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teen witch
Oct 9, 2012
I’m the OP for the Rejected Parents thread in filthy Gibbis and we broached the subject on “does a certain type of politics breed authoritarian or kinda lovely parents?”. Needless to say, no real answer, but it did spur me on with this thread topic!

This thread is a partial vent void to scream into about close ones, whether it be family, friends, parents, and their godawful beliefs, and partially a place of understanding, not necessarily acceptance.

For instance, my estranged father is a trump supporter, and has always voted republican. My father is a goddamned immigrant from Nigeria, a “shithole” country. He finds other black people distasteful most of the time, and he has expressed some dumbass views on feminism! lovely views on Muslims! I haven’t spoken to him in two years and I assume it’s gotten much much much worse. The rest of my paternal family are fairly run of the mill democrats, my mom, his ex wife, total liberal (for good and for ridic), his GF is very loving crunchy granola.

I am estranged from him for a myriad of reasons, most of it having to do with his lovely actions over the period of my life and just never admitting fault. But I’ll be honest those politics are a part of it. His daughters are mixed race - to actively support beliefs that gently caress up his family’s well being, to me, is reprehensible. I understand he had a hosed up childhood, like, the dude saw poo poo, but it does not justify how he treats others.

For another instance, my friend group from 5th grade until now is a bunch of nerds, all stripes. Joe was a great friend, but he mirrored his parents lovely beliefs and after some of my friends came out as trans a few years ago, he wasn’t keen! wasn’t keen on my two friends who survived cancer advocating for a better health care system! I never bothered speaking about BLM with him! We knew he was pro Bush when we were in HS but we never pushed, but once Trump was elected, out came the conspiracy theories. Once we caught wind of him saying awful poo poo about my closest friend, who is and has been a member of this nerdy friend group, that was it. It sucks, he was one of my first friends when I moved, but seeing him change or maybe he was always like this? it hurts regardless

Another sort of inspiration for this thread is oddly enough a subreddit - r/qanoncasualties. As for examples

Can't even get through a family card game without "pedo" symbolism being pointed out. This is not acceptable behavior.

quote:

The following is just a rant that I have to get out, comments are certainly welcome, but this isn't a plea for advice.

I've been battling the spiral into insanity my mom has found herself in for a number of years now. From the 9/11 "conspiracy" to the birther bullshit and everything in between and beyond. For the past year or so, the Q manipulation program has dominated almost every free second she's had, and being retired means there are a lot of them.

Yesterday we had a family get together: me and my family, brother and his family, and my parents, at parents house. Overall it was nice, except for those moments that we have all come to dread and unfortunately expect with every interaction with these people.

Mom puts a DVR-ed episode of the "Game of Games" show on in the background while we all caught up with each other, and of course mom couldn't help herself. She launched into the "real reason" Ellen DeGeneres' show(s) were being threatened/cancelled. How she was on the flight manifests numerous times heading to Epstein Island.

My wife, the love of my life and mother of my child, is not one who cares too much for politics and the associated poo poo-show, so of course she couldn't help herself but to ask what Epstein Island is. She now knows why I don't engage in these discussions with mom anymore. She got just a taste, a small sampling of the quicksand of crazy, all of it essentially yelled to everyone present. Children included. Nice.

Included in this disgusting tirade are the usual topics of satanic ritual, kidnapped children, adrenochrome, their Lord and Savior The Donald, etc... None of which the kids can even remotely assign any meaning to and thankfully mostly ignored while they played together.

After dinner, the adults and my 10 year-old nephew sit down at the table for some friendly party game time and send the rest of the kids outside to play. One game we played is called Ramen Fury, and in this game is a card for Naruto, a Japanese ingredient recognizable by a signature swirl at it's center. Mom again can't help herself but blurt out how that swirl is a symbol used by pedophiles for "boy". Nephew looks understandably confused and appears to be preparing to ask what Grandma was talking about, so quickly I started reading instructions out loud to move the attention away from the pile of verbal fecal matter she just laid out on the table.

I didn't realize that tact and propriety had been tossed out the window with the large sections of brain matter these people are missing. How she thought any of this poo poo was appropriate to discuss with children in the room is beyond me.

I miss my mom. I miss being able to hold a conversation with her that didn't involve this loving nonsense. She has the audacity to call herself a centerist, even while aligning herself with the craziest of the crazies on the far right. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, our Chimp in Chief, Fox News and every rear end in a top hat on that pile of poo poo network. These are the people she listens to, and aligns her beliefs with, but she's a centerist. Sure. The phrase "I'm not racist, but..." is uttered far too often, she's also "always supported the gays" but not their rights to live like she does, marriage and children.

