how many friends/family members have you stopped speaking to because of Donald Trump

Yes, but people outside the US have plenty of other problems to worry about.

right, i was just sayin "you don't gots to be from the US to participate ITT", not mandating it

i have family that voted for him, mostly the older generations. they are going through aging pains and lots of medical shit right now and it is becoming clearer and clearer they are going to die some day. i don't need to stop talking to somebody - time will take care of that. besides it is an opportunity to listen and to present them with a different viewpoint they might not get within their political bubble. such are the hazards of 21st Century M-Theory Politics.

all the young people i know were for Clinton and Sanders, and go to these protests, and were active in social issues years before any of this recent stuff went down. it is the old people who tended to be for Trump. as you get old, if you are lucky enough to live on and not die, your body will fail as well as your mind. as your mind slips, you start acting like a kid again, occasionally reverting to bad or anti-social behavior. i have seen this happen w people i love. on some level it is beyond their control. this is the main reason i don't condemn them.

they are growing old and this also means they are from another era, where morals and values were different, where the culture was different. they recently retired and are idle all day like they haven't been since they were teenagers. like all of us they are embracing nostalgia. their generation was raised on TV and now they have the internet and Facebook. now they have youtube. they can pick up their Daniken/JFK conspiracy theories with ease, and it is amplified through the internal feedback of these Information Echo Chambers.

0 falling out with real life ppl over politics seems bizarre behaviour to me

0 because my mother is not on Facebook and my sister has not divulged the lucky recipient of her vote (we don't talk much at all). My mom must be like others with kids to their left: doubling down on support, gaslighting, interrupting, parental intransigence.

someone who is def not an American posted in another thread about tension between them and family members over Trump....more focused on US, yes, but this dude's a global problem

― Neanderthal, 4. februar 2017 20:19 (forty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh come on. I know I can be a bit annoying, but that's harsh :(

lol that wasn't about you

There are points where falling out with someone over politics gets reasonable. Vote for McCain, okay, whatever. Start sharing Pepe memes and getting all your news/opinions from Breitbart and you've earned a real world culling IMO.

Close to 1

what percent of the person are you no longer engaging with

2

Yeah, not my best phrasing there.

my parents don't talk about it but i guess they'd be the only ppl who would have voted for him that i would have to engage with on a regular basis.

i muted p much all the mouthy conservatives in my facebook feed (mostly ppl from high school i never really talked to anyway), but that was way before Trump. the Obama years were really hard on them and made them aggressively and embarrassingly stupid.

the "now you know how we felt under Obama" shit is what stirs me up from people. Like most of their complaint w/ him is getting 20 million people healthcare and BENGHAZI and other nonsense. Trump has insulted two allies in TWO weeks, had one of his first Executive Orders result in 40+ lawsuits, and got a Seal and a shitload of civilians killed on a decision he made outside of the Decision Room, all while demanding everybody worship him.

like, maybe say that if like a Rubio had won or something....

none. i know a handful of people who voted for trump. luckily i'm in a super blue state & city. no arguments. broke my heart to hear about many friends and acquaintances who refused to go home for thanksgiving or weren't welcome by their families.

a friend of mine (a sweet married father who suffers from depression) had his own mother call him, drunk, and berate/disown him for not voting Trump (he voted third party).

she came online the next day on FB and denied she had done that and he posted a two paragraph takedown recalling the events of the previous night and the things she specifically said on his voicemail.

here are more important things than politics.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)

if you're not gay, black, or Hispanic, yeah, I suppose you can sip pina coladas by the pool.

I live a life pretty isolated from republicans, my family all lives in coastal california and my social circle is california and nyc. I defriended the token loud trump dude on my fb feed - a greasy haired asshole who I knew from 6th grade who moved to some random tiny city in arizona. it was kinda interesting to have him around just to have a lens into that fb world during the election, but now that we all get to live in their world I don't need it.

i really don't get 'there are more important things than politics' or 'falling out with real life ppl over politics seems bizarre behaviour to me'

sure, maybe when you've got a centrist left and centrist right party going head to head, but when there are extremists like trump, a man who is so transparent in his need for money and power, i can't stand the idea of being on friendly terms with someone who buys into that. it revolts me. the only people i'm close with who have somewhat right-leaning views are the italian family i used to work for, and tbh if they had said anything pro-trump to me i wouldn't have been able to keep them in my life. they already have some shady beliefs that i tolerate bc they've been a second family to me, and bc i knew a long-ass time before i even really had my own political beliefs (also they are in NZ).

this isn't like rooting for different sports teams, or fighting over a ref's call. it's people's lives at stake. politics is everything right now.

