Mastodawn

How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in America

https://slrpnk.net/post/16297276

How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in America - SLRPNK

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.

insomniac_lemon Dec 19, 2024

It would be more than that if people had a place to go and a way to get there.

Also it’s not just trumpism, it’s that your family can be intelligent but fall for grifters… or they will be kind 90% of the time and then without prompt will casually say something really fucked up at dinner.

Kitathalla Dec 19, 2024

Yup. Best I could do was to go to a friend’s for Thanksgiving. Now it’s back to hearing the ‘all waking hours’ fox news and talk radio.

Dagwood222 Dec 19, 2024

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.

thefartographer Dec 19, 2024

I just want to point out that McCarthyism existed before Reaganism. But he was a big fucking fan of it.

Nougat Dec 19, 2024

And the Federalists and Democratic Republicans were wildly confrontational.

Hasherm0n Dec 19, 2024

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.

otter Dec 19, 2024

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. 😶‍🌫️

karmiclychee Dec 19, 2024

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.

UltraGiGaGigantic Dec 19, 2024

We NEED the republican party

Biden: We need a Republican party that is principled and strong

President-elect Joe Biden takes questions from reporters after announcing his economic team. He addresses questions about the state of the Republican Party after the debacle at the U.S. Capitol earlier this week.

CNBC

Dagwood222 Dec 20, 2024

You cut out half of what he said.

Dagwood222 Dec 20, 2024

One thing people don’t realize. Back in the day, travel was difficult. Elected officials would stay in Washington for months at a time. Members of Congress [R and D] routinely hung out together. These days they spend the weekends in their districts courting votes.

Another problem is the weaponizing of C-SPAN. Before 24 hour coverage a speech on the floor was routinely ignored. A Memeber could talk down a Bill on the floor, knowing his local paper would cover it, and then make a quiet deal behind the scenes. Now everyone is forced into intractable positions.

Taleya Dec 19, 2024

Nah, the absolute god king and bastard father of ratbag politics is richard fucking nixon

onoira [they/them]Dec 19, 2024

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.

Lemminary Dec 19, 2024

I’m having a hard time relinking narc to mean narcissist and not narcotics in my mind. 😔

bunkyprewster Dec 19, 2024

Spatchcocked?

WhiteOakBayou Dec 19, 2024

Like a chicken. Where you split the breast so it can lay flat. To illustrate the deepening divide.

enkille Dec 19, 2024

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.

TheAlbatross Dec 19, 2024

If you’re not spatchcocking your country, you’re just wasting time and ruining it’s breasts to save it’s thighs, really.

MelodiousFunk Dec 19, 2024

youtu.be/YNvIp9xx3P8

People are wrong about spatchcocking

YouTube

Chadus_Maximus Dec 19, 2024

Gobsmacked, even.

AnarchoSnowPlow Dec 19, 2024

“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.

captainlezbian Dec 20, 2024

And for some of us we’ve built a culture around it because family has historically failed us as a community

cdf12345 Dec 19, 2024

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

Inevitable Waffles [Ohio]Dec 19, 2024

This thing reads reads like the the person in the middle of the disagreement trying to broker peace.

edgemaster72 Dec 19, 2024

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!”

Raiderkev Dec 19, 2024

Womp fucking womp

qevlarr Dec 19, 2024

Celebrate adult children calling out their boomer parents on their society destructive bullshit

TheDoozer Dec 19, 2024

he proudly voted for Donald Trump every time he ran and never hid his political beliefs from his family.

This sounds like an extremely euphemistic way to say he would not shut the fuck up about Donald Trump and his political beliefs. And his family likely gave him every chance in the world to quit that shit, and when they eventually just stopped wanting to be around him, he blamed everything but his own shitty behavior.

I don’t know if that’s what happened in his case, but it certainly sounds like it.

ubergeek Dec 19, 2024

Oh no! People are socialially ostracizing fascists.

Anyways, I hope it doesn’t snow today.

Amoxtli Dec 19, 2024

Time presents an anecdote as an epidemic. Trump won the electoral and popular vote. Trump haters are a fringe group. To quote Jeebus: “Do you think I have come to bring peace on the earth? No, I tell you, not peace, but division! For from now on, there will be five people divided against each other in one house, three against two, and two against three. It is going to be father against son, and son against father, and mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law!”

Riskable Dec 19, 2024

 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.

Seleni Dec 20, 2024

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.

The Alt-Right Playbook: Always a Bigger Fish

YouTube

SwingingTheLamp Dec 20, 2024

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).

surph_ninja Dec 20, 2024

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.

btaf45 Dec 21, 2024

Liberal and Left are literally synonyms. The distinctions you want would be left/far-left or liberal/radical.

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.

Why Do “Left” And “Right” Mean Liberal And Conservative?

During election years, the words left and right often bring to mind the political spectrum than they do directions in space. But where do these associations come from?

