As an atheist growing up in a fundamentalist Christian family, I learned a long time ago that maintaining relationships required tact and self-restraint. That practice makes it easy to also maintain friendships across political divides.<p>But some of my deepest regrets are the times when I was timidly silent while bigotry was voiced.<p>In addition to the intrinsic value of family and community, I think we can catalyze change in our communities if we refuse to dehumanize the people we disagree with and engage them with empathy. But it's also easy to lapse into mere complicity.
We used to have the cultural value of keeping politics separate from work and (mostly) separate from family. In the workplace, this was fairly strongly enforced via the concept of "professionalism", i.e. not personal. You didn't discuss your political or religious views because the workplace wasn't the appropriate venue. On the family front, you didn't discuss religion or politics at Thanksgiving. And so on.<p>But, furthermore, I think, because the concept of "personal" was precisely that - personal, private. There was no social media ecosystem encouraging you to output your entire self into the public sphere. The fact that voting is private is an indicator that in the final analysis, your political opinions <i>should</i> be a private matter.<p>In the last few decades, we've seen a wholesale rejection of this idea. Instead, you should "bring your whole self to work". Your political opinions are now a key, or even the <i>only</i>, important part of your personality. Markers of professionalism like wearing a suit or not swearing at work are seen as antiquated.<p>A lot of this polarization would evaporate, IMO, if we brought back the professional-personal distinction and strongly enforced it.
I wish people were taught in school about the various manipulation techniques that are being used against them. Unfortunately that would mean currently both sides would not be voteable, but that should in the long run make democracy healthier. Currently democracy is legal, because if you have enough money you can easily manipulate people into anything, and if you can print money they your power is unrestricted. I believe that whoever wins, there will be a minor difference to day to day life, except that one side will have this group oppressed and the other side another, whoever wins. If you use divide and conquer, you need to follow up with the work against imaginary threats to be seen as trustworthy.
To add a fresh view on this:<p>Not American, so outside this particular story, but these artifacts of language are causing people to isolate, index on invisible and intangible impressions, confuse real people with symbols and objects, and act out by attacking people who they perceive as representing reflections of their internal model.<p>When you abstract away the meaning from television, the internet and entertainment, and look at what people physically <i>do,</i> they sit in front of a flickering light, talk themselves into a froth, and then go out and kill each other. There is a virus, and it is causing mass panic. It dislodges your ability to index on your physical experience of self and replaces it with an externally reflected one transmitted through language and filtered through an ego that has been isolated and fed like a foie gras duck or a veal calf. Whether you want to call it evil, a virus, society, or poor upbringing, doesn't matter. If it's words, it's a filtered reflection, and very likely a simulation for the virus to propagate its primitives and make a place for itself in your mind.<p>I don't see how this view could be any crazier than the ones causing people to wreck their own relationships and societies. If you can, help others step back.
No one is the villain in their own narrative.<p>Approach people with a good faith belief that everyone want's the world to be a better place. They may be misguided, manipulated or misinformed, but they want a better world and a better life just like you do. And if your especially gifted with an open mind, accept that informed, intelligent, people of good will can look at the same facts and reach different conclusions about policy.
Y'all realize the silliness here? People are willing to end their family ties due to becoming a fan for a political figure. I don't care which side you are on, but to be hateful against someone close to you, literally an individual that would, I don't know, give/lend you money to eat if you're broke, just because they "support" someone. And yes, it's a two way street, which makes it even sicker.<p>99% of people will never meet these humans playing government. Which is all they are. Flawed humans.<p>No matter how good or bad you think a politician is, you shouldn't revolve your life around them and their ideals. Just basing your personal ideals on someone else's bullshit marketing platform just so you can have an easy category bias against people is pretty fucked up. In truth, if you're a pro-politician anything, you're generally a complete idiot. Yea, unpopular opinion. But that was the real lesson from WW2. Don't follow any type of political trend or leader, no matter how well intentioned because the road to Hell is paved in good intentions. Make your decisions for yourself and judge people on their own character and actions. But hey, everyone loves a good witch hunt mixed with a lynching.
It’s twitter. I genuinely believe in the next 10 years or less, twitter will be looked at the way we look at cigarettes.<p>There was a point when cigarettes were looked at as a mere nuisance, but eventually we as a society realized how terrible they are for us.<p>That’s twitter. And to be clear: I mean twitter specifically. Facebook and the others are bad as well, but twitter is <i>by far</i> the worst. Tech journalists don’t tend to write about it though since they are the ones using it. They’d rather write about Facebook.<p>You know: those dastardly OTHERS who are RUINING things and need to better. Pay attention!