Agreed. This is not "politics" anymore.

I have a friend who loves Trump but isn't very intelligent or politically informed and we are in the UK so I can just about let it slide. I think it's more important to ask challenging questions and reframe thought processes than simply step away.

this isn't like rooting for different sports teams, or fighting over a ref's call. it's people's lives at stake. politics is everything right now.

so you if have a genuine connection with someone, rather than use that unique opportunity to expose them to other points of view, it's better to embrace intolerance and isolation in the name of being right? i don't see how shutting people out, how promoting intolerance by ruining an otherwise fruitful relationship via this acid test, is helping in any way. they aren't going to think "Gee, my best friend of 15 years stopped talking to me, maybe I really am a horrible person" they are going to think "These crazy snowflakes have turned my best friend of 15 years against me, fuck that". "lives are at stake" and you two were given this massive opportunity to span the ideological chasm and yet you were so wrapped up in your identity that you must protect it at all costs.

rather than use that unique opportunity to expose them to other points of view

right, cos this has worked very well with Trump voters.

you know, some of those people voted for Obama

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/714604156212932608/eE6okxre_200x200.jpg

your reading that people ITT just like, immediately ceased all communication w/ friends the moment they found out they were a Trump voter is reductive as hell, anyway.

I had quite a few friends who were Bush and Romney voters and none of our friendships ever ended for that reason. but those Presidents weren't saying shit like "we're going to ban Muslims" or mocking disabled people or using fascist imagery either.

Like I said, trump isn't exactly opaque - if someone is falling for all his bs then there's no hope for them. A dozen women allege he sexually harassed or assaulted them. Multiple people/vendors haven't been paid what they are owed by him. He refuses to release his tax returns. He acts like a petulant child ALL the time. And now he's picking his cabinet from a selection of people with horrible conflicts of interests. None of this is a secret or just shady rumors.

So yeah, I'm willing to cut people out of my life over this. My message to those people is this: if you won't stand for basic human, equal rights then the consequence of that is you're no longer in my life. I'm not gonna let you get away with that shit. I can't make someone change their views but I can do SOMETHING by cutting them out of my life.

otm

Got into a big fight with a friend recently about Trump. He told me it's pointless talking to me about Trump because I can't play devil's advocate. I told him that Trump's actions speak for themselves and if you support that, you're part of the problem. We ended up deciding to just not talk politics and stay friends, but yeah just1n3 is right, there's no hope for these people.

Like to me that's like saying "you can't play Devil's advocate about living in a burning house"

Every member of my nuclear family is conservative. Mom, dad, bro in law, grandmother, cousins -- Trump or, in my cousin's case, Gary Johnson voters. We have survived the last three months by discussing neither Trump nor the election. Not a word. I am skilled at storming out of people's houses, though.

your reading that people ITT just like, immediately ceased all communication w/ friends the moment they found out they were a Trump voter is reductive as hell, anyway.
― Neanderthal, Sunday, 5 February 2017 15:05 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

everything about the concept of this thread and the subjects thereof and the attempt to enter discourse or not with a view to changing someones mind about politics or their beliefs is as reductive as hell anyway

W/e dude.

i think my folks are aware that if they start getting mouthy i'll leave and quite literally never come back. i can ghost lamf.

i also think they are embarrassed as fuck.

admittedly i live in a neighborhood where the clinton to trump voter ratio was something ridiculous like 40-1, so i don't really know any trump voters. well, maybe one of my high school friends. i don't know, one of them is pretty conservative but he also doesn't seem to like trump much. my aunt and uncle voted for trump and my aunt unfriended my brother on Facebook, probably because of his posting a lotta liberal memes. i rarely talk politics on Facebook except to lol at things, it just leads to dumb arguments with old co-workers who never pop up to talk about anything but politics, or my friends saying "so much this" or whatever.

we are all reducers

Like...not all viewpoints deserve validation through discourse. I am not going to engage with someone who either has racial motivations for supporting a candidate or someone who has no interest in anything but insulting me and repeating all caps slogans.

