Dealing with Deplorable Family and Friends

Fuck that.

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Cutting my parents out of my life (which turned out to be temporary) was one of the best decisions of my life. Adults are under no obligation to interact with people that make them feel bad and/or make their life worse, period.

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Well I have dealt with deplorable family members by unfollowing them on Facebook. Even both of my parents. I can still check in with them, and they can see my politics, but I don’t see theirs unless they respond. And then I can control all the Bullshit they respond with.

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That’s true but I can’t imagine doing it over politics.

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You can have a great family and a great career and be a generally top notch person and yet totally spoil it by being a Trump supporter, especially a fervent one. That’s because it raises questions about where you’re really at as a person. Its not the same as just being a run-of-the-mill Republican. I’d compare it more like “great people” who have a secret kiddie-porn fetish. It overrides everything else about them. And the stain is now extending to the rank and file Republicans because their embrace of Trump has been so strong.

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There’s a difference between Obama vs. McCain politics and Trump vs. Reality “politics”.

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I don’t think this really captures the dynamics, Trumpkins are cult members and their beliefs are largely driven by known human psychological weaknesses. I don’t think thats the same as pedophiles.

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Yeah. I guess I’m trying to say that being a Trump supporter really defines who you are, over and above the other indicators of who you are. Like there are many people you get to know playing poker that appear to be decent folks. They’re not friends, but they’re acquaintances you respect. And then you find out they’re a Trump fan and your opinion of them turns on a dime.

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I agree with this 100%. I know a few people who are ostensibly genuinely nice and good people. Their fervent support of trump completely overrides every positive quality they have.

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Ehhh it’s tough. When your parents tell you they’re socially liberal and fiscally conservative yet they’re all in for Trump. They aren’t racist, support gay rights, want healthcare for everyone but support Trump because TAXES…? It gets hard to believe after a while and makes you wonder if they’re brainwashed, actually awful people or somewhere in the middle. And maybe it’s worse - they are who they say they are but care so little about people they don’t personally know that they’ll look the other way just to put more money back in their own pocket.

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I would agree with that. Total lack of insight was a pretty big moral issue in American society before Trump, but Trump’s Presidency has thrown a huge spotlight on America’s flaws and to embrace Trump now is in a way a declaration that a person has absolutely no interest in acknowledging injustice, let alone fixing it. As they say, you can’t really explain to an adult that they’re supposed to care about other people. So why bother engaging a Trump supporter?

Its 100% this. They are declaring that they don’t really care about other people.

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Like I posted in another thread it’s never about the straw that broke the camels back. That’s just when you reached your breaking point. A parent/child relationship deteriorating to the point where the child cuts off contact is a compound problem like climate change that usually has several causes and would require a multifaceted approach to fix.

Source: I cut my mom off for 12 years from 14-26’ish. Zero regrets. The regrets I have are about resuming speaking to her at 26 to keep the peace with my brother, who I ironically no longer speak to.

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Rough crowd.
You fuck one goat, and all of sudden everyone thinks you are a goatfucker.

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It’s not a logically sound viewpoint, no matter how often they try to make it one. For instance, in my worldview, I care actually very little for other people outside of my own circle. But, I support progressive policies that benefit people other than myself because I’m aware that a society in which everyone has some level of equality is a good one for me to live in and probably benefits my friends and family the most. In a lopsided society where the top 10% of white people control 90% of the wealth - that’s not a society in which me, my friends and my family can thrive.

So if you’re a selfish asshole like me, supporting progressive policies that benefit other people still makes sense. These people are just selfish AND dumb, and have been convinced by the media and those in power that the wealthiest in the country being wealthy = it being good for them too, which has literally never happened in the history of everything.

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Yes I agree with that. I do think there’s quite a lot of overlap between the “do not care about other people” crowd and the “incredibly naive zero sum economics” crowd. Alot of Trumpkins, including Trump himself, sit right in that Venn diagram intersection. Too malignantly narcissist to care about other people AND to even consider that the actions and circumstances of other people contribute to general welfare.

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It makes a little more sense with the Boomers. They were born into a great situation, so they had the opportunity to get a really nice lifestyle with very little effort if they just went full selfish. The externalities they are causing with that selfishness they are expecting to fade through dying before they come.

But yeah if you’re under the age of 50 and you can’t tell that these people are burning your future to provide themselves with cruises you’re just a moron.

Let’s be real, I should be a Republican. I’m a mid 30’s married white male who owns a small business and lives in Texas (and before you claim I’m what’s turning the state blue I moved here from KY). I’m also perfectly capable of shutting my empathy off when the rubber hits the road and shit gets real. I’m not because the policies they want are going to screw me absurdly hard. I’m going to end up paying all the taxes they didn’t pay, and I’m going to live through a climate catastrophe. I tell myself that it’s going to be fine because I’ll figure out how to make it work… but I just got done rising from the bottom 30% of the economic pile to the top ~5% for my age group during what the history books will probably see as a time of rampant income inequality and lack of social mobility, and I made real sacrifices to do it. And I never would have made it if I wasn’t both lucky and running some upper class software because my dad was the black sheep of a fairly well off and very well educated family… and the second I get to the top of the pile I’m basically expecting society to turn on the well-to-do the instant I’m one of them.

It’s pretty demotivating actually. And the climate catastrophe really is a tidal wave of pure misery bearing down on us. The entire world is going to be massively destabilized and everyone on earth will experience what scarcity is like, mostly for the first time, all at once. Some of us will die violently during it most likely. The way Trump has handled the Coronavirus is how the Boomers are handling that tidal wave because it’s scheduled to arrive 5-10 years after the last one of them is due to be buried.

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Almost all of us here should be republican by demo I’m sure. Do we even have any people of color? We’re all 30-50 year old white guys named “Matt”. Half of us probably don’t have college degrees.

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Lol my name is Matt, am 6 hours short of a BS in econ, and I feel attacked.

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:expressionless: One of our highest volume posters is also Matt.

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