This is such a mental slog. Bits from a conversation I had today with my daughter and my wife
I don't think any of us like to "hate". That's not what liberals, not what Democrats are typically like, right? We are the ones who see the world as one, all needing to work together. We try to see the best in people. We try to be optimists, inclusive, work to make things better.
My daughter and I are struggling with the same thing - how to look at those on the right - yes, the trumpers - as not unidimensional, all of their attributes hijacked by their support of trump. My wife is in a quilt group, has been for years - she knows that the majority of them are conservative (in some cases it is about taxes - money - and in some cases religion - as in one issue, as in the abortion issue). They have a basis of years of friendship - they leave the politics largely at the door as they share their quilting projects, and talk about their families and their lives.
I guess I am more of a hard ass - I am pretty big on values. I look at trump (well, sorry - I can't look at trump, or listen to him, or even thing about him - but you know what I mean) and I see a total lack of any morals whatsoever - I see blatant hypocrisy, I see the avalanche of lies, I see the misuse of religion (I am sure he doesn't have a religious bone in his body), I see all of his -isms. He doesn't hide them - he flaunts them.
To me there are absolute lines - there is no other side to racism. There is no other side for women having control of their bodies. There is no other side to any individual's sexual orientation and their absolute right to be what they are without shunning, ridicule, differential treatment. The media loves to play the "both sides do it" - that's fine for differing fiscal theories, but it is not fine for life matters.
So my daughter and I are working through our current inability to consider trump supporters and want anything to do with them - to be able to ponder that the person may have fine attributes yet support that monster. The two seem diametrically opposed. My wife is softer than I am, probably because of the long friendships with her quilt friends.
My daughter is struggling with this just as I am - she is in a very conservative area of Washington, and the things she hears from some of the parents of her two boys' friends she finds incredibly ignorant and/or offensive.
I suspect many of us are struggling with this - does support of trump essentially mark the person as not worth dealing with (goodness knows, their cultish behavior leads to a complete inability to change their minds). They despise us, too, of course - "owning the libs" has become their favorite sport - they are often voting completely against their own interests to support someone who has nothing but utter contempt for them - but - they get the joy of "owning the libs".
I truly think Biden will win this election and that we are likely to take the senate and grow our lead in the house. But....the cult will still be out there, the polarization will not go away just like that - it may even be worse, and may end up being dangerous.
Anyone else having these philosophical tussles with themselves? Not wanting to hate, but not finding the ability to tolerate anyone who clearly shares the values of the orange asshole?
thanks for listening. Clearly nearly 4 years of this has been more than quite enough.
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I struggle terribly with this because I have an 89-year-old mother and a sister whom I love; yet, both will be voting for Trump again this year and feel no embarrassment about it.
My other sister and I, as well as her two children and my two children, are Democrats and will definitely vote for Biden.
We especially can’t understand how our mother and sister can possibly vote for Trump as my sister just attended her child’s same-sex wedding within the past couple of months. How can she vote for that horrible man who has no compassion at all for the LGBT community? How can they vote for Trump when he promises to gut Medicare? My mother’s only income is her social security check.
We know that they are voting for Trump for one reason: abortion.
They attend the same hyper-conservative church and believe that God will judge them harshly if they do not oppose abortion.
I just have no way to understand this type of thinking. Trump is an evil, cruel menace who absolutely cares nothing whatsoever about retired older people like my mother or about hardworking middle-class people like my sister. My mother has three daughters, as does my sister. How can either of them support this misogynistic, disgusting, filthy-minded excuse for a human being?
I love my mother and sister, but I HATE what they are doing. I hate what they believe. I hate their close-mindedness. I hate their black-and-white thinking. I hate their unwillingness to examine facts.
Sigh.....I hate being in this position. It has worn me out.
I thank you for sharing this with us. It helps me to know that I’m not alone.
Absolutely, marble falls!
Thank you for this reminder. I appreciate that you shared this. You are so right. People can change. And people often do change.
We will someday be rid of Trump. He won’t be around forever. I can hardly wait for such a time.
We share a FB family group, and are scattered all over but we grew up in a very close large family.
I felt compelled to point out that systemic racism and bigotry must be interrupted in a family; America has had enough of it.
I wrote how our grandmother's letters from 1920 to 1940 contain bigoted slurs toward Irish people and Jewish people in her New England location, and that my mother was also bigoted against certain people (she hated "hippies with dirty feet"
and that we need to reject that in our past.
I said that I am a Democrat in the way one of our uncles was a Democrat -- unabashed and unashamed. He would simmer, and then blow his stack at the Republicanism of the family (not today's toxicity, but Eisenhower Republicanism). I said that I am likely to blow my stack about things like police brutality, that's the way it is.
Well, since then my sister has stopped speaking to me. (She is bigoted, by the way, against everyone not WASP and always has been) She had been calling me several times a week to complain about her husband and life; I don't have to hear that any more.
Some people are offended. Some are supportive. Most are FOX brainwashed.
I feel like I said what needed to be said about the perpetuation of bigotry and hate in generations of family. I asked this: "How do we want to be remembered by our children? As hateful bigoted people?"
I thought it was more important to engage on that than to engage on Trump. I do that on my own FB feed. Nobody has any misunderstanding about how I feel about him. 