I'll never forgive the assholes who started this. I hope life deals them a bad hand, as fast and as hard as possible.

I couldn't take it anymore

quote:

I have an aunt I'm very close to that I have had to go very low contact with. I'm honestly not sure how holidays will work this year. We are both registered nurses. I work critical care and it's been rough dealing with Corona. My aunt doesn't work in a hospital. She is taken in by the qult. She has turned full anti vax. Is convinced that the CDC and DR. Fauci are making up claims to discredit Trump. She is convinced all the tests are wrong and no one actually dies from Corona. Meanwhile it's been the worst summer of my nursing career and I've worked flu season before. Now all she ever wants to talk about is the government poisoning people to increase the numbers and how we need to stock pile guns because BLM are terrorists...... she called me a terrorist. I just don't know what to do anymore. My family is very close. We all live in the same county basically. She and my uncle are convinced in Q, even the baby eating parts. Posted that Biden wants to steal newborns from hospitals to sacrifice them. She made my other aunt cry. Its tearing my family apart. And I'm just so tired of it all. I try to stay up to date on latest Q poo poo so I can tell my mother. I try to give her the heads up because my aunt and uncle are actively trying to recruit her. My mom is stronger than me and can just smile and nod. A lot of the q stuff just gets under my skin and I end up saying something. I might just volunteer to work this years holidays.

My friend just told me that Trump shutted down the chemtrails and now I really don't know what to say anymore...

quote:

I'm from Germany and QAnon has become quite a thing over here, mainly because some time ago a few celebreties started talking about pedophile-activities from the 'establishment', adrenochrome and satanic cults within the 'elite' and stuff like that... The media is just making fun about this conspiracy theories and so people who believe in this 'bigger picture' feel even more confirmed about it since the 'fake media' wants them to look like idiots...

A good friend of mine started a while ago to say things like "Don't worry, Trump is gonna free us all really soon" and laughed and I swear to god I thought he was joking... But last night he explained in dead earnest that he's looking forward to the day, Trump holds all the evil people accountable for their satanic actions. Trump will 'free us all' and bring justice for humanity... He will ELIMINATE the evil from this planet!

I was like - woaaa, hold on. How is he going to to that? Answer: He's already doing it! Soon he'll bring them all to the military court and then they'll be executed

I was like - woaaa, hold on. Who is he going to bring to the "military court"? Answer: All the democrats and liberales who are keeping us like slaves, all the satanics and everyone else who is against our freedom as human beings

Again I was like - HOLD THE gently caress ON. Where you got this bs from? Answer: From Q...

We had an argument with my point being: A random right-wing oracle on the internet talking radical bs like this shouldn't be a thing you take actually serious; and his point being: Wake up you sheep, you've been brainwashed by the mainstream-media.

After about 1 hour of this nonsense there was only one thing I really wanted to know: What has Trump been doing since his election, what makes you believe this whole 'he's the one to free humanity'-thing? Answer: Trump shutted down the chemtrails in the US so the liberales aren't able to poison the people anymore...

Jesus Christ...

How to handle this amount of bs? Anyone? Please? It really creeps me out that he actually 100% BELIEVES this stuff, thinking everyone who doesn't is a brainwashed sleep-sheep...

TL;DR: My friend starts to lose his mind over this QAnon crap. What can I do?

So yes. This is something a lot of people are going through, whether run of the mill right wing garbage or wild conspiracy theories. Please feel free to discuss, get angry, commiserate - whatever works. If you’ve been to the RP thread, similar sort of vibe, but political (and not localized to US politics!)

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His Divine Shadow
Aug 7, 2000

I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.
I don't really know at all what kind of politics my parents espouse or who they vote for. I can guess they vote RKP since we're swedes living in the swedi-est parts of Finland, which is bascially a party that's kinda center-right bougerois liberal but also have several more leftist leaning members since it's more a language party than a political one. But I would say it's center-right nowadays, used to be a lot more social democratic-ish in the 80s based on what I've read.

I do remember my dad defending that he paid a lot of taxes when I had some idiot libertarian moment in my teens so I guess that puts him into not your average boomer tax hating rear end in a top hat category. And my mom making some off-hand comments about big corporations and rich people moving their money away to tax paradises while normal people get stiffed, so that's a good sign at least.

I'm afraid my family is pretty politically average for the most part. Except when it comes to medicine, then my mom and sister are a bit nuts.

