He’s a father of a 28-year-old son and he’s hurting. A retired police officer, he proudly voted for Donald Trump every time he ran and never hid his political beliefs from his family. “My son and his wife say that since I’m a fan of Trump they’re no fan of mine and cut me off,” he said. “Now I can’t see my only grandchild who I was so close to. It’s crazy and it’s tragic.”
It’s also increasingly common. The 2024 election spatchcocked the nation, widening a rift that was exposed in 2016 and put in an even sharper gulf four years later. Now, the hyper-partisan politics in the shadow of the 2024 election is breaking the bonds of families to a greater extent than ever before.
What are the odds this guy wept for the CEO and wants to see the suspect executed?
Probably low. Hatred of health insurance is bipartisan. He probably thinks that Trump is more populist than democrats (which is wrong) and that he’s more likely to rein them in (also wrong. They’re tied with democrats and a snowballs chance in hell)
Even Ben Shapiro is getting raked over the coals for sympathizing.
This suggests we may need to put in extra effort to take responsibility for our role in conflicts, show greater empathy for others’ values and perspectives
Hah! That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve said to my (right wing) relatives on a number of occasions but it doesn’t work. Does the author not realize that this perspective is very liberal?
Liberals and progressives are the folks with empathy that can’t fathom how anyone could vote for Donald Trump; a well-known grifter, actual criminal, tax cheat, and total scumbag who cheated on all of his wives.
I have a ton of empathy yet I still don’t understand conservatives. The only thing that makes sense to me is that they’re authoritarian and their chosen authority tells them to hate certain people, that any given thing is a conspiracy, and that no government-run program is ever a good thing. But to tell them that to their faces is like telling them that they’re stupid and suckers. To them it’s incredibly insulting.
Yet when you try to figure out how they (someone who lives off Social Security) came to believe that, “Mexicans are stealing our jobs” it’s the only thing that makes sense. They really are suckers. They may have been “smart” at some point in their life but not anymore. They choose how to vote based on anger at imaginary enemies and fake news.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
They want Order. Specifically, an Order where everyone is put on the Proper Rung of Society and Keeps to Their Place. And of course their Place is above X (insert minority group here) because they are Special because of Y (insert ridiculous circular reasoning—usually racist—here).
These people literally believe that if Society becomes Unordered, it will collapse. And of course the only ones who can maintain that Order are the Great and Glorious White Men. The proof is that all the richest, most powerful people are White Men! (Any rich, powerful person who isn’t White and Male obviously got there through DEI action or cheating somehow.)
Innuendo Studios has a pretty good video on this in his Alt-Right Playbook series.
Yes, and my favorite example of metaphorically watching the same movie, but seeing a different story is the phrase, “law and order.” Plenty of us see the word Order and think of civil order, of happy communities of people going about their business without danger or conflict. The right and alt-right hear Order as social hierarchy. Black Lives Matter is a threat to Order just by existing, as Black people trying to move up to a higher rung on the social ladder than they belong on.
Similarly, we hear Law as rules that everybody follows to ensure peaceful coexistence (order). They hear Law as in “the law,” as in the exercise of power by authorities, either to maintain the hierarchy (the old right) or just 'cuz it’s fun to hurt people (the alt-right).
Don’t try to equate liberals to understanding the empathy of progressives. Liberals are supporting a genocide as we speak. They’re rightwingers who believe themselves to be on the left. They are not.
Liberal and Left are literally synonyms. The distinctions you want would be left/far-left or liberal/radical.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/leftright/
[In politics, the word left is applied to people and groups that have liberal views.]
supporting a genocide
You use “genocide” so many times that you are causing me to yawn every time I read that. You don’t have the slightest clue on the actual things that would be required to fix Gaza. “Letting Trump win” is absolutely nowhere on that list.
Nope. “Liberal” is a right-wing ideology. And I completely believe you yawn at genocide.
Calling the bigotry and violence of fascist rhetoric “political beliefs” is lying by construction.
If you want to be friends then why aren’t you friendly?
