Exactly I stopped speaking to my oldest daughter after she sent $ to the attempted insurrection. My family is aghast. It’s the least I can do. They’re in an altered reality.
Don’t worry bringing unwanted life into the world is becoming a thing of the past because women are almost unfuckable. Their repugnant views on almost everything are turning men off in droves
It's true, Stephen. I've had to cut out so many family members and friends over this crap. I used to be very open minded and had no problem being friends with conservatives but now just thinking about that makes me shudder... How close I might have come to getting hurt without even knowing it. I'm opinionated and not afraid to share it, and I just never considered that the other person's brain might be full of the type of poison that could endanger me. Until the 2016 election, that is.
The sellout by the Evangelicals’ power-hungry grifters has had a profound effect on this divide, in my humble opinion. They are “creating devils to make themselves appear to be saints. These huge megachurches have become like crime syndicates stealing money from people who are not well educated to finance lives of luxury. Separation of Church and State is now just a myth!
I once nce remarked that "we're the bad guys because we want you to have health care and a living wage?" The reply was, "that's not what you want. I KNOW what you're really up to!" 🤷♀️
That’s what makes no fucking sense to me. I mean sure, perhaps you could accuse Democrats and liberals of being naïve or high in the sky dreamers. Neither of which I would agree with, but I could at least understand the rationale behind some right winger making that argument. But the idea that we are murderous conniving and evil just makes no sense. Pick a fucking lane for Christ sake. Once again right wing projection reveals itself to be an uncanny predictor of the right wing mind.
It's just like the immigrant myths: simultaneously irredeemably lazy and shiftless and also dead set on taking every job that would otherwise go to a good god fearing white conservative.
Exactly. I'm sick and tired of being treated like a bad person for doing the right thing and helping others. It's just rightwing gaslighting. KGB Playbook.
It’s totally gaslighting. Good call. It bears mentioning that these are the same people that vilify the notion of the social justice warrior, or the community activist. How the fuck can anyone frame those as ‘bad things’? Oh, and also ‘left-wing agenda’ . This notion that everyone doesn’t have an agenda. Hell, even on a boring day my agenda is to get up and make a cup of coffee and some breakfast and at least get out to take a walk around the block. how do you turn “agenda” quote into a dirty word? It’s infuriating…
It's pure weaponization of completely innocuous words like "Woke" and "Abortion" to confuse and rile up their less contemplative base. Easy pickin's. They don't think things through so much😆
It seems to me that there are places in this country where those in power have turned political parties into teams so hard that there are people afraid to BE Democrats. And I suppose I can believe that those people live with much more fear than I do when I vote or go about my everyday life disagreeing with others, in a state where there are more liberals than conservatives. But I’ve lost my ability to be kind to them. I’ve lost my interest in having any parties where some dipshit decides to tell me how Democrats like me are or flaunts racism.
The thing is, we used to disagree on political issues, and we could discuss that. Like, we could talk about how we felt about abortion, and no one yelled that Dems were killing babeezzzz despite being a giant Catholic family. We could talk about how we thought the economy should work, and unions, with disagreement but not vicious rhetoric. We could talk about the hurdles facing people of color in our community, or how we felt about how best to help refugees, or how immigration ought to work, or whether women with children ought to work. Every issue of the day, we could talk about relatively politely, even when we disagreed. Grandma (D) and Grandpa (R) both believed in the basic humanity of people everywhere, though. We assumed the purpose of the discussion was to make things better for everyone, including people not like us, even as “us” became a more multi-racial, multi-religion, multi-sexuality group.
That’s all gone. There is no way to argue politely anymore, not because the liberals won’t make an attempt to explain their thinking and consider a conservative’s viewpoint, but because the conservatives just spout talking points they cannot defend and cite “facts” that are lies. They may blame the pandemic for killing off 90 years of extended family Christmas, but it’s not that we had to Zoom for a few years, it’s that they stopped believing in the basic rights and humanity of people not like them, and now we don’t want to see them. It’s heartbreaking but I’m not going to tell my trans cousin that I’m partying with the cousin-once-removed who is trying to legislate them into the closet. I’m not expecting my white cousin whose wife is black to tolerate the cousin’s kid who believes in white replacement theory.
I don’t know how we fix this but I sure wish I didn’t have so many white friends whose opinion is “what can you do? Family!” BS. Speak up.
I've lost the majority of family and friends over this. I live in a very Red area, and I've seen it devolve right in front of me even though it was barely even evolved before. There is no reasoning with people who have given up on reason altogether. We will have to find ways to make new family units other than the family of our origins. That's all we can do, even though it's a sad proposition, it beats acquiescence to fascist ideology.