Pretty good
Apr 16, 2007



My brother's politics are... clumsy. If I had to put a label on him, I'd say he's a Bush-era liberal who didn't really move on and only ever had a cartoonish, conspiracy-narrative-tinged take on how things work – he's never felt a need to consciously follow any influencers or figureheads, which is lucky because there was a period when he was very mouthy about his view that feminism was some homeopathy-level new-age woo movement and I felt like I had to actively steer him away from finding out about MRA world and getting sucked into it. Now that he's past his STEMlord Elon Musk worship phase, my impression of him is that he's got mostly-decent if occasionally uninformed takes, but he's aware of the growing white nationalism problem, he understands that talking poo poo about minorities is a bad look, and he came around on Corbyn as the intramural sabotage/press monstering escalated following the 2017 election, so I'm confident that he'll do OK as long as he sticks to his borderline religious aversion to punditry.

My best/only friend from high school is a kind of big tent leftist guy who's been involved in local antifascist organising since 2014ish. He's also been super into boogaloo stuff since around the same time, so when that poo poo exploded this year and was framed as an exclusively far-right thing, I didn't know wtf to make of it because literally my only awareness of it until then had come directly from that guy. He's some kind of lifestyler new-age occultist homesteading shroom farmer who's vocally anti-nazi and anti-QAnon and anti-bourgeois democracy and pro-2A and very happy to work with anarchists and MLs and I haven't seen him in person in over a decade and I think I really need to go visit him eventually and try to figure out what the gently caress is going on there.

My mother is "apolitical" and doesn't vote but still reads the times and the telegraph. My father is a resistance lib who genuinely likes Biden, shares Epic Drumpf Memes on fb, and flips arbitrarily between describing himself as a "conservative, technically" or a "liberal, in the traditional sense".

I have a second cousin who's an Oath Keeper. :geno:

Shugojin
Sep 6, 2007

THE TAIL THAT BURNS TWICE AS BRIGHT...


I'm lucky enough that all I get is my dad being deep into liberal twitter and talking about "the Bernie Bros" who won't vote Democratic because they don't like the candidate.

My dad was so pissy about it being Hillary Clinton in 2016 I guarantee you he didn't vote for her and won't admit it to any of us, like when he voted for Nader in 2000. Except in 2000 we lived in Texas not a swing state :v:

Srice
Sep 11, 2011

I have centrist parents whose biggest concern (prior to covid, of course) was that the deficit was too big and we need to elect someone who would take care of that (And you better believe that they are skeptical of M4A because "How can we afford it?"). At least they're not Trump supporters, I suppose (though even as recently as last year they were still of the opinion that the Trump administration wouldn't be too damaging because he hired a lot of competent people who would stop the worst from happening).

edit: Also, you better believe that they love the Lincoln Project and think they're doing a great job.

Srice fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Sep 1, 2020

ewiley
Jul 9, 2003

More trash for the trash fire
Hoooooboy my family is a hot mess of Catholic weirdness.

My parents are both pre-Vatican 2 mass-should-be-in-Latin Catholics from as far back as I can remember, so I was raised on conservative/libertarian-ish ideas and media. Fortunately as a kid there was this crazy thing called BBS’s and the Internet you could escape to.

Now mom is ensconced in the Fox/OANN/Facebook doom cult who has only gotten worse since lockdown. I know I’ve inherited from her the “you cant tell me what to do” brand of libertarian bullshit the right wing is known for. It took me the better part of my young adult life to shake that.

Dad, however, has turned into a prepper *not for himself* but because when the rapture happens soon, he’ll not be there to take care of mom. He’s fallen for this crazy Catholic ‘prophet’ who believes she is one of the angels of the apocalypse and has been getting visions of the end times since 2010... https://sites.google.com/site/thenearerplacetogod/thewarningsecondcoming-com this is a reasonably good summary because I do not want to link to their site. The new pope is, of course, the anti-Christ since he doesn’t say mean things about gays and abortions as much as he should.

Obviously they’re both Trump voters, despite the cognitive dissonance of everything.

Ugh typing this sucks because I have to remember it’s true. They live in the backwoods of New Hampshire and I don’t have Facebook so I really could ignore them.

The most normal sibling I have lives in Europe and is a Catholic nun. She strictly stays off of social media and it shows. Conversations with her are almost bizarrely calm and level headed, despite our political and philosophical differences. She really trends to the more social justice side of the Catholic Church, rather than the rabidly anti-abortion side.

teen witch
Oct 9, 2012
You were not kidding about that website

quote:

She says she has been instructed, by Jesus Christ not to analyze the messages or add any personal interpretation or views. Jesus told her that he is the Author and she is only the writer and that the messages are to be published exactly as they were received by her – with no changes whatsoever made to the content.

