Haven’t lived there full-time in years. Manage to go back once or twice a year.
I would think the deplorable alcoholism would make up for the occasional hipster drinker.
Yeah I’m about as left as it gets and I’m drunk right now lol
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My parents and I have had conflicting political views for as long as I’ve been out of the house - they have always been Reagan-loving Republicans although my dad claims his views came from local politics where the Democrats “messed things up.” Anyway we’ve long avoided talking politics because it was clear that there was nothing to be gained from it, but things have gotten a lot dicier since Trump was elected and it finally blew up this past week when they were visiting. We were out to breakfast and these older people were having an obnoxiously loud conversation about Israel and I got a pit in my stomach because I just knew that my mom wouldn’t be able to ignore it (she cannot ignore anything strangers are doing or talking about for some reason). First we argued about Israel/Palestine where they fed me me propaganda about Palestinians being mostly happy, as fed to them by their right-wing Israeli friend, in which they basically tried to justify their racism against Arab and Muslim people. Then I unfortunately got the subject onto family separations which they revealed being totally ok with because don’t you know these people are sex trafficking etc. It peaked with me calling them monstrous and my Dad threatening to leave (disappointed I didn’t drop my golden “Wow I guess you’re really committed to separating families” line), although we cooled things off and ended up getting along fine the rest of the day.
Mostly just writing here to vent my frustration as I don’t really have a good solution to the issue. We’ve gotten along quite well for most of my life, though we would probably have drifted some due to political issues if it wasn’t for my daughter and the shared loss of our first daughter. They are very loving with her and great caretakers, much better than my in-laws who like to play with her but don’t really like having to take any responsibility. I talk/read about politics on here and with friends and I know people like my parents exist but it’s hard to confront it in reality; otherwise nice people who have totally consumed Fox News propaganda and basically live in a fantasy land. I do think the best option is to not bring it up because they definitely do not care about facts and reality but I’m also not going to stay silent if a sensitive issue is breached. My mom’s family was brutalized in the Holocaust and she has spent her whole life hating the German people but I really can’t see a difference between her and the Nazi sympathizers at this point; completely complicit in whatever the government tells them about oppressed people and indifferent to their suffering.
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You’re not alone. This is essentially what I deal with with my parents including the Jewish mother who sees no irony in the whole situation. It sucks but your best bet is just ignoring it altogether because nothing you can say or do or show them will change their minds.
Fox News is a hell of a drug.
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More than you can imagine. I can show my parents information from a bipartisan government research committee that directly refutes what they’re saying and they still question it. I can’t even.
Fox News is the new chuch.
And service is non-stop.
A lot of people are just like that Fox or not. It’s not like Fox is showing convincing arguments. This is what they want to believe.
Sure, but a stream of propaganda normalizes their beliefs and emboldens them.
Legitimizes them being the “silent majority” no more.
I mean, congrats on not being dumb and/or born in America.
It feeds right into their victim complex. My dad would come home shaking angry from AM radio. It’s also a lot of unhappy people projecting their issues on others, but still they provide the targets and supply intellectual cover.
I think saying ‘people are going to be this way no matter what’ is hugely understating the issues that conservative propaganda has wrought.
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The Democrats used to be plenty anti-immigration. See Bill Clinton. They didn’t have to listen to Rush to get that way. The lines are more sharply divided now.
A lot of the difference in how open people are about it is just partisanship. If the Republicans managed to nominate an open-borders libertarian, Democrats would be talking about how MS13 is stealing our jerbs.
I used to work nights and mainline Savage for the lols and anger.
there is no such thing as an open border libertarian
also I don’t think fox news has as much of an impact as everyone here thinks 1) the whole world is trending that way and fox news isn’t in every country and 2) I know a fair # of people who never watch fox news and still spout off their talking points, I think they simply just expand upon how at least half of people’s brains are wired.
That’s not true.
Wasn’t sure which thread a video like this belongs in.
Also not sure how to embed videos here…
This got kind of hard to watch, particularly when it seemed to me the Trump supporters were just parroting the politely phrased propoganda and their noble intentions without for a second engaging with the actual impact of their decisions beyond their intent. We get it. You have no conscious, deliberate malice. The things you’re saying/doing don’t have to be intentionally racist to be super racist.
Like when one keeps insisting it’s a travel ban, not a Muslim ban. Lol, so you’re ignoring what the president kept saying is the true purpose of the policy. Cool, very cool. So you’re ignoring the actual impact of how his administration enforces these policies. Even cooler.
At one point, a Trump supporter says how awful it’s been for her to feel like a villain in her own country simply because of her viewpoint. One of the people of color says congrats, you’ve now experienced a SHRED of what people of color have experienced for generations upon generations. Including today. Including in this very room.
The Trump supporter comes back to say well I live in Orange County and have never seen the racism and prejudice you describe. That’s not my community. And then just plugs her eyes and ears when the PoC says lol, but you’re white, of course you don’t see it. I’m a PoC who lived in Orange County until a few months ago. I experienced racism every day of my life. (Paraphrasing her, not my story)
The video auto embeds just by pasting the link?! What god-tier forum is this
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There are Trump supporters who support these things but have no idea what the impact is either because they live in lily white neighorhoods that shield them from seeing the consequences or intentionally shield their eyes and ears from the human cost for fear of seeing those consequences and being horrified at themselves.
Then there are the ones who see the consequences and revel in the human suffering they have contributed to.
They’re all bad but there are varying degrees of evil within Trump supporters. Not sure which category my mother and her boyfriend sit in. They don’t wear MAGA gear or actively attack people who have differing views. Boyfriend definitely more deplorable than mother though.
It’s the “actively” part where I tend to experience an impassable gulf. If a person’s definition of racism requires them to actively seek harm against a person of color, and mine includes being mindful and responsible for the indirect and unintended racism of your actions, we’re rarely going to see eye to eye. But I can’t help continuing to feel hope that I’ll have a meaningful conversation with them.
And then to your point, there are people who do intend deliberate malice and see nothing wrong with that.