“ Every issue of the day, we could talk about relatively politely, even when we disagreed.”
Which only works as long as their right wing ‘wish lists’ aren’t being written into law every day.
For example , before the Dobbs decision, those kinds of arguments remained in some kind of theoretical space because not too long ago, as much as right wingers were opposed to abortion, women still had access to it. But now that women are literally dying from that decision, those discussions take on a much darker dimension. They are no longer happening in some theoretical space. And therefore their arguments become indefensible in a way that they weren’t before.
There can be no unity with the Godless Democrats. They devalue human life with unfettered abortion and devalue America with open borders. Also the incessant calling us racist isn’t an argument it shows your ignorance!
Fuck off Phillip. Republicans are so hot to force people to bring more life into the world only to turn around and look the other way when those lives are miserable and inadequate due to their policies. They want zombie workers and cannon fodder and whatever those precious fetuses get up to in the years in between their usefulness is of no concern.
And ‘Godless’ republicans devalue human life by gutting education, banning books, cutting food security for LITERAL CHILDREN, and voting for politicians that separate children from their parents and write laws to bring back LITERAL child labor…
Your point? You got NOTHIN ‘ Hoss and you know it.
Once a kid is old enough to know their own name, have friends, a family who knows their little peccadillos, and a personality and opinions on broccoli, they’re on their own AMIRIGHT!!!!
Absolutely agree. It's all about turnout the bases now. MAGA has consumed that whole environment because they want the ethnic cleansing. They blame minorities for anything that's wrong in their lives, and the well-heeled, petit bourgeoisie among them love ruining their own careers for benefit of President Klan Robe.
I've reached out to talk to friends like this sometimes, who got consumed by MAGA and like Barney Frank once said, "it's like talking to a table." The dopamine hit of bigotry is too strong and sometimes you just have to let go. It's sad seeing people get consumed by this death cult but in the end it's what they want. And what they want isn't you.
Because of how America is organized these people have disproportionate power (and a lot of media help) but it's not insurmountable.
My solution is to donate to United Rural Democrats (https://www.unitedruraldemocrats.org/). They can talk to these mad hatters in a way that I can’t because I just get too pissed off.
You make such a salient point here I've never heard before.
"The Civil War was often described as pitting “brother vs. brother,” which erases all the enslaved Black people who would live or die in bondage depending on the outcome. If white slave-owning brother prevailed over white non-slave-owning brother, both would remain free and fully human in the eyes of the law. That was never really on the table when the Southern states seceded.
There’s a rising fascist movement in America, one utterly hostile to democracy and to the rights of the marginalized groups. So, I’m wary if not outright demoralized when a supposed ally talks about their MAGA loved ones, who obviously means more to them than my Black ass."
But not all MAGA followers are from small, closed off towns with no local newspapers and Fox on 24-7. They can be found in purple suburbs, major cities just like everyone else.
Reach out. Sure. You can try. But the job here is to literally combat three generations of propaganda that government is terrible, minorities want handouts, the US should step away from the world stage, scientists, experts and academics are pointy headed betas who don’t really know “real America.”
You now have younger generations whose models for national politicians and news makers are the likes of Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlsen and MTG. How is reaching out to people who learned from them going to work out?
This is huge and it’s not going to go away after one or two election cycles.
You're a wonderful writer and communicator. We come from similar backgrounds, I grew up in a very red district outside Chicago, DuPage County. To this day, several family members and friends are staunch MAGAs and I'm heartbroken about it. Of six kids and two parents, I was the only one to finish high school and put myself through college. Even then, I was still Republican and voted for Reagan an 18. It wasn't until I moved to Paris with my degree in French that I even learned what "Left" and "Right" really meant. We grew up believing in pulling ourselves up by bootstraps, meanwhile parents refusing public assistance out of pride. I thought we were the goodhearted ones. That's how confused I was.
I turned into a furious Democrat feeling I'd been betrayed by the GOP lies and indoctrination. I'm fortunate that several of my family members who were middle of the road have been influenced by my stance, and have come around to voting Democrat.
What gets me is how the MAGA family members and friends are so outraged being called racist. As you point out, they know not what they do. But at some point, ignorance cannot be excused. Although we remain close, we are worlds apart politically. Many arguments but no getting through to them.
Thank God Democrats have been strong in the resistance. I do whatever I can to make a difference.
