I have relatives who are Trump supporters. One branch are upper-middle class, inherited wealth, and know better. The others are low-information lower-middle class good-hearted people who are deluded. The first group I’m done with. The second group, unclear. Realistically, I’ll probably never run across either group again unless there’s a big funeral.
Hey, I wouldn’t mind having Carol as a cousin. She’d be a lot better than a couple of my cousins. Thankfully, I only see them at weddings (fewer than there used to be) and funerals (more of those than there used to be), and I can deal with them in those settings when needs arise.
Point is, I guess, that there are some people that we have to associate with from time to time. “We can choose our friends, but we can’t choose our relatives,” as Beck alluded to above. All we can do is try to get along when we do meet, and if the topic turns to something distasteful, then change the subject (when he goes on about how I have to accept Jesus to be saved from the fires of hell, I can always distract my evangelical born-again-Christian cousin by talking about the Toronto Blue Jays, for example). Or visit the restroom. Or, if you’re so inclined, go out for a smoke.
Don’t sweat it, Carol. Keep your cousin. You don’t need to make excuses.
In the interests of transparency, my cousin is better described by your first category (as in, he’s got stupid amounts of money, most of it inherited). But as far as I can tell, he is also low-information, good-hearted, and deluded. I haven’t said a lot about his background and don’t intend to, but as previously noted, he was somewhat scorned by his nuclear family because of his lack of intellectual accomplishments, and as an adult he deliberately chose a life abroad (something he and I have in common).
…and thanks for other supportive comments too (sorry for not noting everyone; it was a fast-moving thread, I was cooking dinner, drinking wine, and discussing practical stuff with my SO).
I think dinner with your SO, especially with wine, means that we can be safely ignored.
Bon appetit!
As bad as a Hitler or Stalin, easily. Neither liking animals nor having a “great cousin” says anything at all about how somebody treats people. Those are simply disconnected qualities.
I forgot this thread was in the Pit. I was looking for a way to report it but now I have realized you can probably get away with it. So let me say your response to Beckdawrek’s lighthearted sounding post was disgusting.
Trump’s politics are fundamentally different from Mitt Romney’s politics. It’s perfectly understandable if someone can stay friends with a Romney supporter, but a Trump supporter (or Mussolini supporter, or Mao supporter) is a bridge too far.
But cutting off ties is self-care, not political activism. Nobody in fucking history said, “I voted for Trump, but my cousin cut ties with me, so I’m a Democrat now.”
Maintaining ties with Trump supporters is the harder and more activist route, for folks that can manage it. It’s not an act taken for the sake of the Trump supporter, or for the sake of the ties-maintainer. It’s an act taken for the rest of us.
The only way out of this horrific shit-show is for some of the folks who supported this dangerous fascist to stop supporting him. And the only way for that to happen is that they hear from folks they trust about why supporting him is so dangerous, and about what they can do instead to meet the needs they thought supporting Trump would meet.
So no: no judgment at all on you, and plenty of judgment for the halfwits who think cutting off ties to Trump supporters is anything more than self-care. I hope that, as your relationship with this cousin continues, you can find ways to talk with him about your worries about Trump, and about how the world could be remade in a more compassionate, safe way.
Besides, authoritarians are inherently anti-family. They see support networks as as threat, and they are terrified of people trusting each other. In their minds, failing to put state before family is treason.
Cutting off ties of friendship and family makes everyone weaker, and that’s exactly what they want.
That’s your opion. In my opinion it was their “lighthearted sounding post” that was disgusting in the way it attempted to handwave away support for tyranny, genocide and mass murder as less important than having a cat.
Life can be full of extraordinary nuance.
I am in a similar situation. All of my immediate family members are deceased but I have a number of very close cousins that I continue to hang out with especially on holidays.
I refuse to let politics take away the people I have left.
I believe some of them might be/probably are republicans and I am pretty sure they know my political leaning to the left.
But we never discuss politics.
