Ask Lemmy

After a campaign like this, how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?

You're assuming those relationships survived the 2020 election. For many, myself included, they didn't.

I was willing to overlook 2016, but after 4 years of horror culminating in a (failed) coup, and those people still supporting him, I just cut them out of my life.

My dad is on his death bed, I haven't spoken to him in years, because he's full on MAGA. It breaks my heart that I lost my dad to that cult and that I'll lose him forever soon, but I will never forgive him for supporting the scum that is proud he stole womens rights.

So to answer your question, being sad and waiting for tomorrow.

Short answer: I bite back now.

Long answer: My parents are hard-R Republicans. Every time they start getting all "demoncrats r bad" i just ask them, "Why do you want me dead so fucking bad? I know from being raised by you that you fucking hated me growing up, but to vote for "gays should be executed"? This is exactly why you didn't have grandkids, the thought of putting more of your hate in the world is abhorrent to me..."

I've only had to pull that one out twice, so far, but it hits them hard when they still (I'm a few months away from 40) insist I "give them grandkids".

You can't go back. This isn't just a political difference of opinion, this is a full blown violent cult. We need greater funding for mental health and deprogramming services.

We... don't? Have you not been watching American news for the last... 9 years? I don't speak with my family because me being trans is not fully accepted by them. I don't really want to associate with anyone who is okay with increasing trans suicides via politics. I moved from North Carolina to Oregon to be in a queer friendly state, and I don't regret it one bit. And I have an appointment to get my passport tomorrow... just in case. I don't know if this country can be fixed. People talk about getting along with our neighbors or meeting in the middle, but I don't know how to get along with people who wish I didn't exist.

Oh, that's easy; we don't! Every four years, the fabric of our society frays and tears a little more, while our politicians either exploit our divisions or attempt to repair them without making any changes to the material conditions or systemic problems that create these fractures, because fixing these underlying issues would upset the handful of billionaires that actually control our government! But there's a new Fast & Furious movie every two or three years, so it balances out.

I've ended my relationship with my father, and the one with my mom/step dad is on shaky ground, though they've just swapped their vote for Kamala (it took way too much convincing for that to happen though).

Here's the issue I have with these people, post the 2024 (and truthfully, even the 2020) election.

Reasons to vote for trump at this point in the game:

• They've seen what he's said and the kinds of actions he's made and his hate/violent rhetoric/attempted coup/felonies/treason with classified documents/overt Fascism/dictator comments/etc/etc/etc, just the fucking worst a US president, hell even a citizen, can do to abuse their power, position, and hurt their fellow Americans in the process; And they're for it. They support their brand of fascism. Because for some reason they agree with his message and think they're going to come out aces after the dust settles from WW3
• They're ignorant to literally every piece of media, news outlets, cable TV, print, tiktok, fucking Joe fucking Rogan shit, and they genuinely don't understand why voting for trump is bad.

In both of those cases, they are absolutely not to be trusted. I don't think there's too many people left in the second use case, but even so, every single one of his supporters is not to be trusted or respected ever again. They've shown their true side, and it's the worst humanity has to offer.

I didn't realize we had that many pieces of shit living here in America, but we do. So I refuse to associate with them ever again. I will not do business or have any interaction with them again, if I can help it.

They've isolated themselves. I will not fall victim to the paradox of intolerance. I refuse to tolerate Nazi's living in my country. And at this point, everyone who's voting for trump is a Nazi.

I don't give a shit if semantically that's not a PC statement. This is the truth. Downvoting will not change that fact. If you support trump today, you are a fascist that is most closely aligned with the Nazi ideals. I don't want to hear the excuses, or what someone is "really" supporting trump for. It's all noise and bullshit to hide the fact that they are deeply disgusting people all the way through who I do not want in my life, or in power making decisions that could affect me or the people I care about.

you don't. you believe them when they tell you who they are and remove them from your life.

how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?

...Why would I want to? Seriously, why would I want to have a relationship with people that have shown me that the things they value are antithetical to the things I value? I don't give a fuck if people are nice to me; I want people to be kind across the board.

There hasn't been any normal for 8 years plus now. Somewhere between 30 and 45% of the population are openly trying for fascism.

Realistically it's only a matter of when unless we make some pretty damned sweeping changes which they are going to fight tooth and nail.

We need to unrig the judicial system. We need to unrig the voting system. We need to put guardrails up on media disinformation. And we need to start holding some of these fucking politicians accountable for openly lying in campaign. We need to roll back the dictator privileges they managed to shove in at the last moment for the president. We need to hold some of these oligarchs accountable for crimes.

They should lock Musk up for a month. Go ahead and have him shit himself that he's not above the law.

I don't know who the next Republican president will be. But you can bet money there's going to be plenty of bloodshed once they decide to do whatever they want with complete and total immunity.

You uhh, you don't.

You don’t.

I haven’t talked to parts of my family the same way I used to. We don’t seek each other out anymore, though some people who do still have connections means we will still see each other for big events like thanksgiving or by happenstance.

Some of them probably think i’m an evil satan worshipping communist based on the last time we argued politics, which was either late 2015 or early to mid 2016, and I was your average slightly socialistic leftist who had just learned about Bernie’s policies for the first time.

With the genocide going on, i feel even more isolated, since I have some family who are harris voters who support israel, and aren’t exactly happy about how vocal I am about palestine. Christian liberal zionism hasn’t been something I could talk people out of.