They’re a bloodless thing, politics, abstract, almost administrative sometimes. Making decisions about who you associate with based on political views is apparently like getting into a screaming fight over an improper stapling methodology on one’s TPS reports, or ending a friendship over pizza toppings. And at other times, political views are sacrosanct, holy, the most special and personal part of a person’s belief structure, something that a decent person would be no more likely to critique, much less reject, than they would be likely to tell a new mother that her baby is ugly.
I have noticed that whether political views are trivial or sacred seems to depend on the point the professional mourner of crumbling civility is trying to make in the moment, in order to bolster civility. They are usually trivial when we are meant to make friends despite them. They are usually sacrosanct when we try to point out what they are.
But some of us have noticed that politics are neither of these things, have noticed that politics are where power is arranged and distributed, and have been listening not to the civility mourners or the supremacists they defend, but rather to the many people who are directly harmed by harmful policies driven by harmful political views, who have no luxury to believe in false separations. They know that politics are, in fact, a matter of spiritual alignment, and that spirit is not something to do with ghosts, but with the blood and guts of how collective belief touches their lives.
This reminds me of https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html
At least the reason for estrangement is clearly not missing in the situation(s) being discussed.
Spatchcocked?
Removed by mod
Gobsmacked, even.
Removed our spines and flattened us to allow for more even cooking. If you remember when those dudes in black suits came around and did that to everyone, that’s what this is referring to.
Like a chicken. Where you split the breast so it can lay flat. To illustrate the deepening divide.
Gullibility and ignorant malice are an epidemic. Hate and stupidity are an epidemic. Estrangement is self-preservation and a symptom. We aren’t boomers, we don’t stay in abusive relationships because “that be how the world be”.
Well said.
Like so many problems in modern America, you can trace it back to Reagan.
Back in the day, it was important for politicians to try and maintain a civil tone with one another in public, no matter how much they despised each other behind the scenes. Reagan publicly used ‘Liberal’ as a pejorative and implied that those who disagreed with him weren’t really patriotic.
These days, it’s more like they’re literally buddies behind the scenes while expressing partisan vitriol in public for show. It’s fucking gross.
I just want to point out that McCarthyism existed before Reaganism. But he was a big fucking fan of it.
And the Federalists and Democratic Republicans were wildly confrontational.
Calendar on Adams in 1800…
“Ye will judge without regard to the prattle of a president, the prattle of that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, of deceit and weakness; without regard to that hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
That’s just one example of many quotes from that time. There was some wildly vitriolic mud slinging in early American politics.
You stop at “mud slinging”? Mofuggas brought guns to a fistfight on congressional/senatorial floors. “Mud” ain’t the half of it, and anyone who’s not familiar with this history is gonna be doubly surprised when these psychos today cosplay as their favorite fictional version of said founders. 😶🌫️
Nah, the absolute god king and bastard father of ratbag politics is richard fucking nixon
How Assholes Have Become an Epidemic in America
I have broken all contact with my mother and her Trump loving husband. Best decision I’ve made in a long time. I personally don’t want them influencing my children with their frankly crappy attitudes and shitty politics.
It’s crazy and it’s tragic.
take a drink every time a narc parent uses the words ‘weird’ or ‘crazy’ to describe being treated like the horrible person that they are.
I’m having a hard time relinking narc to mean narcissist and not narcotics in my mind. 😔
“Choosing bonds of identity over familial obligations” has judgemental connotations.
The thing about “bonds of identity” is that those people respect your right to exist and your personal agency. The family that deserves to be cut off does not.
If you’ve had it explained to you multiple times why the decisions you make are harming the people you claim to love, and you don’t change your behavior, don’t be surprised when that person you say you care about tells you to piss up a rope.
And for some of us we’ve built a culture around it because family has historically failed us as a community
Yes, the grandfather is hurting and is clearly the victim. It cannot be due to his own choices and his children calling him out for being a shit person.
ACAB
This thing reads reads like the the person in the middle of the disagreement trying to broker peace.
When asked to reflect on how their actions and choices have lead to their families cutting them out, they responded “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”
Womp fucking womp