Thank you for the comment and for believing in unity. However, I do not share your view there. Our country is living proof that we can exist divided, just off balance. I have zero tolerance for Republicans. ZERO. We shall right this ship. But many of them will be lost overboard.
Same! My district was so white, an Indian immigrant family moved in and the daughter was our age and I thought she was so beautiful. Then finally in high school a black family moved in and that was a first. In college, I dated a guy named Stirling Levine (still a good friend) and I didn't even know what Jewish was until someone mentioned it.
It’s a nice idea, but only ONE side is keeping us from realizing it. In fact, I’d argue that the endless left wing tolerance of this crap is part of why we are in the stew we’re in. It’s the ONE thing I’m willing to blame liberals for. Tolerating TOO much for TOO long. Just because Democrats aren’t good at being cops doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be cops. We want people to get along and do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. It comes so naturally to us that we simply can’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t want to do the same.
"But I also think liberals have not been paying attention and have been letting themselves get distracted."
Could you elaborate on that?
To me it seems that the INLY people doing ANYTHING about anything ARE liberals and democrats. RW republicans are literally obstacles to those goals. Do you think we should be removing these obstacles more forcefully ( not violently just more 'forcefully')? Because I agree with that wholeheartedly
Certainly we could do MORE and do it BETTER (no argument from me on that)
“ They are all different and many are appalled by the violence and insanity of current gop rhetoric.”
I get ya, but it remains that party affiliation is voluntary…so there’s that. I have several family members who are Republicans as well. I love them because I grew up with them and they are family, but I have absolutely zero respect for them. It’s a difficult row to hoe and conundrum to parse but their continued affiliation with that party has changed our relationships dramatically. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Good Republicans have had several opportunities to defuse the threat Trump poses and most have refused. Trump is set to win the nomination in a landslide.
And there it is. If I don’t make excuses for the few Republican family members that I have, I’m sure as fuck not going to make excuses for any other Republicans. They chose which side of the line in the sand they stand on, and it has changed our relationships forever. And that’s on them. I will not become an indecent half/ hateful human being to meet them in some theoretical middle.
I understand where you are coming from, but every situation has to be assessed with the peccadillos of each situation to be considered. Some people have family members far too gone to pull back. Some people just don’t have the fucking time, and my sympathies are 100% with them. It’s not my job to hold the hand of a fucking insolent petulant adult who I’ve known all my life and should fucking know better. More and more people are running out of patience with these fucking spoilers. So I like to take this bit of wisdom to heart
Never wrestle with a pig. You will both get dirty and the pig likes it.
I don’t think you’re wrong in that some GOP are indeed fearful but people need to step up to the plate and take some kind of action. Hiding under the bed isn’t an option.
In the cases of many GOP, it certainly is, but I think some are just deathly afraid of change and cling to whatever outdated ideas they have.
I’m not giving them a pass and I will certainly argue the point. Others I blow off because they have zero to say, except insults and they’re just fucking stupid.
Funny how only one side is willing, capable, and most frustratingly EXPECTED to ‘reach out’… over and over and over again, only to get kicked in the face over and over and over again. There is only one side that is keeping communication and resolution from happening. This is not a both sides do it problem. In the same way that racism isn’t a Black people problem, this isn’t a liberal problem. It’s not ours to solve. It’s not something that we couldn’t fix even if we wanted to. Maybe we can on a case by case personal level, but systemically it is insurmountable for now
Exactly I stopped speaking to my oldest daughter after she sent $ to the attempted insurrection. My family is aghast. It’s the least I can do. They’re in an altered reality.
Don’t worry bringing unwanted life into the world is becoming a thing of the past because women are almost unfuckable. Their repugnant views on almost everything are turning men off in droves
I have a t-shirt that says, "Let Zygons be Zygons"
One of these days we need to have a beer over some serious Doctor Who discussion.
It's true, Stephen. I've had to cut out so many family members and friends over this crap. I used to be very open minded and had no problem being friends with conservatives but now just thinking about that makes me shudder... How close I might have come to getting hurt without even knowing it. I'm opinionated and not afraid to share it, and I just never considered that the other person's brain might be full of the type of poison that could endanger me. Until the 2016 election, that is.
The sellout by the Evangelicals’ power-hungry grifters has had a profound effect on this divide, in my humble opinion. They are “creating devils to make themselves appear to be saints. These huge megachurches have become like crime syndicates stealing money from people who are not well educated to finance lives of luxury. Separation of Church and State is now just a myth!
