Asklemmy

How am I dealing with it? Not well. I don't feel like I can talk to my parents anymore. They're completely disengaged from politics 100% of the time until it comes time to blindly vote Republican. They don't care that the world is dying because they'll be dead before it would impact them. Even though they have children and grandchildren. It sickens me and I have no idea how to grapple with that

I broke up with my parents about 9 months ago.

I need to mourn the good, morally centered parents, who taught me all of the principles that are now being sacrificed by my parents, or by the creatures they have turned into. The parents that raised me are essentially gone.

Haven’t had any contact with them since. Makes it a bit awkward with my siblings, since they generally feel the same but haven’t taken as drastic a step yet.

This is a painful topic for me. I empathize with you all.

I don't keep in contact with my family, but I'd have no problem telling trump supporters that they're dumbasses straight to their faces.

I have no hope of ever having a normal relationship with them. I avoid talking about myself, my thoughts and feelings, and just nod and bite my tongue. The world won't change if I make them see the truth, so I'm not going to bother trying, just to bring more issues between us and risk being alienated even further.

UUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

i deal with it by just trying my goddamned hardest never to have to see them.

bury myself in setting up self hosted shit so maybe i barter a season of bobs burgers for an ounce of pepper once all the shareholders have extracted all value and moved on to the next planet.

i absolutely can't stand it.

deal with them because i want to use the pontoon boat? its just not worth it anymore

edit. did not realize it would format like that

i only have my father left, but both my parents were always latin-american leftists and so were most of my siblings.

most of my siblings married maga-white people and their children (as well as their children) are maga and my father and siblings have become maga-sympathetic as a result.

only my sister and i remain leftists and i'm convinced it was entirely because we were the only ones to marry other latinos. we both keep our distance for the rest of our family. it's been 10 years since she's seen the rest of the family and i decided to do the same thing last xmas. we only visit cousins/aunts/uncles that have maintained ties with our latin-american origins and that luckily happens to coincide with our politics.

my father still tries to maintain our relationship; but i suspect that it has more to do w my aunts/uncles prodding him to do so and it didn't start happening until i told them about my decision last xmas.

I mean lots of old people go quietly insane… the world moves on and doesn’t want their “wisdom.” MAGA feels like a club or a religion, it’s accepting as long as you want to own the libs or whatever.

It’s a simple version of America that feels like the good old 50/60’s… family values, beating the communists.

To answer your question, I tell myself they will be dead soon. We need to focus on saving the country, not our folks. Let them go.

My dad was in the military, but I never heard the sorts of things from him that I do now. He has started saying the N word to try to get a rise out of me, thinks Trump is going to “fix” everything, and every time I talk to him on the phone, I can hear fascist talk radio in the background.

We have learned not to bring up politics with each other. The last time I challenged him on it, he said I was being disrespectful, but I don’t accept that. He just thought I was supposed to sit quietly and listen to crazy ranting.

I have learned that in general it’s best to change the subject if someone wants to talk politics who I know I don’t agree with. Most people have gotten the point. We still get along great! We just have polar opposite politics.

Now I know that some people would question why I remain friendly with those people. The answer is that we have more in common than not. Someday, when everyone finally comes to the conclusion that the powerful and foreign are manipulating our political discourse to sow discord, we will finally be at peace again.

My dad has always been on the right and he’s a Trump voter, but he’s mostly avoided going full MAGA-proud. We have always had a tense relationship when it comes to politics and at times had very little personal relationship. Now we just avoid political discussions or keep them very high level, and it’s manageable. I talk to him a lot less than I would if he didn’t have those views. His health is declining significantly at this point so I have decided it’s not worth trying to change his mind.

My mom is still with him and she’s leftist and we talk all the time.

My dad’s two sisters are deep into MAGA (they were proud attendees of Trump’s first inauguration). They’ve been far-right fundamentalist Christians most, if not all, of my life, so I already had a strained relationship with them before 2016. I haven’t even tried in over a decade now. I was recently diagnosed with a chronic disease that one of them also has and I kept thinking about reaching out but ultimately decided I don’t even want her in my life for that so I haven’t bothered.

