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Venting about shit. Angry about the willfully ignorant motherfuckers around me.

I’m meeting my grandfather for lunch on Friday. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen him in several years. He went all the way down the hate hole. Never heard him cuss but last time we talked he was using the N word.

He’ll be 87 soon. Most likely, I’ll never see him again. He’s going to find out we’re moving out of the south to yankee land.

Fuck it. He’s not the man I knew. He doesn’t have the wisdom I thought he did.

I hate it and it fucks me up. I’ve lost my people to hate and stupid. So fucking stupid. They all want to suck some orange cock. Fucking really? That’s your fucking Messiah? They didn’t actually fucking read the fucking book they claimed they believed in while shoving bullshit down my throat and the throats of any child they could get ahold of.

Fuck em. They could wake the fuck up if they choose to. They could read. They could think. I tried to tell them.

I’m real sad about it. Not a fucking thing I can do about it. They can live inside their lie holes.

Blackberry Winter has skipped two years. There are armadillos, geckos, and fire ants now. Those critters didn’t live here until things changed. The fucking woods smell and sound different now. They could wake the fuck up and quit listening to fox or their preacher but they choose not to.

I tried to tell them and they didn’t listen because they choose to be ignorant.

fuck em

ATDA ,

I’ve been having the same conversations. Told my family I love them as people but I’m moving because their politics quite literally are devolving into third world territory.

Can’t keep power on, roads and bridges falling apart, rights being taken away.

If that’s where you want to live that’s cool but peace.

MystikIncarnate ,

When I see stuff like this, I’m happy my father died when he did. He was also suffering at the time so seeing him no longer in pain was a good thing. I won’t get into that whole story, but he started going that way when he became a bit too forgetful. As in, he couldn’t even follow along with a normal conversation anymore. Happened sometime in the mid to late 2010’s.

He watched stuff like Fox, and listened to guys like Rush Limbaugh, and he was religious. I don’t really follow any media/news organizations, I don’t listen to pretty much any broadcasts specifically, nor follow any specific celebrities, and I’m atheist/agnostic/non-religious (I have some beliefs, but they’re not relevant to the story. I will say that I generally abhor any organized religion with a few exceptions).

I never saw him get consumed with hate over these things. He wasn’t aware enough that he could have even realized that Trump was president at all.

I should also disclose, were not Americans. We’re Canadians, but ask pretty much any Canadian about American politics and most of us will have a good understanding, meanwhile we generally know less about our own politics.

In any case, at the time that this decline into hate mongering started, his mental faculties were all but non-existent.

I’m truly sorry that you’ve had to deal with this op. I wish you the very best of luck moving forward.

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

What’s the difference between your grandfather and a lib supporting Genocide?

skeezix ,

We could be talking about the gestation period of marsupials and you linkerbaan, as is your wont, would try to turn the conversation to Gaza.

militaryintelligence ,

Do what I do, play dumb. “What does woke mean, grandad? I’m out of the loop here.” It’s fun. I think I’ve made a few realize how dumb they sound by their facial expressions, but they’ll never admit it.

Luckily I don’t have any red hats in my family.

A_Very_Big_Fan ,

He doesn’t have the wisdom I thought he did.

I know it’s armchair/backseat advice, but if it comes up I suggest telling him this word for word. It’s the kind of thing that would (or at least should) pierce the soul of a man his age.

Madison420 ,

Goddamnit southerns, you are Yankees. The only southerners that weren’t Yankees were confederates who can also be called treasonous traitors.

Essentially, if you’re not a Yankee you’re a goddamn traitor.

Machinist OP ,
@Machinist@lemmy.world avatar

Yes and no.

I’m country as a pinto bean sandwich. Yankees were people that lived in the north and talked different.

I used to have a lot of pride in my people. We are tough and proud. Able to endure heat that most people don’t understand. Stretch a penny and squeeze a dime, fix a truck with bailing wire, JB weld and a coke can. Kind to others, stop on the road and help someone broke down.

Collard greens, corn bread, catfish, and a mess of green beans. There’s bacon fat in the beans and they’ve been boiled down.

Black folks around, you say Ma’am and Sir to make sure they know you respect them. We’re all people.

I started reading, left home, and lived near a big city for 20 years.

I come from profound ignorance. There’s a good naturedness that seems to have left my people.

Melvin_Ferd ,

Hang out with grandpa and just ignore the trump shit. If it’s just them liking trump and that then learn to let go and just be with people if you liked them before trump. Not your job to change people. But don’t burn bridges. Internet taught a generation there are these clear lines that we can’t ever cross. My dad is a die hard trump supporter. Love him to death. We have many heated arguments and he fully knows he won’t listen to facts. I also refuse to listen to sources like fox or New York Post or other bullshit. We have many impasses. But I love him and would never dream of thinking less of him or going no contact over something that use to be a thing we all kept to ourselves. Not worth it. Don’t let trump make you burn the people in your life that are family.

But I get if they’re violent or deep deep deep into it. But also we should all get better at looking past this stuff. Trump will be gone one day and the bridges we burnt over it will never be worth it.

Dearth ,

Easy to say if you and yours fit into the demographics that trumpers support. Not everyone has the same privilege as you do.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

He doesn’t have the wisdom I thought he did.

One of the starkest shocks I had during the initial trump candidacy and pandemic was the veil being lifted on so many people I worked with or knew.

People I thought of as intelligent, level-headed, and reasonable suddenly appeared hateful, mulish, and willfully ignorant.

They didn’t care about the environment. They didn’t care if they got people sick or killed them with covid. They didn’t care about the open overtures to authoritarianism or fascism - if anything they directly welcomed this. The wild and rampant stupidity behind the conspiracies and Q-anon. The concerted attacks on women’s or lgbtq rights, the denial of equality or justice for people killed by police. The complete willingness to throw their fellow humans under the bus for any reason at all to spare themselves the inconvenience of not being able to eat at Applebees without a mask.