Dictionary.com

surph_ninja Dec 22, 2024

Nope. “Liberal” is a right-wing ideology. And I completely believe you yawn at genocide.

vikingr Dec 19, 2024

Maybe he just shouldn’t be such a snowflake. As they say, facts don’t care about your feelings, and the fact is that every single Trump voter tacitly approves of what a repugnant human being he is.

You are the company you keep.

Too bad, so sad grandpa. Do better. Be better. BE BEST.

I don’t really care, do you?

SacralPlexus Dec 19, 2024

Two-thirds of survey respondents agree that ending contact with a family member because of political beliefs is not justified and that most family fights over politics could be easily resolved.

Ah yes those pesky, abstract “political” beliefs shouldn’t get in the way of family. Such esoteric ideals like

I believe in human rights.
Rapists should not be in power.
Nazis are evil.

Who could ever let a silly disagreement over politics spoil a relationship? /s

yuri Dec 19, 2024

It’s hard to be told “everything will be fine” when much of the incoming administration believes trans people aren’t real/shouldn’t exist/are all groomers. And it’s really difficult to even associate with folks who voted for this and refuse to see the coming storm.

Fucken, not to compare everything to nazis but it is LITERALLY the “first they came for x, but i am not x so i said nothing”, only it’s the fucking PARENTS hearing THEIR KIDS say “I don’t feel safe” and saying nothing except “can you believe my crazy children?”

surph_ninja Dec 20, 2024

I don’t understand Dem supporters cutting off family that are GOP supporters. Both parties oppose human rights, enable rapists in power, and support currently arming Nazis (Congress had to withdraw a ban on arming Nazis in order to send arms to far-right groups in Ukraine).

If you’re a leftist opposing both fascist rightwing parties, you’d have a leg to stand on. But Dem supporters cutting off GOP supporting family just feels like that meme of spiderman pointing at himself. Anyone supporting either pro-genocide party is in no position to be criticizing the political beliefs of others.

Notyou Dec 20, 2024

Unfortunately it’s a side effect of the team sports of politics. I vote Dem but they obviously have problems to fix. My family mainly votes RNC. I can talk to some on an individual level and get to agreements about political topics. Usually after agreeing on something they will reset back to talking points.

I understand why some people will cut off toxic families, but it doesn’t help change the situation. I feel obligated to try to talk sense into people while I still have some patience. Pushing each group further into their echo chamber just helps our oppressors.

surph_ninja Dec 20, 2024

Arming Nazis, supporting genocide, escalating to hot wars with nuclear superpowers, breaking records on oil extractions, breaking records on deportations, working to privatize Medicare, etc. Saying the Dems have “some problems to fix” is putting it mildly. If you judge their actions, instead of their words, there’s no difference between the two.

You’re in no position to be giving your family any grief while you’re still voting for Dems. Pot calling the kettle black.

Notyou Dec 20, 2024

Yes. Thank for agreeing with me that the Dems have some problems to fix. I think their main problem is they put corporate interest over citizens. I think that will solve many of the other issues that you mentioned. Would you like to suggest something else for them to focus on? Or is your complaint that they aren’t perfect?

I don’t got time for doomers that just want to blame others. We (humans) have enough blame to spread around. Fix each other and help each other grow. Don’t wall off everyone else.

Also thank you AGAIN for agreeing with me (even if your reason isn’t 100). I’m NOT giving them grief. I am engaging them with conversations. I can do this because I don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. That just helps fascists.

I guess my confusion is what do you think should happen? Then whatever you say as the answer. YOU go make that happen. You can keep complaining about other groups not doing anything, or you can get involved yourself. Join a different group, if the current ones aren’t up to your standards. Start a new group. Try to make the world a better place for you and your loved ones by trying to make your goals a reality.

punchmesan Dec 20, 2024

In the US there are only two party choices that matter. We are forced to vote for evil and must choose the lesser. I agree with you in principal but Trump is an especially egregious choice.

surph_ninja Dec 20, 2024

When both evils support genocide, there is no lesser. The only reason these two maintain their power is because people like you convince everyone that’s all that’s possible.

punchmesan Dec 20, 2024

Not to be reductionist of the genocide in Gaza, it is undoubtedly evil and both parties deserve to be labeled as such for supporting it, but to speak as though that’s the only issue in this world and the only yardstick we can use the measure both parties is itself reductionist. And the reason they maintain their power is that the system is so structured as to ensure it. And that’s not to say there is nothing we can do about that (for one, elimination of FPTP voting), but as of the 2024 election the reality was that only one of those two parties would win. And to claim that recognizing that in itself is the sole cause of it is silly.

surph_ninja Dec 20, 2024

It’s not the only thing happening. But it is the worst thing happening. It’s the worst thing that can happen.

