown was committing scandal after scandal. We should be inviting cultists who refuse to listen to us back into our lives and calmly discuss why it is good for the country to be a Christofascist dictatorship.
If you want democracy to survive you should be intolerant of intolerance.
I’m not listening to Nazis so fuck off.
you’re all going to have to talk - and listen - to each other
We do not tolerate intolerance.
I don’t disagree at all. However, that is a whole lot easier said than done when one side is so far gone in an alternate reality of lies and hate.
We’re going to need a mass cult de-programming or something. I just don’t know how we come back from where we are.
The usual way to fix these things is civil war. Don’t worry, you won’t have to start it, the racists and fascists will do it for you. And then they’ll get annihilated, like always.
This is because they may be loud, aggressive, greedy, hateful and boastful which all help them start and ramp up wars. But they are also stupid, cowardly, irrational, week minded and a minority, which make them loose these wars.
What you think about them, they think about you. They’re not evil, they’re not idiots. If they lived nextdoor you would probably find each other very pleasant.
I just don’t know how we come back from where we are.
It looks pretty simple from where I’m standing. You talk to them. You listen to them. You find things you agree on, beginning with the smaller things. They’re not automatons, they’re people.
What you think about them, they think about you.
True, but irrelevant.
They’re not evil, they’re not idiots.
Hard disagree - they have to be at least one of those things to be MAGA, usually both.
If they lived nextdoor you would probably find each other very pleasant.
Hah! They DO live next door and I most certainly don’t find them pleasant.
They’re not evil, they’re not idiots.
Hard disagree.
“What you think about them, they think about you”
No, this is precisely the issue. Any leftist worth their salt can’t fucking stand conservatives and YET we will still protect their basic human rights and accept them into a collective society.
Conservatives on the other hand are perpetrating violence every single day against leftists and minorities they LOUDLY do not except into a collective society. They deny abortions for women who are on the verge of death, they advocate for draconian health care policy that massively raises the suicide rates of trans kids because they hate trans kids and they believe deep down in their racism with an unshakable fervor that makes their meager spiritual practice of christianity look sad and pathetic in comparison.
It is far past the point of having a debate with rightwing conservatives, what is left is to intimidate them into shutting up, drowning out their voices and laughing at their tiny hateful visions of the universe.
The social fabric of the US is being ripped apart by conservative white men because they can’t handle how scary using pronouns is and frankly the solution is to activate everybody else, not humor these people yet again with another discussion they are going to approach in a fundamentally disengenous way.
Naw, maybe you’re not queer and not being called a pedo, or followed or having your job threatened by a former president. It’s not my job to raise an adult right and free of hate, I have one child. I don’t need to burn myself out giving Republicans 3rd and 4th chances to be decent people.
Let’s assume that they are not bad people. In order to bring them to sanity, it would take an ungodly amount of pressure, and they would have to have no connections back to the cult. If there is even a single connection all the effort would be for naught.
They are not where they are, due to logic or empathy, so you can’t use logic or empathy to argue them out of it. I lost my entire extended family over this.
Your first sentence, yes I agree. The next two, not so much. In my town in 2020 we had groups of these chuds roaming around downtown, armed, hunting for “antifa,” meaning anyone wearing black or looking slightly punk. Some of them really do want to shoot us with impunity.
But yeah, it’s also my parents, who probably wouldn’t turn me into the gestapo, but the cognitive dissonance where they simultaneously believe I’m their family but I’m also “the enemy within” doesn’t seem sustainable. At some point, it’s got to be one or the other. Getting them to agree on small things hasn’t changed their overall loyalty to the party, their disdain for Dems, or our relationship.
Yankee here, and fully agree with what you said. Unfortunately, empathy seems to be an increasingly lost art in this country and it only seems to get worse as each side continues to dehumanized the other.
It’s hard to listen to the illiterate.
I don’t need to talk to those who are openly racist. I’m not talking about some political double speak. I have trump voters in my community that openly use racist slurs in their discussion of immigrants, and minorities in town.
You are the company you keep, and those folks aren’t part of my life. Trump was just the vector to illuminate their position that was previously kept in hushed tones behind doors.
In all seriousness, how does one listen to and communicate with people who have slid so far down a misinformation hole to a place where science is fake, every expert who disagrees is part of a global conspiracy, and the only people they listen to literally can’t stop lying?>
I still talk to and value my mother, and believe she is a good person, but she’s fallen prey to insidious propaganda and believes that Trump is just a flawed tool for God and the Republican platform is the only way to save the world from the forces of evil.
As an aside, my favorite conspiracy theory was how all the governments of the world were collaborating on the COVID lockdowns so they could control the people and take power. The governments capable of national lockdowns could take power. 🤦🏼♂️
you don’t. women have lost their federally protect right to an abortion since trump packed the court the last time, there are more than a million less people alive in the United States today from a mismanaged federal global pandemic response because trump was in the big chair the last time. you don’t get back to normal when fascism wins.
My dad is on his death bed, I haven’t spoken to him in years, because he’s full on MAGA. It breaks my heart that I lost my dad to that cult and that I’ll lose him forever soon, but I will never forgive him for supporting the scum that is proud he stole womens rights.