Though it reminds me of my mom’s side- she and her siblings were raised hella Catholic. None of them are Catholic now, Mom bolted to Episcopal Church before I was born and raised my sister and I that way, which like, is a hard church to rebel from as a teen let me tell you. However she has two siblings who went to Fundamentalist Protestant City and as of now they seemed to have chilled a bit but when all of us cousins were kids, I was the bad rear end one with my cable tv, public schools and Halloween celebrations.

I had no concept of Satan until my grandmother’s funeral, and I remember this vividly. I asked my cousin who was my age what she was going to be for Halloween, and she said “we don’t celebrate that, it’s Satan’s birthday.” I assumed that Satan was a close family friend of theirs, so close that it took precedence over Halloween. I was uh, educated shortly thereafter.

They’ve actually all turned out a bit more chiller as they got older but god peering into Xtreme 90s Christianity as a kid was loving buck wild for me. I had “let’s color in Jesus green” Sunday School.

Zedhe Khoja
Nov 10, 2017

sürgünden selamlar
yıkıcılar ulusuna
Being a communist academic apparantly makes for a lovely parent who raises people who go on to hang resource maps of Afghanistan in their living room or brutalize poor black neihborhoods.

teen witch
Oct 9, 2012

Zedhe Khoja posted:

Being a communist academic apparantly makes for a lovely parent who raises people who go on to hang resource maps of Afghanistan in their living room or brutalize poor black neihborhoods.

Come again? I’m probably missing context but I’m also interested

Zedhe Khoja
Nov 10, 2017

sürgünden selamlar
yıkıcılar ulusuna
A decent number of center-right dems had prominent marxist academics for parents. The one specifically referenced being Pete Buttigieg. Kamala Harris' father was also a marxist professor. One of the biggest neoliberal pundits (Brooks maybe?) wrote about being a red diaper baby, and a bunch of the Neocons were famously former Trotskyists and a few were 'born in to it' so to speak.

PipHelix
Nov 11, 2017



Zedhe Khoja posted:

A decent number of center-right dems had prominent marxist academics for parents. The one specifically referenced being Pete Buttigieg. Kamala Harris' father was also a marxist professor. One of the biggest neoliberal pundits (Brooks maybe?) wrote about being a red diaper baby, and a bunch of the Neocons were famously former Trotskyists and a few were 'born in to it' so to speak.

Matt Yglesias was one. Mr. Nuke The Iraqis and Take Their Oil For 9/11; Mr. Ok So I was Wrong About Iraq, But For The Right Reasons; Mr. Rana Plaza Did Nothing Wrong; Mr. Eight Years of Obama Prosecuting Whistleblowers and An Assumed Eight Of Hillary On The Horizon So Here's Why The Government No Longer Owes Its Citizens Transparency A Year From a Trump Presidency; Mr. Here's Why We Need to Double Cop Budgets A Year Before Floyd Protests. Apparently you can raise a kid with the best intentions and politics in the world but you raise them rich on the upper east side of manhattan and send them to fancy private schools, that's what you get.

Anyway, I'd highly recommend checking out Welcome To Hell World. It's a paid newsletter written by an angry man who goes on profane punctuationless rants, truly something for me to admire. He did two write-in articles where people talked about the effect the paranoid echo chambers of Fox (Antifa! BLM Thugs! Knockout Game! Isis Ebola Babies!) and MSNBC (Russia! Bernie Bros! Medicare 4 All! AOC! GND!) had on their parents and it's a reallllllll bummer but makes you feel less alone, regardless of whether your parents are Red or Blue MAGA.

I hope these are free. I'm subscribed, so they work for me but they open in an incognito window which might be a good sign.
Fox: https://luke.substack.com/p/i-hate-what-theyve-done-to-almost-39f
MSNBC: https://luke.substack.com/p/msnbc-just-destroyed-what-was-left

PipHelix fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Sep 1, 2020

SaturdayKnight
Mar 31, 2011

I guess I can throw my 2¢ in here. My mom texted me recently to send me two articles, one about a secret bill gates led conspiracy to force everyone in Africa to get vaccinated (which was obviously a test before doing the same thing in America) and another about how black people need to vote for trump which was written by a paid member of the RNC strategy committee without ever mentioning that little fact anywhere.

I wanted to tell her that her poo poo was a joke and to remember how they used to make fun of the soviets for every news article having to be written by the party, and how now she WILLINGLY won’t read news unless it’s written by the party but I just ignored it instead. There’s no hope, my parents are too far gone.