And they manufactured whatever slights they could think of to justify their actions regarding the above. It was retaliation for loss of perceived status as White People In Charge.

It completely killed discourse because you can’t have a discussion with someone who isn’t willing to argue in good faith. Who Gish Gallops and buthwhatabouts. Who exhausts their opponent with conspiracies that are so full of shit that you don’t even know where to start rebutting because they have no place in reality.

The trump election sharply split America in two. The country and the world are a far less stable place than a decade ago.

ashok36 ,

When you realize all the people you admired for their love of freedom actually just meant the freedom to be an asshole… That’s a hard lesson to learn.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

Yeah, that’s the truth. Their freedom to not be inconvenienced regarding how their fellow humans are treated.

Machinist OP ,
@Machinist@lemmy.world avatar

Yes. it was an incredible shock. 9-11 was less of a shock.

It’s like a transmissible soul sickness that they willfully acquired because it seemed easy and it made them feel right and justified.

I’m moving on and trying to make peace with it. I’m trying to view it as a different kind of pandemic or an asteroid that came out the sky and smacked us.

xanu ,

youtu.be/FS52QdHNTh8?si=Cr5PW-7FQJimgHbI your post reminded me of this amazing documentary called “The Brainwashing of my Dad” in which the documentarian talks about how Rush Limbaugh and the greater right wing fox news propaganda machine turned a man he once respected and looked up to for his strong character and morals into a barely functioning hatemonger.

Machinist OP ,
@Machinist@lemmy.world avatar

So many people I love fell down this hole. I used to listen to Limbaugh, everyone did. As I was coming out of bad religion, I stopped.

I’d like to piss on that motherfucker’s grave. He killed my family.

Asafum ,

Be mad at the propagandists. The same thing happened to my best friend and my father. It’s 99.999% at the feet of the likes of fox news and Newsmax.

They get introduced through the lense of “fairness” (illegal immigrants “skip the line” it’s not fair!) (msm lies about trump, it’s not fair!) (I pay taxes and it goes to lazy people, it’s not fair!) and these outlets keep tickling your amygdala keeping you angry and it just spirals. These people end up watching right wing media as “hate-porn” and it becomes a bit of an addiction. They completely believe they are on the right side and any time you bring up some disgusting thing a right winger said/did they can dismiss it as “lies” because their chosen hate-monger tells them as such.

They have some blame as they allow themselves to hate, they form some justification, but you can see it here too from “the left.” See just how many people (myself included) will say how much they hate Republicans (in office for me) so it’s entirely a human thing which is why I blame propaganda almost entirely.

I should change my username because I say it so often, but I FUCKING HATE PROPAGANDISTS!

AbsoluteChicagoDog ,

I have no pity for willfully ignorant people

sentientity ,

He’s not the man I knew. He doesn’t have the wisdom I thought he did.

The grief is really, really real. I’m so sorry. I feel this way about several people I grew up around, It sucks to realize people you respected aren’t interested in doing the right thing or even acknowledging reality.

roboto ,

Feel you! My family are immigrants in Germany and my grandpa who was always misogynist and all that old school bullshit, I loved him anyway because as a kid I didn’t realize and he always brought us chocolate and ice cream so I wanted to only remember that.

But in the last couple years he started saying more and more racist shit, being really angry and I’m pretty sure he’s now voting for AfD (our local MAGA). My brother started telling me how we need to deport more people and how all of those immigrants should integrate and learn German Blabla and how they’re not contributing. I was like, do you remember that we’re also immigrants my man?

It’s an epidemic, idk what else to say, but I wish you strength and patience to deal with this, certainly I need it myself.

Berttheduck ,

I know where your coming from. My parents feel right down the racist conspiracy theory rabbit hole during Brexit and COVID. I was working in the hospital watching people and colleagues die regularly and my dad was telling me it’s just flu and all a hoax to scare people, they convinced my 90 year old grandma to not get the vaccine. We had a lot of fights. Eventually after a lot of reflecting I decided that having a relationship with my family was more important than winning an argument so now we just have a selection of topics I refuse to engage with, just say let’s move on and change the topic. I found it really hard to see the people who raised me fall into racist rhetoric and conspiracy theory thinking, these people taught me to be a good person and now have some glaring holes in their compassion for others. I struggled with that for a long time.

rekorse ,

If it was drug use wed call this enabling. Family shouldn’t get a pass to be dick bags.

NellyAdagio ,

It is also caring for oneself/ their own wellbeing and sanity.

jpreston2005 ,

but just like being addicted to a drug, we can’t force them to stop. They have to want to change themselves. And if they don’t stop, what, we’re supposed to cut off our whole family? That won’t stop them from continuing to be hateful, but it will stop us from having a meaningful relationship with our loved ones. All we can do is make our values clear when they attempt to bring up any of their hateful BS, and then move onto something else.

ivanafterall ,
@ivanafterall@lemmy.world avatar

I had a similar experience. I was working in D.C. and had focused on Ukraine, of all things, well before it became an international talking point. As Russia got increasingly involved in U.S. politics via Trump, I found I couldn’t really share what I was seeing/experiencing first-hand, because back home, my family was actively falling for the same bullshit I was trying to scream about in D.C. It’s all been so surreal.

lars ,

This feels like excerpts I read of “here’s just an example of how disenchantment and loss had impacted everyday citizens of _ in the early _ century”.

I forget what kind of coping mechanism it is called where I try to see things historically when they hit a little too close to home.

Maggoty ,

Disassociation?

lars ,

Voilà yup

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