I once nce remarked that "we're the bad guys because we want you to have health care and a living wage?" The reply was, "that's not what you want. I KNOW what you're really up to!" 🤷♀️
Exactly Leslie. I'm sick of being made out as the bad guy for fighting for people.
Seems pretty nefarious if you ask me...
Right?!
That’s what makes no fucking sense to me. I mean sure, perhaps you could accuse Democrats and liberals of being naïve or high in the sky dreamers. Neither of which I would agree with, but I could at least understand the rationale behind some right winger making that argument. But the idea that we are murderous conniving and evil just makes no sense. Pick a fucking lane for Christ sake. Once again right wing projection reveals itself to be an uncanny predictor of the right wing mind.
It's just like the immigrant myths: simultaneously irredeemably lazy and shiftless and also dead set on taking every job that would otherwise go to a good god fearing white conservative.
Excellent point 👍
Exactly. I'm sick and tired of being treated like a bad person for doing the right thing and helping others. It's just rightwing gaslighting. KGB Playbook.
Fascism makes up into down and makes the concepts of right and wrong incredibly situational.
It’s totally gaslighting. Good call. It bears mentioning that these are the same people that vilify the notion of the social justice warrior, or the community activist. How the fuck can anyone frame those as ‘bad things’? Oh, and also ‘left-wing agenda’ . This notion that everyone doesn’t have an agenda. Hell, even on a boring day my agenda is to get up and make a cup of coffee and some breakfast and at least get out to take a walk around the block. how do you turn “agenda” quote into a dirty word? It’s infuriating…
It's pure weaponization of completely innocuous words like "Woke" and "Abortion" to confuse and rile up their less contemplative base. Easy pickin's. They don't think things through so much😆
It seems to me that there are places in this country where those in power have turned political parties into teams so hard that there are people afraid to BE Democrats. And I suppose I can believe that those people live with much more fear than I do when I vote or go about my everyday life disagreeing with others, in a state where there are more liberals than conservatives. But I’ve lost my ability to be kind to them. I’ve lost my interest in having any parties where some dipshit decides to tell me how Democrats like me are or flaunts racism.
The thing is, we used to disagree on political issues, and we could discuss that. Like, we could talk about how we felt about abortion, and no one yelled that Dems were killing babeezzzz despite being a giant Catholic family. We could talk about how we thought the economy should work, and unions, with disagreement but not vicious rhetoric. We could talk about the hurdles facing people of color in our community, or how we felt about how best to help refugees, or how immigration ought to work, or whether women with children ought to work. Every issue of the day, we could talk about relatively politely, even when we disagreed. Grandma (D) and Grandpa (R) both believed in the basic humanity of people everywhere, though. We assumed the purpose of the discussion was to make things better for everyone, including people not like us, even as “us” became a more multi-racial, multi-religion, multi-sexuality group.
That’s all gone. There is no way to argue politely anymore, not because the liberals won’t make an attempt to explain their thinking and consider a conservative’s viewpoint, but because the conservatives just spout talking points they cannot defend and cite “facts” that are lies. They may blame the pandemic for killing off 90 years of extended family Christmas, but it’s not that we had to Zoom for a few years, it’s that they stopped believing in the basic rights and humanity of people not like them, and now we don’t want to see them. It’s heartbreaking but I’m not going to tell my trans cousin that I’m partying with the cousin-once-removed who is trying to legislate them into the closet. I’m not expecting my white cousin whose wife is black to tolerate the cousin’s kid who believes in white replacement theory.
I don’t know how we fix this but I sure wish I didn’t have so many white friends whose opinion is “what can you do? Family!” BS. Speak up.
I've lost the majority of family and friends over this. I live in a very Red area, and I've seen it devolve right in front of me even though it was barely even evolved before. There is no reasoning with people who have given up on reason altogether. We will have to find ways to make new family units other than the family of our origins. That's all we can do, even though it's a sad proposition, it beats acquiescence to fascist ideology.
“ Every issue of the day, we could talk about relatively politely, even when we disagreed.”
Which only works as long as their right wing ‘wish lists’ aren’t being written into law every day.
For example , before the Dobbs decision, those kinds of arguments remained in some kind of theoretical space because not too long ago, as much as right wingers were opposed to abortion, women still had access to it. But now that women are literally dying from that decision, those discussions take on a much darker dimension. They are no longer happening in some theoretical space. And therefore their arguments become indefensible in a way that they weren’t before.
They need to be asked directly Do you believe that Black Americans should be enslaved again? Will you reverse the Emancipation Proclamation?
Don’t be ridiculous of course we don’t.