Well, thats the thing. Once the mask is off it can't be put back on. My relations have cooled with the Trump supporters I know. At least they stopped putting signs out in the neighborhood.

Why go back to normal? Conservatives all over the world have revealed themselves to be 5th columns who will take any opportunity at power, even if it means working with foreign powers.

They seem to have a fundamental belief that God is on their side and no matter how bad things get He will protect them because only they are real people.

I cut them out. Don't remember where I heard the quote but there was one that goes something like "Our values are so different that any relationship we could have that doesn't fall to violence cannot be a genuine one." Essentially we care about things that are too different to be able to talk to each other honestly and get along.

you can't reason with unreasonable people. it's literally impossible to have a discussion with someone who dismisses everything they don't like to hear as "fake news"

as another person commented, it requires serious deprogramming to get rid of the cult brainwashing, and that is not a simple, quick, or easy process

to answer the question: you have to get to a point where you can burn those bridges and not look back, because toxic relationships destroy mental health

Sometimes you just don't talk about politics, to avoid fighting with in-laws. That has always been true, and it will always be true.

But I hope you don't "go back to normal", because hundreds of millions of Americans acting "normal" had the power to prevent this kind of scenario from occurring in the first place. Of course there's a ton of corruption, and shady corporations and billionaires (all of them) are major culprits in the badness, but also we the people have a lot of power to fix problems if we can get ourselves organized and motivated. So let's do that.

We don't. We are in a new era where only one of the major parties is committed to democracy. Until that changes, we will remain just one election from an authoritarian theocracy.

You don't. You accept the fact things are progressively getting worse and move on

Those people have proven themselves to not be worthy of a relationship. Those people should be shunned for being inhumane monsters, not welcomed back into society. They will not change. They hate me and the people I love. I, and I assume many others like me, will never forgive, and never forget. And they will not stop. Even if we win the election, we will not have beaten them. This will only escalate until we beat them back and crush their ideology.

You don't. It wasn't really normal before 2016 and normal left the building since.

Since 2016, its been a constant onslaught of idiots that live on the internet creeping out into the real world with their bullshit and conspiracy theories and half of America taking them seriously

You're looking at the new normal, at least for a while. Trump's 2016 election was a paradigm shift in politics around here. Sure, Republicans were generally grifting ultra-capitalist race-baiting snowflake hypocrites before, but trump really lifted the veil and showed them their true selves. No longer do the need to actually govern or occasionally throw some benefits to their base. All they need to do is keep the hate baiting rage machine running, and their supporters will look the other way as long as they can hate anyone else for any reason rather than just deal with the fact that people exist outside their comforting illusion of "normal".

You think next round is going to be any different? The next round of their presidential primaries are gonna be Desantis, Abbott, and MTG. They are going to keep using those same tactics, because fear and hate are easier for them to live with than hope and acceptance.

For me, I assume the Trump voters in my life have fallen for propaganda. Not every Trump voter realized that Trump isn’t in their interest; they’re simple people who think Trump is funny and down to earth and points out many of the serious problems we genuinely do have.

The issue, of course, is that he’s not going to help fix those problems. He’s going to make the country far worse and is obviously only in it for himself.

As many others have said, you don't. That may be part of the devisive-ness experienced here currently, but when one side is stating that the military should be used on dissenters, and the other side needs slaughtered, and they're talking about deporting detractors currently in govt, it's addition by subtraction. Should my side win, I don't expect any kind of persecution of people I don't agree with. Should the other side win, they are functionally demanding it.

"You won't have to vote anymore" is an insane statement from a democratic candidate. "We'll fix it so good, you won't have to vote". And people are on the fence. It's disgusting. Choose a fucking side and vote it.

You don't. Most of us have already either fully cut-off contact with Trump supporting family members or limit our interaction with them heavily. Our country is rotted to the core, and this election won't be the end of it. Even if Harris wins, there will be contestion of the results. There may even be a successful coup by the Republican party. A civil war is not out of the question.

There is no normal. There won't be ever again.

Had to cut out both my parents and sibling due to their homophobic remarks and my coming to terms with being gay. The politics just furthered the gap, and the last time I spoke with them in early 2023, "It's all about that woke generation" came out of my dad's mouth and that was the end. I don't expect to hear about their passing, and I'm not sure I'll care, despite them seemingly raising me to be a decent person. These are two humans who canvassed for Obama in '08 & '12, so it was sad to see them devolve.

Unless we get a blow-out for either candidate that cannot be challenged, which does not seem likely based on the polls and battle lines, even if we have a Biden-esque victory for Harris, I’m fairly unsure of what will happen next. I personally doubt full on Civil War like in the Garland movie, or the actual civil war, but I would expect all kinds of shitty legal tricks, possible Supreme Court involvement and of course, stochastic and targeted violence, particularly towards immigrants and minorities. In other words, win or lose, I think the US may be in for a bad time. Hopefully I’m working in my assumptions here and it is somewhat more boring.

To better answer your question though, assuming things don’t completely fall apart: the two sides already don’t mix much, which is part of the problem in the first place. We’ll get more govt inaction due to gridlocked congress, probably more defense spending and some states, in the absence of federal legislating, will continue to take a larger role as they have been doing already in the recent era.

So basically more of the same, on a not-great trend line. Something has to give at some point, it’s hard to imagine how you could put the genie back in the bottle now, particularly with overall conditions in the world due to late-stage capitalism and climate change constricting each year.