These cousins are my sole social support network and at 67 & close to retirement I have no realistic way of building anything new (especially given the rural, red area where I live).
I hold them close and enjoy their company when I can.
They will be the ones taking care of things when I die.
On one hand, I hear time and again how so many Trump voters are trapped in noise and cultural bubbles of only watching Fox News (or worse), Twitter nonsense and Facebook memes. On the other hand, if someone voted for Trump, I guess the only answer is to shut them out of your life and never speak to them again or else you’re just coddling intolerance and supporting all the worst things about Trump by proxy. The only time to speak to a Trump voter is to call them a Nazi or lay down some sick burns.
Sure, makes sense. Can’t see any issues coming from that.
Good luck with the cousin, CairoCarol. Hope you guys have a wonderful holiday and stay close.
Absolutely, I wouldn’t hold it against anyone for being civil to, and choosing to spend time with, a family member. Or a friend. Or anyone, really. Better to “err” on the side of human interaction and broadened appreciation for each individual’s complexities. (Nor would I judge anyone for choosing to cut ties).
In January, I’ll be chaperoning my 14-year-old son and his friend for three days of skiing. The friend has shown consistent signs of attraction to toxic masculinity and Trumpism (starting with an Andtew Tate phase a year ago). I struggle with how to handle this. For now, I’m supporting their friendship — but also I have talks with my son about these matters, and how he needs to be careful and not get sucked into that whole horrendous, curiosity-and-empathy-free world.
If you actually pay attention to the voting numbers, you’d see that Trump actually had fewer supporters than before. We lost because people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn’t vote for Kamala, not because people weren’t reaching out to Trump voters. So your snark is utterly misplaced.
Look, I’m not so heartless as to say you should cut off your Trump-supporting loved ones. But the reason behind that is that I expect you to be using your influence to try and change them. That’s the one argument for why we shouldn’t cut off ties.
The OP pisses me off because that does not seem to be what they are doing. They are pushing the nonsense of “agree to disagree” on political issues. They value him for his “loyalty.”
Seeing the nice way he is as a potential way to help him understand what a horrible thing he has done? That’s great. Ignoring that horrible thing because he’s been there for you? Not so great.
I hope I’m reading the OP incorrectly.
Hitler, for all evidence, loved his dog, and, being a dog, I’m sure Blondi loved Hitler and thought he was the best human ever. Look what that got him in the end.
We’re not dogs.
And I’ll lose my trump loving, Obamacare hating, armed private citizen on horseback border patrolling brother in law, if you don’t mind. You do you.
I see no evidence they give it any thought at all. The MAGA mindset isn’t rabid isolation. In fact, most of the people posting that they don’t like being around their trump-loving relatives have not expressed that the relatives don’t want to be around them. And besides, us isolationists aren’t alone, we have our own friends and family that aren’t rabid misogynists, fascists and/or racists
I love my friends and family more than I hate Donald J. Trump.
It can be difficult, stressful, and strained, but I haven’t cut anybody out of my life – ever – based on politics.
And I hope never to do so.
Sure. But the more that Trump supporters get cut off by his opponents, the less they hear from his opponents. If folks have the energy and skill to burst that bubble, there’s an opportunity to peel away some of that support.
If they were fringe, isolating them could be effective. But we’re in this nightmare world where they’re not fringe, so other strategies must be used.
And has listening made any difference at all?
That sounds like a rhetorical question, but I don’t think it is. Trump’s supporters aren’t all-or-nothing. There are certainly folks who previously supported him, but who heard things from his opponents that gave them pause, and later decided not to support him. So: yes. Listening has made some difference for some of his supporters.
If it made no difference at all, there would be nobody who stopped supporting him.
On an individual level? Sure. I’m confident that a number of people could give their “returned from darkness” stories about family or friends who voted for Trump and later changed their mind/stance. On a macro level, I dunno but then I imagine most people are more immediately worried about their siblings and cousins than the Trump-voting population of the state as a whole.