Oh Joy. I get Free Airfare for a Vacation WITH TRUMPISTS

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I have friends in the NE Georgia area, and I went to their Christmas party. Despite Georgia voting blue in their last election of Senators, that part of the state is still firmly red. Fortunately the subject of Trump or politics rarely came up. However, I got a text from my friend JB who hosted the shindig, telling me 4 people who attended tested positive for Covid. They thought since they had caught it before, they wouldn’t catch it again. I texted back “This is why I hate coming to Trump country.” JB sent back “I would move if I could.”

I’m really not enthusiastic about visiting again, but my friends who have actual sense deserve some kind of support.

22

Well, two of their three kids are lost sheep as well, so they are more ambivalent about my standing. It helps that I was never disfellowshipped. Funny thing, my uncle gave the eulogy at my dad’s funeral, and my dad was disfellowshipped. That was a no-no. So you can see, they aren’t militant about the Truth as they call it.

23

More like stink bugs!

24

About average, really. Unlike a good chunk of Trump’s base, they don’t really hear the dog whistle of racism in his platform. It goes over their heads like pre-teen girls listening to YMCA. I’m thinking that the grounding in the Witness faith keeps them from going all Archie Bunker. So there’s that.

25

I’m fortunate that my immediate family, much like myself are all bleeding-heart liberals.

That said, I have two cousins with whom I’ve always been close (we grew up together; our parents were co-owners of a hardware store), who both went around the bend in recent years on Fox News and Trumpism. I haven’t had any real contact with them since COVID started, and I’m not sure what sort of relationship (if any) I’m going to have with them in the future.

26

I have a cousin who voted for Reagan in '80 “because he wae going to win”. That pissed me off a bit, but I came to reaize that the times I got into trouble were the times I was hanging out with him, and he gradually revealed himself more and more to be a piece of shit, so I just have nought to do with him any more. Saw him at his sister’s wake but barely exchanged word 1 with him. sometimes family is not enough to make up for pain.

27

How long is the trip?
Will you be staying w/ family or apart?
Will you have your own transportation?

And as to your relatives:
Are they able to avoid talking about politics/religion which bother you?

I’m able to associate w/ people who are far more conservative/religious than me - but we generally don’t talk about those topics. If one of them brought it up, I’d likely:
-try ignoring/avoiding them at first.
-If they kept it up, I’ll likely progress to saying, “I strongly disagree with you but I do not want to debate it. Are you willing to discuss just about anything else?”
-If they kept it up, I’d leave - hopefully without telling them what I really felt about them.

I will admit my personal prejudice. It would take an exceptional Trump supporting Jehovah Witness to qualify as “good people” in my book - relative or not. Of course, they likely reciprocate by considering me a godless commie who is going to hell! :smiley:

28

No, they don’t believe in Hell, and they aren’t supposed to believe in left or right wings either. And they are far more against the rest of Christendom than communism or atheism. In a weird way, they almost think having no god is better than believing in a false god, or the Christian god in a worldly way. The closest they ever got to denouncing communism during my time with them was the unaccountably bizarre take they had on the United Nations.

29

You’re not. Mine didn’t use to be, but . . .

That’s the technique. Sometimes combined with “Not rising to that, [BIL].” Or just the raised eyebrow that says the same thing.

Helps in my case that at least one other relative will help to shut it down.

Maybe they’re also worried about winding up alone.

30

I read the last word of the title wrong and thought the OP said “with trumpets”.

31

This. It can be a very fun game as long as you don’t diss the relatives. If they insist, just say “That is something I am unwilling to discuss. I think I’ll go for a walk now.”

32

If a pianist is a piano player, shouldn’t a trumpist be a trumpet player?

33

Pat Robertson came out to retirement just a few days ago to say about the same thing.

34

Some Bingo cards you might want to take along:

35

You’re not. My mother is a Trump supporter and I still go visit her once a week. I do my best to avoid talking about politics, including COVID, but occasionally it happens anyway. And despite what many people on this board might say, she’s not a bad person.