Who are ‘we’ exactly?
SOME ‘we’ are Nikki Haley and you can’t have missed her racism denial speech and subsequent doubledowns
I’d read about her comments, which were bad enough, but I recently saw the video and it’s even worse hearing her say those things. Cringe
It is a study in internalized self loathing coupled with naked ambition and it is ugly.
There can be no unity with the Godless Democrats. They devalue human life with unfettered abortion and devalue America with open borders. Also the incessant calling us racist isn’t an argument it shows your ignorance!
Fuck off Phillip. Republicans are so hot to force people to bring more life into the world only to turn around and look the other way when those lives are miserable and inadequate due to their policies. They want zombie workers and cannon fodder and whatever those precious fetuses get up to in the years in between their usefulness is of no concern.
And ‘Godless’ republicans devalue human life by gutting education, banning books, cutting food security for LITERAL CHILDREN, and voting for politicians that separate children from their parents and write laws to bring back LITERAL child labor…
Your point? You got NOTHIN ‘ Hoss and you know it.
Once a kid is old enough to know their own name, have friends, a family who knows their little peccadillos, and a personality and opinions on broccoli, they’re on their own AMIRIGHT!!!!
I agree. We cannot change the minds of racist, anti-LGBTQ MAGAs. Cruelty and intolerance is the appeal of the GOP. Anything to feel superior to us.
Therefore, I'm here only to say: Peter Capaldi's Doctor is the best!
Capaldi really was magnificent as the Doctor, wasn't he? Especially in scenes like the one above.
Capaldi had the best scripts of the modern Doctors, which gave him the opportunity for such passionate delivery!
Nice you have memorized all of the talking points. No evidence offered just the usual BS..
It's good to know who to block. ByeBye Philip.
The funniest part about Philip is that only paying subscribers can comment on this substack.
Oh shit, wow. Lol
Absolutely agree. It's all about turnout the bases now. MAGA has consumed that whole environment because they want the ethnic cleansing. They blame minorities for anything that's wrong in their lives, and the well-heeled, petit bourgeoisie among them love ruining their own careers for benefit of President Klan Robe.
I've reached out to talk to friends like this sometimes, who got consumed by MAGA and like Barney Frank once said, "it's like talking to a table." The dopamine hit of bigotry is too strong and sometimes you just have to let go. It's sad seeing people get consumed by this death cult but in the end it's what they want. And what they want isn't you.
Because of how America is organized these people have disproportionate power (and a lot of media help) but it's not insurmountable.
I couldn't understand why my non-white stepson was a trumper but it's also about male dominance. 💔
Because he was intelligent
My solution is to donate to United Rural Democrats (https://www.unitedruraldemocrats.org/). They can talk to these mad hatters in a way that I can’t because I just get too pissed off.
I don’t want to believe what you’ve written because it scares me. Unfortunately, I think you are correct.
You make such a salient point here I've never heard before.
"The Civil War was often described as pitting “brother vs. brother,” which erases all the enslaved Black people who would live or die in bondage depending on the outcome. If white slave-owning brother prevailed over white non-slave-owning brother, both would remain free and fully human in the eyes of the law. That was never really on the table when the Southern states seceded.
There’s a rising fascist movement in America, one utterly hostile to democracy and to the rights of the marginalized groups. So, I’m wary if not outright demoralized when a supposed ally talks about their MAGA loved ones, who obviously means more to them than my Black ass."
But not all MAGA followers are from small, closed off towns with no local newspapers and Fox on 24-7. They can be found in purple suburbs, major cities just like everyone else.
Reach out. Sure. You can try. But the job here is to literally combat three generations of propaganda that government is terrible, minorities want handouts, the US should step away from the world stage, scientists, experts and academics are pointy headed betas who don’t really know “real America.”
You now have younger generations whose models for national politicians and news makers are the likes of Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlsen and MTG. How is reaching out to people who learned from them going to work out?
This is huge and it’s not going to go away after one or two election cycles.
You're a wonderful writer and communicator. We come from similar backgrounds, I grew up in a very red district outside Chicago, DuPage County. To this day, several family members and friends are staunch MAGAs and I'm heartbroken about it. Of six kids and two parents, I was the only one to finish high school and put myself through college. Even then, I was still Republican and voted for Reagan an 18. It wasn't until I moved to Paris with my degree in French that I even learned what "Left" and "Right" really meant. We grew up believing in pulling ourselves up by bootstraps, meanwhile parents refusing public assistance out of pride. I thought we were the goodhearted ones. That's how confused I was.
