Art by Mrlovenstein
I’m sorry to hear that. I “lost” my father in the same way. He was always conservative (listened to Rush when I was a kid), but he went from casually conservative to full MAGA radicalized thanks to facebook and modern social media. I went to his facebook a few years back and saw some of the most hateful vitriolic content. I asked him how he could do that to people who helped raise me, that I had both LGBTQ and mixed race teachers, leaders, friends, all of whom have been incredibly important to me. It did not go well. I had to tell him to allow his hate speech would be a disservice to everyone else who had such a profound impact on me, and told him if he loses the hate we can have a relationship again.
That was 6 years ago. Haven’t heard from him since.
I hope your dad is doing better than mine. I’ve seen others confirm what you said, that just cutting out the source will see a return to semi normalcy - the propaganda depends on a constant drip. Just disconnecting them from the feed can have a huge positive impact.
Very sorry to hear that, i hope there’s a near future in which you can come together with your father again.
What gets me every time, is the similarities in all stories i hear. It got really bad one time with my father, when we had a LGTBQ related discussion. I’m always shocked when i hear Anti-LGTBQ discussion points. It’s like, they would rather kill 'em all, than to just live their own live and give a fuck who is fucking who.
As long as it’s all consensual adults …
Society should rather look at the sexual activities in their own circles. Most children are abused by relatives. While i have never heard of a transgender person abusing a child, i constantly hear about priests abusing children.
I live in another country than my parents and sometimes I’m grateful for that. I don’t know how i would have handled it, if we had constant contact and am somehow happy i didn’t have to. The distance is hard enough, everyone is getting older and i would love to be able to sit with my father in the garden and watch birds, like in the long ago times.
I opted to evade discussion and to try not to discuss anything politics with my father. I don’t want to spend the limited time we have together, fighting with him over such an absurd take on everything alive.
Think about it, the older they get, the less they’ll change. I figured that I’ll have to ignore that, talk about others things. It’s the only way, if i want to keep our relationship alive. There’s no more time to let grass grow over it or to let time heal things.
I appreciate it, and I hope your interactions with your father go better too. I know many many people who take your approach, just avoiding it. There’s no real right or wrong way, because we shouldn’t be in that position in the first place. I hope they stop bringing it up around you and respect your wishes about it.
Re: circles, maybe keeping it personal will help too. Turning off Fox news and sources will help, but my dad sure did shut up when I brought up the people he knew (and I know he liked) that he was talking about. They always go “They’re one of the good ones”, but then the reverse is “These policies effect the good ones too, dad”
i really appreciated our conversation. It made me rethink my behavior and realize that only avoiding talking about the elephant in the room may be the wrong thing.
Let’s see what the future brings.
I sure hope our dads may come around one day and also try to talk and discuss everything, without going directly into “I’m right, fight me” mode.