A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

What I've come to realize, slowly at first but now with some real clarity, is that for wing-nuts (of either stripe, most prominently these days Republicans, but they are still Maoists and Stalinists running around there that fit in this), that accepting the reality of what their fascists/communist gods did is impossible. And I use the god word deliberately, because for a lot of those holding extremist views, their faith is as unshakeable as a life-long zealot. Any failing, massacre, or deliberate genocidal policy on the part of their god is impossible. Therefore, that Donald Trump allowed COVID-19 to get completely out of hand due to sheer incompetence or that Stalin deported the people's of the Caucus to the wastes of Siberia is actually all a giant conspiracy. To put it more simply, the more extreme your faith in an ideological god, the less likely you are to follow Occam's Razor. It can't just be as simple as "Donald Trump is an incompetent buffon", no, it has to be the work of secret society holograms and shadowy deep state government that are undermining our glorious leader. And that's what we're seeing popping out in today's American society: a deliberate side-stepping of the truth, because to accept the reality of what has happened over the last twenty years would require a rigorous ideological and emotional examination of yourself, and for a lot of the old, that just ain't gonna happen.

PerniciousKnid
Sep 13, 2006

ewiley posted:


The most normal sibling I have lives in Europe and is a Catholic nun. She strictly stays off of social media and it shows. Conversations with her are almost bizarrely calm and level headed, despite our political and philosophical differences. She really trends to the more social justice side of the Catholic Church, rather than the rabidly anti-abortion side.

Every since I read this I've been thinking about becoming a man-nun. But if I avoided the internet I probably would be a conservative by osmosis by now, so I'm torn.

tinytort
Jun 10, 2013

Super healthy, super cheap

PerniciousKnid posted:

Every since I read this I've been thinking about becoming a man-nun. But if I avoided the internet I probably would be a conservative by osmosis by now, so I'm torn.

A "man-nun" is, I believe, a monk. And I'm pretty sure that there are orders which allow internet access.

mediaphage
Mar 22, 2007

Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through
there's always the trope about kids wanting to rebel against their parents.

as for the topic of the thread, i haven't seen or talked to anyone in my family, outside of a handful of times, since i came out in 2003, for all the reasons you might expect.

my parents were always registered democrats, though super racist and very conservative. i feel like my mother voted clinton, but then what i assume is her untreated mental illness sucked her down the path and she sort of started talking about "what a nice person" billy graham is and how she wanted to go to the arena and see him? (wtffffff)

last time i checked in several years ago she wasn't voting for obama because she flat out told me he was the antichrist (brown).

i am literally unable to predict who she'd vote for at this point but i could see a trump run since she and my late father refused to eat at non-traditional american restaurants (others were "furn trash", i am a hillbilly) and even balked at o'charleys since, you know. that o' is kinda foreign.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



mediaphage posted:

there's always the trope about kids wanting to rebel against their parents.

I think the sitcom Family Ties was basically centered around "what if hippie parents had Michael J. Fox for a son and he rebelled by turning into a Reagan Republican"

PipHelix
Nov 11, 2017



tinytort posted:

A "man-nun" is, I believe, a monk. And I'm pretty sure that there are orders which allow internet access.

Something about this just triggered a three decade old memory of that old Dinosaurs (not the mama!) show. Where the daughter tries to get a job but their society is so rigidly patriarchal that there's a montage of her getting rejected by employers yelling 'PaperBOY!', 'BusBOY!!', 'Shoeshine BOY!!!', and then the stinger 'Cocktail Waitress BOY!!!!'

MAN-nun!

Ralph Hurley
Aug 3, 2009

:barf::sweep::zoid:



My dad has always been level headed and liberal in his beliefs and rejects loony conspiracy junk, and absolutely loathes trump and republicans in general. But I worry about him because his Facebook page is absolutely riddled with images of trump. Certainly more than even a rabid maga rear end in a top hat would post. He reads the news on a kindle fire and snaps pictures of trump with his iPhone to hate-post to his page.

Because of this rear end-backwards boomer photo sharing technique, his trump images have a degraded, pixelated quality that makes them more ugly and ominous. He often makes a caption to provoke and mock his conservative friends, demanding they explain themselves and justify their support of “the Grifter” as he calls him. Whoever these conservative friends of his are almost never take the bait. Sometimes he gets into it with strangers which I hate seeing because he’s really not good at sparring with trolls. So my dad’s page is just image after image of scowling trumpface with no likes, mixed in with nature photos and really cool drawings that he does and I wish he would post more of than the endless trump poo poo.

I personally, for my own sanity, do not allow chuds and their poo poo opinions in my social media and I have largely cut down on looking at Facebook at all. It makes me sad seeing how much space “the Grifter” takes up in my dad’s and everybody else’s head. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for five years waiting for this national nightmare to go away and it just won’t. gently caress you forever donald you loving turd, please drop dead.