But since her retirement, she spends an inordinate amount of time on the internet and she’s fallen down a rabbit hole of crazy thinking. She’s not a toxic person, but I find it difficult to speak to her about anything of consequence because we can’t even agree on basic facts. We talked about the war in Ukraine, and my mother is supporting Russia. She says she’s neutral, but everything she says comes out in support of Russia. “NATO promised them it wouldn’t expand and went back on its word!” I just wanted to bluntly ask her why she’s supporting the interest of an aggressive foreign dictator against the interest of the United States and her allies. I can’t imagine my mother would have supported Trump or Russia in 1999.

I still love my mother and like I said I visit her weekly. When she tries to talk politics I usually just nod my head and change the subject. Most of the time my mother avoids talking politics to me. My sister, who is more conservative than I am and far more blunt, will just tell my mother she doesn’t want to talk about a subject. “I don’t want to talk about COVID.”

I can’t tell you whether you should go visit your family or not. But I get it. It can be frustrating.

36

It’s difficult. My Wife’s side of the family are mostly (not all of them) Trumpers. Some are coming around. Many are also devout, church going folks.

My BIL is a lot of fun to hang out with. I only see him every few years. We DON’T discuss politics or religion.

37

I have a friend, who I’ve known for going on twenty years. He was always a Conservative Christian Republican. I thought he was wrong about just about everything related to politics or social issues, but wrong within normal parameters. He’s also one of the nicest, friendliest, honest, and hard-working guys I’ve ever known. One-to-one, he’s unfailingly kind, thoughtful, and generous. I enjoyed hanging out with him, gaming with him, seeing movies with him, and talking with him about geeky stuff.

In 2016, I would have sworn he would be a never-Trumper, but, no, he became a Trumpist. Then he became a COVIDiot - he’d abide by legal and work requirements, reluctantly, and he wouldn’t give anyone else grief about taking precautions, but he and his whole family flatly refused to abide by literally any precautions that they weren’t strictly required to take. And when COVID vaccines started rolling out, he fell down the anti-vax rabbit hole.

I cut off all physical contact with him early in the pandemic, and so did everyone else in our circle of friends. I still occasionally exchange texts, and I’ve talked to him online a couple of times. I don’t want to cut off all contact.

Because he’s still, one-on-one, that same friendly, nice, generous, thoughtful guy. He’s just got ENORMOUS cognitive blind spots.

It’s genuinely tough. I can barely even imagine what it would be like to go through that with actual family members.

People are complicated. They’re not all one thing.

@Two_Many_Cats2 , ultimately, they’re your family, and you’re the only one who can decide what your relationship with them means to you, and how to navigate it. I’ve got no advice for you. But I do have sympathy.

38

Maybe I’m just more “aggressive”, but I don’t get this “nod and smile when my relatives spew BS” thing. Their opinions aren’t more valid than ours, so why should theirs get to roam free and ours get stifled? Get in their faces! Give 'em hell with facts, strike preemptively. If that doesn’t work, start talking about how AOC is the savior of the Future, how Putin is Stalin and should be nuked, how Biden is responsible for world happiness and lower cereal prices. Who cares if what you say is even true! What they say isn’t.

But, you say, that will make my visit unpleasant, and besides, “just because they’re trump apologists, Jan 6 supporters, anti-vaxxers, think BLM and CRT are actual terrorist threats to this country, and think you can’t get pregnant from “real” rape, that doesn’t mean they are bad people”, then I submit that spending time with these people already is unpleasant.

39

I felt so helpless after Trump was elected - just didn’t know what I could do to affect what I saw as the horrible trends in society.

I recall one of my sisters saying the one thing she saw that she could/would do is to NOT remain silent when she heard people saying reprehensible things. While she would not look to confront them, she would directly tell them that she disagreed with them.

I thought there was some merit to that. But I personally tend more towards avoidance after decades of confrontation seemed to result in nothing more than frustration and anger for me.

The only hardcore Trumpist I had to deal with was my FIL who - fortunately - died in December. We have nothing to do with his extremely unpleasant widow.

As far as religious folk, I simply do not discuss religion with them. If they insist on bringing it up, I try to change the subject, and progress to asking them to discuss something else. If they persist, I choose to avoid them as much as possible. I could imagine visiting with them, but certainly would not stay with them.

40

that middle square is incomplete, missing the “-dumb”