Submitted 3 months ago by Machinist@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Not sure what you’re saying about the local ecology. In any case, it’s changed radically since I was a kid in the 70s, plain to see.
FFS, you don’t have to clean the bugs off the windshield at every gas stop. That should be a major wake-up call to us old folks. The bottom of the food chain dropped out!
Nothing you can do OP.
We’d drive across the state as a kid and at the end of the day it was a sticky mess that was beginning to impact a driver’s ability to see well. I drove across the country a couple years ago and there were days at a time where we didn’t need to clean the windshield.
I had the same experience. Driving three hours in an Ohio summer in the 90’s meant consistently using the wipers and fluid to get bugs off the windshield. then in 2013, driving across country, I had to clean my windshield of bugs, a single time. Now? haven’t needed to clean the windshield in years.
I ask my conservative father about these things, he just ignores it. Literally, if it doesn’t fit within his small, hate-filled world-view, then it might as well not exist. If I insist upon a response, he just starts hating me.
It feels as though I’m losing my parents in much the same way dementia would take them. Except it’s not some medical condition, it’s smug assholes in suits profiteering off peddling hate.
Yes you do lol, bugs messing up my windshield dam it lol
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.
If it was drug use wed call this enabling. Family shouldn’t get a pass to be dick bags.
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.
It is also caring for oneself/ their own wellbeing and sanity.
I don’t feel I’ve given them a pass. I feel like I’ve set boundaries where I can tolerate/ enjoy their presence without being subjected to their hateful or stupid beliefs. It was a difficult decision for me and I seriously considered not having a relationship with them at all for a long time. But I’d miss out on time with my baby nephew, my elderly gran and my siblings who all live near my parents (the main culprits) and I decided that the relationships were more important to me than winning an argument.
To continue your addict analogy, you might agree to hang out with your addict friend on the condition they come sober and don’t take drugs whilst you’re together. Rather than just saying you take drugs so we aren’t friends now.
The world is rarely black and white.
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.
If you are going to be upset about other people like this, you will be in a state of constant anger.
It’s not your responsibility to control what people do or think. My advice is to let those people be who they are, while you focus on being the best you can be.
Keep the people you vibe with in your life, and let the others go. Meet your grandfather and just observe him. This is life showing you someone who is hateful, from the sound of it. It’s just an example of who not to be, that’s all it is. Learn from that and remain calm.
You can do it. :)
There is wisdom in what you say.
I tried to help them. I wanted them to see a way without the hate.
It hurts a lot that they can’t come with me. I love them so much. It’s not okay that I can’t help them. My grandfather. My family. We make our choices.
It is so so so painful to lose a loved one.
It is excruciating to lose them before they die.
Even worse is when you see parts of what you liked about them suffocating beneath the propaganda that poisoned them. This is like a threefold death.
You will start to view him as someone funny, like a child
Well his grandfather is so old he’s probably well on his way becoming a child again.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, that’s the truth. Their freedom to not be inconvenienced regarding how their fellow humans are treated.
I am drunk AF, but yeah. If people don’t have the decency to understand ecology, fuck em. They are living in their own world which does not reflect reality.
I’m drunk as well. Fuck em. They chose not see things as they are and accept others for who they are. They chose to drink the poison.
Just going to point out that alcohol is literally a poison people drink to make them feel good. In much the same way that listening to someone who is projected as an authority figure, telling you that everything that’s wrong in your life is someone else’s fault makes your grandpa feel good.
He doesn’t have to feel bad for supporting bad politicians/policies, because they would have worked if not for those damn immigrants.
He doesn’t have to feel bad about voting to deny people abortions because they’re all just drugged up sluts who should be punished with children.
He doesn’t have to feel bad about destroying the environment because science is wrong sometimes(I can’t really condense the rhetoric on denying climate change because it literally makes no sense?).
The reason they watch this stuff is to feel better about themselves. And just like an alcoholic, indulging in performative blame-shifting politics can make you feel good in the short-term, while negatively impacting your life in a million different ways, ultimately resulting in you losing your friends, loved ones, career, and community.
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.
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.
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.
They sound like my boomer parents. I just keep them far away from me. We talk once every 6 months or so, that’s it. They live a 2 hour drive away, but now that I don’t have a car anymofe it’s 4,5h with public transportation, so a good reason not to visit them. I love it. I’m just waiting for them to die. Stupid boomers. They fucked up my youth, they fucked up the world, now they spread hate.
Just live your own life, surround yourself with people who are like minded. I have a lot of friends around me, I left my family. The expression “blood runs thicker then water” is originally longer. Many people interpret it as family bonds being stronger then friends, but the entire expression is “blood runs thicker then water from the womb” meaning the exact opposite. You can choose your friends, you’re stuck with the people who are your family, you can’t choose your family. But you can choose to not talk to them anymore and to focus on friends instead.
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.
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.
