I agree with natureboy, and think your stance is sad. I’m not MAGA, but have many relatives, friends, and coworkers who are. The vast majority are, in fact. And some are quite vocal about it. Despite my absolute disgust & contempt for Trump, I haven’t unfriended any of them. There would be no purpose, and doing so would only make things worse for me and them.
I can’t be friends with anyone that supports a rapist, pedophile, traitor. Luckily, none of my friends or acquittances do.
How exactly is it sad?
So you have “absolute disgust & contempt for Trump” but don’t see the point in unfriending people who support his disgusting and comntemptible positions, words, and actions?
Of course their would. By continuing to be their friend you are telling them that their behavior is acceptable. It is not.
I don’t see how. At this point, MAGA folks might wake up when the leopard eats their faces. They will definitely not wake up before that. Continuing to have them in your life will not wake them up. Again, Trump is a hate-filled fascist doing evil things. MAGA folks either see that and actively support it, don’t care so long as it doesn’t effect them personally, or ere in deep denial about things. In none of these case do I need or want them in my lfie.
Worse for them? Again, they might maybe wake up when the leopard eats their faces. They will not wake up before them. Worse in some other way? If they are still MAGA at this point, I no longer care what happens to them. Should they somehow wake up, and reach out to apologize and beg forgiveness, I will consider it.
Ok to start sharing other anecdotes?
I went travelling recently with a group of german friends, and although most were not political, I was disappointed to discover that my closest friend of the group has quaffed the kool-aid.
He is sure that Trump is playing 4D chess, and has surrounded himself with “very clever people” (
), hence he will turn around the “broken” economy.
More annoying than this though, was a refusal to acknowledge anything negative about Trump; pretty much everything was responded to with “…but Hunter’s laptop!” and the like.
Obviously politics is off the table now, but I can’t help feeling it’s another friendship that’s going to drift apart over this weird cult.
Yeah, well, one party in this country decided to stop debating with political opponents and started assuming political enemies. It wasn’t the Democrats.
Sorry for the situation. It seems to me though that perhaps you did not know them quite as well as you thought you did… maybe in social contexts they refrained from talking about politics?
And people do change… I had a good musician friend years ago who I played with in a band for years. He always seemed to be a fairly level-headed and light-hearted fellow… but later he fell into some sort of ‘self-improvement’ cult and slowly became obsessed, to the point of eventually being a ‘councillor’ or ‘trainer’ for it.
I tried to keep in contact for a while, but the ‘message’ of the cult seemed to consume him, and eventually we just stopped communicating.
I don’t intend to dispute your choices- whatever makes sense for you is what you should do. However, I reject the absolute position that staying in community with someone with bad beliefs (or who takes bad actions) is by definition a signal of approval, while ending community with them is the only way to communicate that their beliefs or behavior is not acceptable.
To put it another way, ostracism is not the only tool available to express that their actions are not acceptable. And I believe that most of the time that message (“I can’t be your friend anymore because of how you voted”) does not have the intended result of making a person consider that you are correct and their behavior was wrong. Mostly, it provokes a reactionary response that labels you as intolerant and manipulated.
Cut them off for yourself if that feels right, but the belief that they will understand it as a consequence of their own behavior is misguided.
It might not be that. My MAGA mother was apolitical throughout most of her life, believing all politicians were liars and crooks, but she fell into the Fox news rabbit hole and her demeanor changed. She still insists she’s an independent, but she spouts your typical MAGA talking points. Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed at the Capitol on January 6, voted for Obama before she fell down the MAGA rabbit hole herself.
What I’m getting at is things have changed. Not only have the rules of the game changed but the people have changed as well. It’s very possible your most ardent Trump supporter today might have voted Democrat in 2012.
There are tens of millions of Trump supporters and millions more who decided they couldn’t be bothered to side with democracy over fascism in the last election. There are simply too many to shun. From a practical point of view, we’ve got to find some way to live with them. Me personally, I don’t mind telling MAGAts they’re full of shit, not even my own relatives. I’ve never been rude to them, but I’ve told them exactly why they were wrong. They don’t bring up politics with me anymore.
Why did she fall down that hole, I wonder?
What is the attraction?
That sounds like a challenge. Challenge accepted!
I do not discuss politics with coworkers or my bosses. The amount of relatives I actually want in my life is a very small percentage of the amount of relatives I actually have. I choose my friends carefully.
Yese, there ae a lot of Trump supporters. The overwhelming majority of them are not a part of my life. The amount of people I would need to stop interacting with and start shunning is actually quite low. Given that I need less social interaction than most people, that I generally do not care what strangers think of me, and my ability to hold a grudge, I can certainly shun the required number of people until they die, I die or they wake up, repent, and seek forgiveness.