I turned into a furious Democrat feeling I'd been betrayed by the GOP lies and indoctrination. I'm fortunate that several of my family members who were middle of the road have been influenced by my stance, and have come around to voting Democrat.
What gets me is how the MAGA family members and friends are so outraged being called racist. As you point out, they know not what they do. But at some point, ignorance cannot be excused. Although we remain close, we are worlds apart politically. Many arguments but no getting through to them.
Thank God Democrats have been strong in the resistance. I do whatever I can to make a difference.
Thank you for the comment and for believing in unity. However, I do not share your view there. Our country is living proof that we can exist divided, just off balance. I have zero tolerance for Republicans. ZERO. We shall right this ship. But many of them will be lost overboard.
I grew up in small towns and finally experienced "diversity" when I joined the military... like meeting people from New York.😉💕
Same! My district was so white, an Indian immigrant family moved in and the daughter was our age and I thought she was so beautiful. Then finally in high school a black family moved in and that was a first. In college, I dated a guy named Stirling Levine (still a good friend) and I didn't even know what Jewish was until someone mentioned it.
👭
👯♀️
It’s a nice idea, but only ONE side is keeping us from realizing it. In fact, I’d argue that the endless left wing tolerance of this crap is part of why we are in the stew we’re in. It’s the ONE thing I’m willing to blame liberals for. Tolerating TOO much for TOO long. Just because Democrats aren’t good at being cops doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be cops. We want people to get along and do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. It comes so naturally to us that we simply can’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t want to do the same.
"But I also think liberals have not been paying attention and have been letting themselves get distracted."
Could you elaborate on that?
To me it seems that the INLY people doing ANYTHING about anything ARE liberals and democrats. RW republicans are literally obstacles to those goals. Do you think we should be removing these obstacles more forcefully ( not violently just more 'forcefully')? Because I agree with that wholeheartedly
Certainly we could do MORE and do it BETTER (no argument from me on that)
“ They are all different and many are appalled by the violence and insanity of current gop rhetoric.”
I get ya, but it remains that party affiliation is voluntary…so there’s that. I have several family members who are Republicans as well. I love them because I grew up with them and they are family, but I have absolutely zero respect for them. It’s a difficult row to hoe and conundrum to parse but their continued affiliation with that party has changed our relationships dramatically. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Good Republicans have had several opportunities to defuse the threat Trump poses and most have refused. Trump is set to win the nomination in a landslide.
And there it is. If I don’t make excuses for the few Republican family members that I have, I’m sure as fuck not going to make excuses for any other Republicans. They chose which side of the line in the sand they stand on, and it has changed our relationships forever. And that’s on them. I will not become an indecent half/ hateful human being to meet them in some theoretical middle.
I understand where you are coming from, but every situation has to be assessed with the peccadillos of each situation to be considered. Some people have family members far too gone to pull back. Some people just don’t have the fucking time, and my sympathies are 100% with them. It’s not my job to hold the hand of a fucking insolent petulant adult who I’ve known all my life and should fucking know better. More and more people are running out of patience with these fucking spoilers. So I like to take this bit of wisdom to heart
Never wrestle with a pig. You will both get dirty and the pig likes it.
I don’t think you’re wrong in that some GOP are indeed fearful but people need to step up to the plate and take some kind of action. Hiding under the bed isn’t an option.
Fearful is just a nice definition of moral cowardice.
In the cases of many GOP, it certainly is, but I think some are just deathly afraid of change and cling to whatever outdated ideas they have.
I’m not giving them a pass and I will certainly argue the point. Others I blow off because they have zero to say, except insults and they’re just fucking stupid.
Right on!
And like I say (and should have been clearer about), it’s all on a case by case basis
“Can they be ‘salvaged’?
“Is it worth the time and effort?”
And the saddest
“Is your own personal safety and well being contingent on maintaining a relationship with said person”
The last one is epidemic and more about navigating abusive relationships, which again, really sad…
The bigger problem remains the systemic disease. How do you get enough people to change enough to change the dynamic and cultural gestalt
Funny how only one side is willing, capable, and most frustratingly EXPECTED to ‘reach out’… over and over and over again, only to get kicked in the face over and over and over again. There is only one side that is keeping communication and resolution from happening. This is not a both sides do it problem. In the same way that racism isn’t a Black people problem, this isn’t a liberal problem. It’s not ours to solve. It’s not something that we couldn’t fix even if we wanted to. Maybe we can on a case by case personal level, but systemically it is insurmountable for now