I think he’s saying that “southerners call northerners Yankees, but they don’t know that EVERYONE in the US is a Yankee once the confederacy lost, because not a single confederate soldier remained, reclaiming those states as Yankee territory and any citizen therein is a Yankee. Anyone who disagrees doesn’t remember the lesson Ol’ Sherman taught em”
Also, for what it’s worth, my family was from the south. My reunions and funerals and weddings all take place somewhere in a holler with 1 Walmart about 40 minutes down the mountain.
My uncle once said, and my mother agreed, in relation to gay men “I wish they’d put em all on an island somewhere, they’d be happier that way”.
But I wasn’t lucky enough to know my grandpa as a man of wisdom. He’d said enough stupid shit, or abided it in his home when his children begged for '“Barack Houssein O’bummer’s” birth certificate. He had a dog named Blackie, that I called Blackie because I wouldn’t dare say it’s real name if someone asked.
What was good in them did all truly disappear in front of me day by day from that point. Hell, I actually believed the ‘states rights’ reason for the civil war until I was at least 14 or so. Crazy what stupid can breed
I’m not from the US but just wanted to say that I found your descriptions in this thread very evocative. Thanks for the perspective on a place in time that I otherwise hadn’t seen
100% wrong, Yankee has a meaning and has only ever been a north south during and after the civil war, you know when we killed a bunch of racist ducks and burned their cities to the ground.
If you see yourself as anything but a Yankee I’m going to call you a traitor and a closet feddy, it is what it is no matter how many friendly southern afforisms you offer.
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.
Have you tried locking Fox behind parental controls on their TV?
Maybe I could have early on, but cousins would have probably unlocked it. Too late now. Now I’m just tired.
Holy shit that’s a good idea! My dad is clueless about technology 👌
My Dad growing up was probably fairly conservative but cool where it mattered - people are who they are, live and let live, that sorta shit. We never really discussed politics or anything.
When I graduated he remarried, sold the trailer I grew up being told would be mine, bought a house he lost within 2-3 years and kicked me out of basically immediately. I ended up in the Army, caught an IED, got seperated. Couldn’t even use the “guest room,” charged me $500/mo (in 2008, kinda insane then but maybe not so bad now lol) to sleep in the open basement and kicked me out again cause I wasnt paying up fast enough.
An ex convinced me to call him years later. First words out of his mouth - “You have that money you owe us?” I never reached out again.
Over covid, he tried to add me on Facebook. I’d blocked him but he made a new one. Hell no, but you’re my dad I’ll let you creep. On a post about the protests going on - “Those protesters wouldn’t be a problem if we just gun em down.” I blocked him and then had to tell me aunt (“you can’t just block family over politics”) that this isnt political, its moral and I don’t want anyone like that in my life. Bright side, I never have to feel bad about it ever again.
Its OK to let people go and cut them out. Blood family, chosen family, friends, they all stay with you even if your paths split apart. Never let old bonds tie you to a toxic situation. My Dad killed it growing up, now he’s a fascist. As you said, the man I knew was gone, and I do NOT owe whoever this new guy is anything. If thats the life they want to live, let them.
I got lucky, my father died when I was 4. My step father was good in spite of his religion.
That shit fucking sucks. I’m sorry for you. Sucks donkey balls.
Those things make us hard. We’re hard and take care of the ones we love. We make sure they don’t ever have to live like that. You sound tough, we’ll keep on going and loving. All we can do.
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.
I think it did for my aunt I told her that I thought she was smart and wise, and that it made me sad and disappointed to hear her talk dumb
I’m in a very similar spot. My mom is starting to slip mentally and the further she slides, the more hateful she becomes. Before she knew and were friends with many diverse people. Now she hates their kind. Gays, trans, immigrants, blacks, etc.
I theorize the more you decline mentally, and lose your ability to critically think, the most convincing arguments are most repeated ones. I’ve noticed that the strength of her opinions are usually based on the frequency that she hears it. I can predict how often she’s gonna start ranting about black people, trans pedophiles, electric vehicles by the amount of content she’s watching. The more she watches, the more she argues.
I can’t seem to break her out of this cycle. The right has thoroughly brainwashed her that Democrats and leftists are scum and should only exist to be shamed and exiled. If an opinion or fact is even slightly related to democratic values, she just shuts off and rejects it.
She had a PhD and was extremely successful but now she has difficulty just using the oven. There are days when she is lucid and relatively straight thinking but other days she is entirely unintelligible and relies heavily on hand gestures.
Sometimes I wish she would pass. She causes so much pain for everyone around her (my sisters went no contact) and she is in pain herself. She is so extremely stressed and fears that antifa is going to burn down all of the great American cities, the homeless and blacks are going to ravage and loot everything and the left will be complicit since it’s their “ultimate goal” to destroy america.
It makes me extremely sad.
It hurts a whole lot. I can’t find a cure for their sick and I’ve tried.
Bless her heart, I don’t think she can help it. I don’t think you can fix it.
We can’t fix or help them. They’re sick in a bad way and we have to move on and take care of the ones that will let us.