That’s the $10,000 dollar question, isn’t it? My working theory is twofold: The first is that many of us live in our own little media bubbles with very little interaction with opposing viewpoints. The second is that many MAGAts have tied their identity directly into the movement. To criticize Trump or any MAGA talking points is to criticize their identities. I have an addendum to the first point, and it’s that a lot of people just aren’t savvy when it comes to critically thinking when being fed bullshit from “trusted” sources.
At least in my mother’s case, looking back I can see the signs. It started with her becoming an anti-vaxxer, encouraging me to get a religious exemption instead of the required MMR booster when I went back to college. She’ll tell you she’s not an anti-vaxxer and turn around and refer to the COVID vaccine as the “kill-shot.”
I certainly don’t want to come off as someone who is telling anyone else who they’re obligated to socialize with. I know my mother’s MAGA thoughts have damaged our relationship because of her political stance. I’ve looked on in horror and the woman who inculcated in me values including treating others fairly has seemingly abandoned them for that Ochre Ogre. During our weekly visits we rarely discuss anything of substance because I’m no longer interested in her opinion.
So I get it. I just don’t think cutting everyone so many people off is practical advice for most people.
MAGAs have shown what they are. I have NO problem criticizing their identities. The criticism should be yelled from rooftops until the crawl back under their rocks.
I agree completely, Trump has destroyel all trust this country has built in its allies. He has sided with Putin, a dictator invading a democracy, against Zelenskyy, the democratically elected leader of the country Putin is invading. He gave DOGE, a group with no qualifications, access to secure government databases containing information ranging from sensitive to classifed. DOGE then cancelled programs and slashed budgets claiming they were fighting fraud and reducing waste. No evidence of fraud was ever presented. No charges were ever filed. Trump promised to end trans rights. He is keeping that promise. He has cancelled student visas because people have pro Palestinian views. There is no evidence these people have ever been violent or broken any laws. There was no evidence there were going to be violent or break laws. Scientists have been told that they can only publish findings Trump approves of. ICE agents, masked and unidentifiable, are grabbing people off the streets and when they show up to court so that they can stay here legally. Sometimes, those people are transported to other countries without due process of any kind.
If you still support Trump at this point-
You support all his hatreds.
You don’t believe the leaopard will eat your face.
You are unbelievably stupid.
You are willfully blind and deaf.
Pick any of the above. Explain why I would want any of these people in my life.
What’s mad is that there’s considerable overlap with the crowd that used to, ostensibly, be all about small government, and would talk a lot about defending our constitutional rights against whatever conspiracy theory of the day.
Then, when there genuinely is an authoritarian government trampling individual rights, the courts and other civil institutions, sending marines to quell protests…it’s ok, because that’s my guy.
I think his stance is completely rational. I just don’t think it’s going to change anything for the better. I’ve watched my mother and aunt shame my MAGA uncle, which I’m sure is a scene that has replayed itself in (mostly white) households across the country. It hasn’t changed him a bit. If anything, he’s even more MAGA and more convinced of how evil liberals are and now probably throws them in the same bucket as some of the Vietnam war protesters he hated when he came back from the war.
“We don’t talk to evil” makes us feel good, but it doesn’t change the hearts/minds of people. If people have to take that approach for their own mental wellbeing, I guess I get it.
I am not interested in changing their hearts/minds. As I said-
These people might wake up when the leopard eats their face. If they have not woken up by now, nothing else will work.
I think humans generally are storytellers and mythologists. I mean most of us in the Global North believe we can go on living an 10,000-watt lifestyle (relying on raw materials and cheap labor from the Global South) and that there won’t be consequences because technology will save us. Republicans are deeper into their mythologies than the rest of us but I see how they fall prey to propaganda.
That seems a wee bit of an exaggeration.
According to this article for instance, northeastern states are seeing substantial declines in Canadian tourism but nowhere remotely near total boycotts.
Maine is expecting a 26% drop in Canadian visits this year, which would mean about 600,000 visits instead of the usual 800,000. About 5% of Maine’s tourism comes from Canada so the Trump Effect will hardly wipe out the state’s tourism industry.
It might however be a final blow to some businesses teetering on the edge of failing.
No, it’s accurate. My company was trying to put together fully paid for business trips to industry events in honolulu and Las Vegas - trips people would have fought for last year - but had to cancel because no one was willing to go. Some people are going on trips they booked months ago, but fewer are still booking now. There is real judgment for people voluntarily traveling to the US, and to a lesser degree purchasing US products. And note that in your article the governors are “expecting” declines of 26%, but hotel bookings are actually down by 45%.
Hey, don’t make fun of him. He’s Sweet-ish.