SaturdayKnight
Mar 31, 2011

I mean, I refuse to engage with my parents in any kind of political discussion because I am well aware that the highest mountain to scale in that conversation is getting them to admit they were wrong about something which I have vivid childhood memories of them being incapable of that, even 30 years ago. They’d have to admit they’ve always been wrong to be voting republican and that will literally never happen. I was raised very conservative and had that idea that Democrats=bad implanted into my brain from a very young age. But when I moved out and went to college I realized I was wrong and the democrats weren’t blowing up America because Obama had been president for 4 years and nothing happened. I was able to understand that I had been wrong and changed my opinion based on observations. I know my parents will not do that. They have the choice of literally any source of information they want, and they choose Fox News because it tells them they’ve always been right and makes them feel good about having been always right. How can you fight that?

Spaced God
Feb 8, 2014

All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement
Inhabits here: some heavenly power guide us
Out of this fearful country!



My brother's a joe rogan loving mra state trooper who warned me about "false rape accusations" being a huge deal when I went away to college. He kicked me out of his house on Thanksgiving in below freezing weather in the middle of the desert when he asked me why I didn't like cops and answered honestly. My mom's a big ol Back The Blue gently caress The Rioters landlord and general yuppie racist too so she's on his side for most political stuff which makes life fun.

His birthday's on sunday and everyone's gonna get mad if I don't call him so that's gonna be fun lol

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



I remember being like 10 years old and seeing some movie on TV where a young penniless dude is driving to college or something, he picks up a hot chick who is hitchhiking; she starts taking off her clothes, and he's like wtf yay 8D, but then suddenly she's like "Gimme all your money or I scream rape".

I don't know what the hell movie it was but god drat it scarred me for years to think that's what the big bad world was like for us poor white males

Even with parents on the good side of the spectrum, just the occasional odd squib of pop culture can really gently caress you up if it hits you at just the right angle at just the right time.

brotato
May 14, 2013
My in-laws went through a prepper phase a few years ago. Bought some property on the side of a mountain, put a trailer on it, filled a closet with ammo, started buying food in bulk for storage, invested in silver, etc.

Then they just suddenly stopped being like that. I mean they still have the land and the silver and the ammo but they don't stash food or practice shooting or whatever anymore and moved on to new intense interests. FIL is into running, MIL is obsessed with her air fryer.

They still watch too much fox news tho.

SaturdayKnight
Mar 31, 2011

I am ever thankful that despite being brought up very conservative I never came across any of that MRA poo poo while I was in my formative years. I don’t even know if it existed back then but I can only imagine that if I had gotten deep into that I would probably be a horrible person today.

Not that I’m not a horrible person but I’m not that kind of horrible person.

Freakazoid_
Jul 5, 2013


Buglord
My elderly father used to lean left, more so than most people even a couple decades ago. Mom's death shook him up real bad. He's made a number of questionable decisions since then, one of which is his slow, downward spiral into conservatism. He's at a point right now where he's got a mishmash of left and right leaning opinions that don't make sense except to reinforce whatever he believes in the moment.

The recent George Floyd and Jacob Blake shootings put some more stress between us, particularly because in both cases he made it seem like he was finally understanding the problem, only to retreat to a "both sides did wrong" position after learning of the victim's criminal history and refusal to cooperate with police.

I've had to rewrite this post a few times because I don't really want to get into too many specifics. I just want others to know it's hard getting the family you love to stay on the right path.

Seven Hundred Bee
Nov 1, 2006

over the last ~15 years my dad has becoming increasingly conservative and now is a republican official in a new england state. I honestly don't know what happened to him - my pet theory is his inability to recognize the role of his own decisions in his increasingly unrealized life led him to focus on the idea that all of his problems came from 'the govenrment'. thankfully he is less of a racist social conservative and more of a libertarian nutjob, but it has been very weird watching an ivy league educated lawyer who came from a liberal family (and at one point was married to someone who was jewish!) fall increasingly down a rabbithole, eventually culminating to him buying 80 acres, joining a baptist church, homeschooling his kids and cosplaying as a self-sufficient farmer.

we don't see him very often but every time we do he tries to pick an obnoxious fight about climate change or trump.

Chomposaur
Feb 28, 2010




My dad's been a card-carrying aggrieved republican egomaniac his entire life. Spent all his time listening to Rush Limbaugh and ranting about how women existed to take your money etc. Told my sister (who's now a successful occupational therapist) that she should not go to college and instead be a secretary. Didn't see him for over a decade and literally within five minutes he turned our conversation to trans women being perverts who wanted to sneak into bathrooms. Honestly I think he's like Trump, if Trump was born into a family without money. No one has any incentive to hang around this borish rear end in a top hat so he's slowly estranged everyone in his life and as far as I know he now lives alone sustained by rage at the system and a minimum wage job.