Goddam this one was heartbreaking
The irony being they are actually correct in some cases. Lots of leftists want to destroy the state, and national borders in favour of a unified world. You also have tankies that want death to America specifically, and honestly I can understand the feeling.
I don’t think wanting to end America is “tankie,” you’re just using dramatic phrasing. We have a corporate right wing government that has cut off all roads to influencing politics to the left that pretends to fight between two sides which are actually unified in fighting off anything left of the mid right wing.
Feeling that there’s no pulling back seems perfectly reasonable to me. Institutions aren’t infallible eternal entities and their time sometimes comes. We’d all love a peaceful transition that doesn’t ruin anyone’s day to day, but how much systemic violence does it take before responding with violence is the only tangible response?
There’s nothing stopping you from going NC with extended - or even immediate - family, if they negatively impact your sanity to that degree. At the end of the day, you’re human, and so is everyone else. Live your life on your own terms.
I don’t disagree, but when you mention it like that, I can’t help but think of how cults shun people who don’t assimilate.
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!
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.
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.
Appreciate the kindness. I kind of wish they all died early so I didn’t have to see the rot.
Y’all watch out, be on guard.
Live well an full.
I have no pity for willfully ignorant people
I’m sorry. It’s still hard to grow up and realize that people aren’t who we thought they were. Never meet your heroes, as they say.
Either this is a significant personality change that would indicate an illness requiring treatment, or this is who he’s secretly always been in which case you’re really not losing anything but your illusions and if this is the last time you see him then you’re not really losing anything important.
If it’s the former it may help you to feel better by trying to get him some help, even if you fail then at least you tried. If it’s the latter then it’s just best to cut your losses as soon as possible and move on.
What’s the difference between your grandfather and a lib supporting Genocide?
Is there anything else in that head of yours? Do you have space in your mind alongside this vitriol for anything that makes life worth living? Family? Friends? Hobbies? What things do you find to be positive or wholesome in your perspective? I’d genuinely like to hear what your ideas and beliefs are beyond the topic of Gaza.
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.
I have similar issues with my family. Never forget how much they love you, and never forget that they are the ones who helped you become the person you are today, regardless of the politics and or language they used to get you there
This actually sounds a bit toxic tbh
How so? Because the family is toxic?
They have become what they taught me not to be. I studied what they told me was the truth. They would crucify Jesus for being a pinko commie. Something changed and they aren’t who they used to be. I have a lot of trouble trying to make peace with it.
They opened your eyes. Give thanks for that. The world works in mysterious ways, and they need your love more than ever now.
This… I don’t necessarily agree with this. If you come from a healthy, functional family, then sure, but for those of us who don’t, this is a very unhealthy attitude to keep, and is a mindset that is very easily manipulated.
And it’s almost impossible to explain to people who don’t come from that background. Ask me how I know…
Of course it’s them - hateful and aggressive - not understanding you.
Why would it ever be you - knowledgeable, well-informed guy writing nice, respectful posts about them on the internet - not trying to understand them?
Probably better to move out south.
There’s a really cool community on reddit called QAnonCasualties. Maybe we need that here.
I’m from the South so I feel your pain, people are painfully ignorant. I’m more interested in the fact that you said the woods sound and smell different, could you elaborate?
This will be hard to put into words. I figure it’s a result of climate change/global warming.
There was an eartheir note in the smell when I was a kid. Now I smell more clay and piss, I think the piss smell is from the insects changing. I smell less oak and a lot more privet. Less walnut and pecan sharp smells. Lots of a green smell that I only used to know in high spring. Fungus and wood rot way more often. Something like cut grass even in February.
There was a constant whine and buzz. It was a background noise and is mostly gone. There was always knocking in the trees and it happens way less. The ground had a buzz and shuffle that is way less, even though big beetles move through.
There are new whinings, there’s a deeper buzz.
It’s all subjective, it’s different, things have changed.
I’m trying to put words to this, but it’s like trying to talk about the way water feels.
I appreciate you taking the time to describe that. I’ve always thought about the effects on local fauna and flora and the shifting upwards of temperatures and thus shifting biomes and potential farmland upwards as well. And what you’re describing kind of fits the description.
I feel like something bigger is going on though. People around the states have noticed bug populations down in populated areas, I don’t know about anything outside of here though. Things are changing and the way science works it’s typically slow to react.
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.
Easy to say if you and yours fit into the demographics that trumpers support. Not everyone has the same privilege as you do.
magnetosphere@fedia.io 3 months ago
My sympathies. Ignorance, especially willful ignorance, can be absolutely exhausting to deal with.
Don’t focus on that. Just remember that Friday is probably the last time you’ll see him alive. Try to steer the conversation towards pleasant memories. Make the conversation about his life, not current events. Ask him about his childhood, his first car, how he met your grandmother; stuff like that. People like to talk about themselves. Plus, it’ll keep the conversation away from politics.You might even learn some interesting family history!
TheFriar@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Not to mention possibly have one last happy memory with a relative you thought was gone forever. If he steers it back into hatred, well, at least you tried.