So to answer your question, being sad and waiting for tomorrow.
To those giving you shit about cutting horrible people out of your life and saying you need to go visit…
Bullshit. Fuck that noise. I have family that I’ve cut out as well (although, luckily, not my parents). I’m 100% open to them rejoining my life, but their hatred for others is stronger than their love for me, and I won’t allow them back until that changes. Spoiler alert: it probably never will, because there’s no love like Christian “love”.
“Agree to disagree” is reserved for things like “I don’t like coffee.” Not racism, homophobia, and sexism. Not human rights. Not basic common decency. If I unfriend you during this, it IS personal. We do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in morality.
- @cdvaughn16, Twitter, 2020-06-05
Shit, I’ve been upset for losing a friend, your right, losing a parent is terrible, sorry to hear.
This is the correct energy. You already lost him. What’s dying now is some rabies-zombie.
Sorry you had to lose him in such a horrible way. I know exactly what that’s like to go through.
Damn. I’m sorry :(
My dad is also MAGA but thankfully not very outspoken about it or I couldn’t stand to be around him. I’m still quite pissed at Trump and his cult following for putting the thought into my head that his death could be a net benefit to society.
As someone who just lost a parent suddenly.
You will almost certainly regret that.
No they won’t. I can’t wait for my parents to both fucking die so I can reconnect with my sisters without them being emotionally abused.
Fuck racists, I couldn’t care less how they die. They oppose my family, I spent 2 decades trying to accept my family, they didn’t.
Nope, when my mom dies it will bring a weight off my shoulders, not having to make sure she doesn’t know where I live. The last time she lived by us she wrote manifestos about militant lesbians forcing straight women to become like them and stapled it around work and home.
Sure, because everyone’s experience with their parents is just like yours
My father’s death was one of the best things that happened to me.
Blood is thicker than your dad’s skull. Be bigger than him and hug him before he leaves you forever if it’s possible for you. Fuck the MAGA cultist mentality. Overcome his stubbornness and pride.
People are not owed love by circumstances of biological relation. They made the bed they lie in, actions have consequences, bridges can burn.
Given enough time person might look at their dad less like the asshole and more like the victim of a scam perpetrated by the real asshole, but life is tricky like that
There’s a lot that’s great about this. Need one change though–“scam” isn’t quite the word for this. If you scam somebody you can just fool them once, get their money, and get out.
“Darn, I have been fooled once, in the past, and won’t get that money back, I’ll look out for that scam now”. That’s a scam.
Getting up every day and choosing in each instance to be not just shitty, but a nazi, isn’t “getting scammed”. That’s something he participated in and is on the hook for. He had to go really far out of his way to do it.
It’s a beautiful and clarifying sentiment that, at most, only partly applies in this situation.
Getting up every day and choosing in each instance to be not just shitty, but a nazi
These people are getting up every morning and all they see are comments downplaying and explaining why it shouldn’t be taken literally. They turn on their favorite ‘news’ station which ignores the obvious and latches onto sensationalized nothingburgers and conjecture. Reality to them is an entirely different thing. They can’t see the forest for the trees. Everyone around them is telling them not to look. They step in a little too far and get caught in the undertow.
But this far right bullshit is happening all over the world, started happening as soon as everyone wound up with a phone in their pocket, and it often gets traced back to Russian interference and influence.
And the dumber it sounds, the more credence it gets, because it drives the other half up the fucking wall. Beetles are what’s causing the Canada wildfires, hurricane machines, Haitians eating cats and dogs, normal ass people are not letting these things become things organically
Agreed. I said “if it’s possible.” Pride is a real motherfucker for some, but I think it can be overcome. Hopefully they can do so with their dad.
The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
Short answer: I bite back now.
Long answer: My parents are hard-R Republicans. Every time they start getting all “demoncrats r bad” i just ask them, “Why do you want me dead so fucking bad? I know from being raised by you that you fucking hated me growing up, but to vote for “gays should be executed”? This is exactly why you didn’t have grandkids, the thought of putting more of your hate in the world is abhorrent to me…”
I’ve only had to pull that one out twice, so far, but it hits them hard when they still (I’m a few months away from 40) insist I “give them grandkids”.
I’ve known many people to be like this, they just want to slink back, and ignore the blatant. Thank you for having the balls to step up and bite back. People like you are the reason I don’t see almost ANY Trump flags in my neighborhood this year. It’s a cult of personality that nobody else has quite been able to achieve. Once he’s gone for good, things can get back to semi-normal. We still have to be vigilant about the shit Republicans are doing, but at least maybe at that point some family ties will begin to heal.
You don’t.
I haven’t talked to parts of my family the same way I used to. We don’t seek each other out anymore, though some people who do still have connections means we will still see each other for big events like thanksgiving or by happenstance.
Some of them probably think i’m an evil satan worshipping communist based on the last time we argued politics, which was either late 2015 or early to mid 2016, and I was your average slightly socialistic leftist who had just learned about Bernie’s policies for the first time.
With the genocide going on, i feel even more isolated, since I have some family who are harris voters who support israel, and aren’t exactly happy about how vocal I am about palestine. Christian liberal zionism hasn’t been something I could talk people out of.