My mom believes in reincarnated native american shamans, the healing power of rocks, homeopathy, anti-vaxx, reptilians, planet X on the far side of the sun, basically you name it she's in for it. She spent the past three months getting indoctrinated into Q along with all her friends but thankfully she was able to recognize what a hateful ideology it represented (her friends unfortunately are still deep in it).

My brother was headed down the conspiracy theory path but thankfully he met a nice lady who convinced him that maybe the bigger problem was politicians and corporations than a secret cabal. Although his GF is pretty deep into the woowoo new age stuff, she's not quite on the level of my mom.

My best friend from childhood is now a priest who loves his country and his president. Big fan of war and economic policies that gently caress the poor, but if you say a curse word he'll do an obnoxious captain america shush and if you open up a board game that has any kind of fictional reference to spooky ghosts or demons he'll quit and leave.

cool kids inc.
May 27, 2005

I swallowed a bug

The second to last time I discussed anything political in earnest with my mom was when my partner was in surgery for an emergency appendectomy. She then proceeded to tell me that she was voting for trump in the upcoming election. I asked her why. She started going off about clinton and benghazi and the dems and blah de blah.

My partner has transitioned since then, and more importantly, my mom's on the same poo poo. Both of my parents said they were fine with it, but in practice, when I got married to her, they didn't show.

We don't talk politics anymore, and as this presidency has gone on, we've stopped talking pretty much entirely. A few facebook comments a year (usually me about a particularly egregious and false meme she's posted) and a happy birthday in each direction and that's it. My mom especially was so big on independent thought and being good to others, and I just DON'T UNDERSTAND why this had to go this way.

The last time we spoke on politics (this May, while dealing with my Uncle's funeral arrangements) she tried to tell me that life will get so much easier once you stop caring about other people. She was positively flabbergasted when I said that I was going to continue to care about other people and fight for them because it's what I'd want them to do for me. It just blows her boomer mind that I give a poo poo. She couldn't understand the ruckus about George Floyd and thought the protestors were animals.

I stopped and just let her talk, and I haven't seen her in person since. I gave up on my dad years ago, mom here's a new sting.

HungryMedusa
Apr 28, 2003


My parents were normal people for a long time. They always leaned right, but at least would pretend to "not be racist." My dad watched a lot of Fox News starting after 9/11, but at least had the decency to not watch it on Thanksgiving or whatever.

They went from being willing to not talk politics to interjecting it everywhere. Easter 2019, I spent the weekend with them and not only did they refuse to not watch Fox at volume 11 the whole time, my mom told me she was voting for Trump again while we were doing coloring books with her grandkids and were talking about nothing political. It was in a very "nana nana boo boo" way, like she wanted me to be mad?

I didn't really react. I wasn't surprised, but I am sad. My dad has always been a gently caress you got mine guy, but my kind mom - who knew she could want kids in cages and protesters shot?

They called to invite me somewhere the week George Floyd was murdered. My mom said something like "I bet you wish you were with those awful protesters" and I said of course I stand with them. She laughed at me and was like "oh, you Democrats!" My dad was in the background laughing too, like it was a joke and dumb me just doesn't get it. I guess it's funny they think I am moderate enough to be an actual Democrat. What isn't funny is we have black relatives and my own kid is old enough to be uncomfortable being around my parents. Because of course they want her to come over and won't even think about wearing a mask. They try not to say racist things in front of her, but she has friends who are from immigrant families and these kids aren't stupid.

I try not to talk to them a lot. It works, mostly.

My dad's side of the family has gone to see Trump and Pence at a couple different rallies in the past month. Pretty sure I am not going to any holidays on that side, Covid or not. These used to be people who would at least hold off on politics during family get together; last Christmas they had a "I'm not racist, but" story contest. Trump has made it so they always think they are cool just going off about people not speaking English at the grocery instead of asking to pass the mashed potatoes.

Marxalot
Dec 24, 2008

Appropriator of
Dan Crenshaw's Eyepatch
Unlike a lot of the stories ITC this doesn't involve parents and I'm going to be intentionally vague/brief, but ~4-5 years ago I was told by a close family member that The Mexicans brought back Smallpox. The immigrants; They're very dirty you see. I just laughed and said that the last time anyone caught smallpox was a lab accident in the 80s which they more or less acknowledged, and also confirmed that they weren't just confused and thinking of Measles or some dumb poo poo like that. But they maintained that The Mexicans brought it back from the grave.