Anytime they bring up politics, I just tell them we can't discuss it.

If they press the matter, I say the same thing, except the second time I add: "...because it's going to make me hate you."

They've been borrowing my car to drive for DoorDash since April 2024 and still haven't figured out that this government they voted for is really fucking shitty.

I he’d a funeral for the one that went MAGA in my mind. I gave a great eulogy. All my favorite food was served at the meal following the wake. Easily in my top 10 funerals.

Complete cut off.

My mother is a hard R republican and a self proclaimed Christian Nationalist and has been making excuses for the GOP since at least Nixon.

I spent about 20 some years of my life being subjected to Fox News, Limbaugh, Mike Savage, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity every single day. It was exhausting listening to all of the unhinged screaming. While I lived with her I did not seek to find who was telling the truth because I didn't want to know how bad it really was, and I had a pretty good idea of what she would do to me if she found out I was so much as questioning the Republican ethos. So I kept my head down and my "official" stance then was that I wasn't into politics.

I went no contact with her because she became physically abusive 16 years post-TBI. I have not spoken to her in 7 years. From what I gather from her Facebook posts, she's still an awful person who is also falling for all AI pictures, videos and scams that support her narrative.

I have no interest in speaking to her ever again.

Went no contact in 2016. Was the right choice, my life blossomed without them. One of the last things my dad said to me was " guess I'm a fascist then" Still miss em tho, still not worth it to reach out. My aunt tells me however he turned on trump when his j6 crowd was yelling to hang mike pence. He would have always preferred a theocracy to a full blown white nationalist state tho.

I try to take a page out of the playbook of a cult deprogrammer or a Darrel Davis type personality. My trips home are short (no more than a week) and I try to deescalate any hotbutton conversations. People do change, but unfortunately some people harden and shut off to new ideas as well. Hearing a different personality speak often helps open people up to hearing new ideas; a lot of the fascist ideology is born out of fear, miseducation, and selfishness.

well it sucks. It looks like he's going to die a Nazi. What the fuck dad?

ITT: Really depressing stories of society's decline into ChristoFascist mania and delusion.

I feel for you. My parents also drank the Koolaid, but my mother is dead now, and my father has slipped even further down the rabbit hole. He's also a horrible person in general, and while I used to engage with him if he were behaving himself, I've effectively gone no contact now. I've only spoke with him once in the last few years, and when he launched into a racist anti-immigrant tirade I told him not to be a coward his entire life and hung up on him. It was on my birthday.

You can love someone and things dont work out. Family or otherwise.

My dad always leaned center-left, and he's only gotten slightly lefter as I reach middle age and get very left. I'm very fortunate. My mom is long dead but I would like to think she would be on board too.

The real bugbear is my extended family, typified by dad's sister and her family. Always leaned into the Rush Limbaugh right, but really she isn't so much visibly MAGA as she is aggressively Zionist. It happens with a lot of Jewish boomers; Does 'Never again' mean for everyone, or just for the Jews?

Anyways, I was a protest at our local holocaust center in 2018, protesting the detention camps on the border. The proudboys and others were counter protesting. I told her about it, and she just said,

"They cant use that word, thats our word!" "You know who would agree with you? The nazis?" "What do you mean?" "They were there! I have pictures!"

Anyways, shes been surface level cordial ever since.

I'm... lucky?... that my dad was a shitbag for other reasons. He was already on thin ice prior to 2016. My mom "isn't interested in politics" but even that's feeling unforgivable for me nowadays.

My parents have gone from seeing their 2 grandchildren biweekly, to me limiting visits with their 3 grandchildren to 3-4 times a year. Even those times are intentionally with my dad absent, and are only at extended family gatherings.

Fuck. Them. Both.

I live in a place that could pass for MAGA Mecca and am literally surrounded on all fronts pretty much anywhere I go. It is extremely isolating. Thankfully my parents are sane; still Christian, but at least they look on with a similar confused horror - though they still "like a lot of what he's doing, just not how he's doing it."