I could and did argue with opponents in previous elections, because it was possible to actually have a fruitful discussion...even if I thought my opponent was loony.

Whereas re: Trump, it's all ALL CAPS rhetoric like "FAKE NEWS" whenever you even try to engage, or you get called a "liberal pussy" at a party when nobody was even discussing politics to begin with.

If i was in a coma from May 2015 and woke up in January and read about President Trump, I'd probably report the page for vandalism because the absurdity of it would have been unbelievable.

Wonder what it's like for wrestling fans right now?

ecstasy

one in my family gets around in a maga hat, and this isn't even america. suitable given his history of outright bigotry, but advertising his fucked views is the line for me and i seriously cannot be fucked any more.

i talked about this on 77 a bit but the longtime neighbor across the street from my mom and where i grew up, some time in the twenty years since i've lived there, turned into a full on right wing lunatic. his bumper sticker is a simple and quaint "OBAMA SUCKS", but the massive white letters on the back window of his truck read SEALS GOT THE WRONG MUSLIM. anyway he will still, on days when there's a blizzard, wordlessly shovel my mom's driveway for her since she can't handle it herself. he used to have a wife and kids, who knows where the hell they are. seems he's devoted himself to a life of infowars asceticism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw1qw9VM8Bw

so you if have a genuine connection with someone, rather than use that unique opportunity to expose them to other points of view, it's better to embrace intolerance and isolation in the name of being right? i don't see how shutting people out, how promoting intolerance by ruining an otherwise fruitful relationship via this acid test, is helping in any way.

the person embracing intolerance is surely the person supporting the political movement that's entirely based on intolerance?

also, a Trump supporter either subscribes to race, gender and sexuality-based hatred or considers them unimportant enough to overlook. If you are not white and/or not straight, there is no genuine connection or fruitful relationship there and they have made that clear. Cutting them off is the kindest thing to do for all concerned.

Just1n3 otm throughout this thread. Politics isn't a parlour game or small talk to pass the time any more, if indeed it ever was.

also, a Trump supporter either subscribes to race, gender and sexuality-based hatred or considers them unimportant enough to overlook.

this is the critical aspect imo. plenty of vocal trump supporters claim "i like his position on jobs", i presume for the same reason these men would have read playboy for the articles. the fact that they're willing to tolerate trump's repugnant views and actions says everything i need to know about them, and is more than reason enough to jettison them from my life. i mean christ, if someone turned up to a party in a kkk outfit, no reasonable person would say "hey it's cool, (s)he probably just likes the kkk's position on jobs".

in theory it would be easy for someone like me (white, male, married to female) to say "oh, this (white, male, married to female) trump supporter is otherwise quite nice to me, so that's all right then". except it's not. to maintain a connection with these particular pro-trump fuckwits over everyone i know who's female/gay/muslim and nice would be the ultimate betrayal. i don't want to be forced to take fucking sides but i will side with the nice people who are on the back foot, every single time.

for real i've been ~advised~ to "just ignore it" and let the bigotry wash over me, like water off a duck's back. no.

We must learn to tolerate intolerance. But only intolerance.

some people aren't worth the effort though

Are Trump voters worse than Brexiteers? From here in the UK it seems like they probably are but that might just be that I don't know any in person.

Depends on the Brexiter but in general I think yeah.

fwiw my grandfather, who my dad has always felt some obligation to despite the fact he is a total dick, is currently on his deathbed. since the death of my grandmother he's been more than reasonable and helpful

here are some delightful things my grandfather has said:
"I hope I outlive you!"
"If I die first, I'm going to haunt you!"

we can kind of laugh these off now, but in all reality my grandfather has haunted my dad for 20 years with this sense that he's responsible for helping him out, despite the fact he was a mean, emotionally needy asshole

if you are going to cut someone off then at least pause to think about why you were friends with them for so long (im not talking acquaintances) before this and furthermore why you tolerated those views prior to this political epoch.

It's almost like people can reveal new things about themselves or even... change.

would mom and I really have so much in common if we didn't live in the same house