I have 2 GOP parents, one that voted Trump originally and one that did not. Over the last 9 years, I have watched them both travel down the MAGA pipeline to become visibly fascist. The parents who taught me racism was wrong and to have empathy for others, have become openly hostile about immigrants, Muslims, and even parrot the Nazi “great replacement” theory.
Part and parcel with this, they refuse to have any discussions about the facts – like immigrants not stealing and eating people’s pets. They won’t hear it, they won’t even engage in the conversation…they just get angry and loud the second they hear anything that doesn’t fit into the Fox News narrative. Can you relate? How are you dealing with it in your relationships with your parents?
My parents actually went the other way. They were very conservative while I was growing up until my mid twenties, and nowadays they are the complete opposite.
When they were conservative, I generally didn’t bring up politics, but if it came up I didn’t argue. I would just say I thought something was mean spirited and just shrug if they tried to argue. I think I accidentally psychologically fucked with them. I think being mean was against a core value of theirs and me repeating that idea slightly tweaked their thought process.
Eventually I started hearing the “mean spirited” comment from them as a reason they disliked a policy or conservative person. And they now vote for liberal or labour parties.
I think that’s what I’m going to have to do. Not sure if they care if something is mean-spirited now…will have to find out.
That’s pretty much the extent of how it worked with my family. I don’t throw out mean-spirited too often, because that tends to bring out defensive combativeness.
This sounds like my (more reasonable) extended family.
Unfortunately, my parents are still deep in the cult.
Credit where it is due. My parents are willing to question things. And that is half the battle.