Honestly, I thought it was just this person's specific brain poisoning from whatever loving far right shithole facebook group they're a part of, but then I saw some Fox News talking head complaining about how Immigrants brought back Smallpox and Polio during the 2018 midterms so I guess this is A Thing to an extent.


10/10 love conservative propaganda



Marxalot fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Sep 2, 2020

Alterian
Jan 28, 2003

I've posted a little bit before about my mom. I cut ties with her a little over a year ago now. She started a poo poo storm with me over text during my kid's first birthday and I was just done. I can post more later. I don't have time to type up everything about her.

Her flavor of bonkers beliefs is very "christian" based. I put it in quotes because its really not very christian at all. For instance I guess the pope is actually with Satan because if you look at some sculpture in the Vatican it looks like a goat (or sheep?) with its tongue out? I'd like to note she grew up Catholic and her family is all Catholic. Also we are all children of Satan or something. It all parallels Qanon beliefs too. She believes every single fringe idea and conspiracy theory. She got mad at me and my husband the last time we visited because we were making fun of flat earthers with my dad.

It'd tough with my kids. My older son sometimes asks why we can't Skype grandma or have a visit with her.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Alterian posted:


Her flavor of bonkers beliefs is very "christian" based. I put it in quotes because its really not very christian at all. For instance I guess the pope is actually with Satan because if you look at some sculpture in the Vatican it looks like a goat (or sheep?) with its tongue out?

All the artwork in the vatican looks exactly like what you think satan would look like. I think the whole 'satanic' iconography is just "it looks roman catholic" until everyone sort of forgot what they were drawing.



teen witch
Oct 9, 2012
As an avowed satanist, yeah, Catholics and Orthodox Christianity have the stranglehold of nice rear end evil imagery.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

There's nothing stopping you wearing orange and blue striped pyjamas if you want to.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
My folks tend to be okay politically, including a fierce undying hatred of Ronald Reagan in particular, but they're so weirdly light on Nixon. They hated W even the day of 9/11 and I recall my mother being angry that he was being rehabilitated in real-time over it. But Nixon? They're fine with Nixon.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Pick posted:

My folks tend to be okay politically, including a fierce undying hatred of Ronald Reagan in particular, but they're so weirdly light on Nixon. They hated W even the day of 9/11 and I recall my mother being angry that he was being rehabilitated in real-time over it. But Nixon? They're fine with Nixon.

My lack of American history is showing but I genuinely cannot remember what he did, he's almost interchangeable with Reagan. Two white Republicans who killed a lot of citizens.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

He was not a crook.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

StrixNebulosa posted:

My lack of American history is showing but I genuinely cannot remember what he did, he's almost interchangeable with Reagan. Two white Republicans who killed a lot of citizens.

He wasn't senile and was present for some legislation packages like the clean water act that were happening with or without him. I just think they hate the friendly-seeming Republican presidents more. That's my actual theory.

Blue Moonlight
Apr 28, 2005
Bitter and Sarcastic

StrixNebulosa posted:

My lack of American history is showing but I genuinely cannot remember what he did, he's almost interchangeable with Reagan. Two white Republicans who killed a lot of citizens.

Super-short answer: he helped cover up his administration’s participation in a break in and wiretapping of the DNC headquarters.

As we have learned over the past few years, though, orchestrating crime is no longer a disqualifying factor to hold office.

Blue Moonlight fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Sep 2, 2020

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HungryMedusa
Apr 28, 2003


One of my lovely relatives posted on Facebook complaining that they have to buy school supplies that are shared communally in the classroom. A lot of places do this, the school district my kid goes to does. They have us all buy enough to pool resources, so no kid has to admit they couldn't afford scissors or whatever.

This relative could not stand to buy 48 pencils to share because:

"A Good Christian" posted:

some parents dont. [buy school sulpplies] That’s the only reason it makes me so mad. Socialism is creeping in little by little

Most of their friends are agreeing, or at least saying things like "only buy 24 pencils if you think it's excessive." Lower in the comments, they double down:

"A Good Christian" posted:

I decided after reading the district page comments about “needing to get some empathy” & “they don’t mind sharing” & “what’s it really cost to buy pencils” & “to grow up” & “to quit spending money on [very expensive hobby]” & calling me selfish I decided I won’t buy anything. That is what the socialist model does. Takes away the reward for working & providing so people get in line for handouts until there are none left to be handed out. The big picture here is not the pencils (in case no once caught that). So my errand list just got lighter today

Screwing poor kids to own the libs!

I am wondering if this person used their real name on the "district page" they mention, so their fellow parents can see what a peach this person is.

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