I thought we all agreed genocide is the worst crime possible.

punchmesan Dec 21, 2024

And nobody in this thread at least is arguing against that. You seem to have taken the position that because both parties support Israel in their genocide of Palestinians there can be no other measures worth judging them by. That they are equal. And the “both sides” argument is objectively a false equivalence. It’s not as though a woman’s bodily autonomy no longer matters because Israel is leading a genocidal campaign in Gaza, for instance.

It is precisely because there are other issues in the world and in the country that there is a lesser evil. Even if we disagree on degrees of “lesser” or even who is “lesser”, everything is not so one dimensional as to be able to label both political parties as equally evil when there are other evils that need to be piled on and added to the scale. Ignoring those evils is ignoring the victims of those evils.

surph_ninja Dec 21, 2024

When people are charged with a crime, while there may be many sub-charges for other crimes committed at the same time, the prosecution will mainly focus on the most severe charge.

Both parties are criminally complicit in genocide. Debating the weight of the lesser charges each is guilty of is not really relevant. They’re both genocidal. They’re both irredeemable. They both need to go.

punchmesan Dec 21, 2024

Well as far as I understand, this discussion is about voting and not prosecution. A prosecutor’s job is to seek the greatest penalty they think they can feasibly get, so of course they’re going to focus on charges that carry the greatest penalty. A voter’s job, in the context of presidential elections, is to choose between a series of power-hungry hyenas to lead the Executive branch of the government. Not voting is counter-productive and under the current system voting third-party is also counter-productive, so a voter has an incentive to consider all of the “crimes”, and even the good sprinkled amongst them, and not tunnel-vision on the worst.

So debating the “lesser charges” could not be more relevant, because who you vote for matters and the government does a heck of a lot more than support Israel. If I follow your line of false equivalence, I can only envision 2 conclusions:

Who you vote for does not matter at all, just flip a coin.

There’s no point in voting at all, leave the decision to everyone else.

Yes, the current system is corrupt and is awful, and it needs to change, but in the meantime elections are still held and decisions are still made about things like education funding, women’s bodily autonomy, trans rights, student debt, and so on and so on. Saying nothing else matters because the political parties that have a duopoly on power support Israel’s genocide campaign is short-sighted at best. As far as I can tell what you’re advocating for is voter apathy, and I fail to see how that’s productive.

btaf45 Dec 21, 2024

I thought we all agreed genocide is the worst crime possible.

We agree that Hamas is most responsible for Gaza and Israel’s terrible prime minister is the 2nd most responsible party. Americans are much farther down the list, and the GOP is way ahead of Dems. Biden literally gave the Israeli PM an ultimatum at one point. There is 0% chance Donald Trainwreck would have done that. And you are helping people like Trainwreck come to power. YOU are “enabling genocide” more than us.

btaf45 Dec 21, 2024

The only reason these two maintain their power is because people like you convince everyone that’s all that’s possible.

Is because those are the two with the support of the vast majority of voters and we don’t have a parliamentary system that would allow for more than 2 viable parties. By not voting for a serious candidate, all you are doing is setting yourself up to be a lifetime loser in politics.

btaf45 Dec 21, 2024

If you judge their actions, instead of their words, there’s no difference between the two.

Dems did literally none of those things. Your conclusions are worthless because your facts are too.

jjjalljs Dec 20, 2024

Hmm yes 2 and 4 are both numbers under 10, so they are the same number. I guess 4 is prime now.

surph_ninja Dec 20, 2024

Once you’re far enough right to support genocide, absolutely. There’s no worthwhile distinction.

jjjalljs Dec 20, 2024

And two genocides is the same as one genocide.

btaf45 Dec 21, 2024

Once you’re far enough right to support genocide, absolutely. There’s no worthwhile distinction.

The way I see it, there is no worthwhile distinction between supporting Trump and not opposing Trump. And since Biden gave Israel an ultimatum over Gaza and Trump never would have done that, then by either supporting Trump or not opposing Trump WITH YOUR ACTIONS, you are enabling genocide more than the people who opposed Trump.

surph_ninja Dec 22, 2024

truthout.org/…/un-expert-warns-israel-on-track-to…

Biden is in open violation of domestic and international in continuing to arm this genocide.

UN Expert Warns Israel on Track to Exterminate Nearly Entire Gaza Population

“Once the dust settles, I can’t imagine how the world will go on after having allowed that. Again,” Albanese said.

Truthout

SwingingTheLamp Dec 20, 2024

Assuming this is a good faith argument, I’ll throw in: Some thoughtful, leftist commentary claims that the Democrats and the Republicans are fundamentally the same behind the scenes, with identity politics as the window dressing to distinguish them, and keep the lower classes divided.

Well, look at what we have here: Identity politics successfully dividing the lower classes. The two parties do differ quite a bit in some ways, and the window dressing is causing the estrangement.

surph_ninja Dec 20, 2024

How do they differ in any way besides rhetoric?