> A September report by the non-partisan Pew Research Center found that nearly 80% of Trump and Biden supporters said they had few or no friends who supported the other candidate.<p>As someone in the other 20% there are some weird things going on that are kind of new, for example, I can see that the caricatures of "the other side" are pretty inaccurate. "Both sides" care about different things, they weigh different things differently, the thing they don't like about the other side isn't what the other side weighs heavily or actively thinks about at all.<p>Yes, whatever side immediately came to mind is different from what someone else immediately thought of.<p>No, I'm not saying "both sides are the same".<p>Yes, there are some things done the same and it is weird that people tune out as soon as "both sides" was said in any context whatsoever, as if there is a better word to convey the same message.<p>Yes, someone on the other side was just as quick to say the exact same thing to convince me that both sides are not remotely similar and cannot be mentioned in the same context. How original and unique.<p>Yes, it's weird that you all aren't talking to each other and don't even realize you're both doing the same things to maintain cohesion and temporary power by vilifying everyone that's not putting your party on a pedestal, whether they actually are on "the other side" or simply not repeating the stances verbatim.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc</a>
It seems like this article solely blames Trump for this state of affairs. There's no agency given to the people who break off relationships based on political disagreement. It's all Trump's fault for being the most polarizing figure in the world today.<p>There's no question he's polarizing, but you can't blame him for every disagreement.<p>My suggestion - don't disown your family over Trump.
We all have family members from which we, either actively or passively, have disconnected because of their beliefs. In the past we just called them crazy people but now "crazy" and "politics" are joined at the hip. For me it was relatives who started believing 9/11 conspiracy theories. Then Obama was a secret muslim. Then climate change was a "China hoax". Then came rants against vaccinations. Today, masks are a democrat tool to wipe out old people. The final inevitable descent into madness will be flat earth. That hasn't come to them yet but it will. Not wanting to witness that final plunge, a few years ago some of the younger members of the family actively disconnected from them. We do not invite them to family gatherings and stay away from those at which they may appear.<p>It is a cliche, but it is about the kids. We don't want the new generation hearing speeches about how chinese people are out to destroy democracy, or how teachers are all liars because schools teach "the climate hoax". There is only so much crazy we can mitigate.
Personally for me, it was the double standards of boomers that made me raise my voice within the family. My grandparents came "illegally" from Europe. Caging their kids would have caused outrage. They are outraged at trees dying in their parks but its ok if entire cities drown elsewhere. White mentally deranged criminal => "poor kid", black criminal "those uncivilized people". We want tax cuts but we also want massive social security and medicare payments.<p>And the worst of all, the mental gymnastics to justify Trump's actions.<p>I raised my voice and have only cursory ties with them. My entire life is ahead of me and I don't want to go back to their era of bigotry. These boomers will die in 15 years but I can't leave their racist, sexist and selfish legacy to myself and my children.
Sometimes I feel like a real piece of crap for being relieved that my father isn't around to have these arguments with. I'm 99% sure he would be a staunch Trump supporter if he didn't pass away several months before the 2016 election.<p>Not to say I don't miss the hell out of him.. but statements like "I don't remember being raised by a racist" when he'd throw around racial slurs to describe the then-current president led to a few fights that I didn't know how to reconcile. It felt like it was out of left field because I never saw such crap in my family growing up, but all of a sudden he was flooding with it because he didn't like Obama.
I'm honestly not surprised that this was the reaction coming from a leftist. Cutting off your mother for voting for Trump, even if you disagree with him, is just loathsome and disgusting. This is peak virtue signaling and cancel culture.
> “He specifically told me, ‘You are no longer my mother, because you are voting for Trump’,” Gomez, 41, a personal care worker in Milwaukee, told Reuters. Their last conversation was so bitter that she is not sure they can reconcile, even if Trump loses his re-election bid.<p>I have a pretty strong suspicion that they didn't have the greatest relationship before that final moment. Otherwise, that's a massive over-reaction (same as it would be if the vote were reversed).
My worry that has happened with Trump’s presidency is the normalization that has occurred. For example, it is not my impression or understanding that Trump has any actual policies or stances and that he does not actually do any presiding. My understanding is that if he is not rallying, he is either tweeting, vacationing, or watching TV and barely takes on more than a few meetings a day. A president who reportedly spends upwards of six to eight hours a day watching TV is no president. The problem is that he is simply a caricature of a president, letting others do the actual policing making and tasks behind the scenes. For example, Trump doesn’t have anything to do with his own supposed immigration policies. They’re primarily written by a third generation Jewish immigrant who somehow is a white supremacist.<p>The secondary effect of this normalization is the normalization of hate. That is, the idea that these policies rooted in hate and bigotry are somehow normalized into legitimate stances. It’s mind boggling to me that a person with the last name of Gomez as found in the article could somehow support policies that have Mexican children in concentration camps on U.S. soil. We’re all immigrants here who forcefully took this land. It’s mind boggling that anyone in the U.S. could hate immigrants enough to want them treated the way the Trump “presidency” has.<p>It’s just very concerning. A president who is not a president is treated as one, and it legitimatizes his hateful and ignorant words. Trump likely has clinical personality disorders, and I would not be surprised if his mental capacity is extremely low. He took on running for presidency as yet another attempt to recover his brand and be a source of revenue, and it’s in all likelihood that if he loses, he will be launching his own TV network, i.e. continuing to abuse his presidency to further his brand. He basically only won in the first place due to the undue influence of Robert Mercer, a living breathing Bond villain.<p>Trump is a literal cancer and has been used as a character actor by the Republican Party. That is it. Whether someone dislikes Democrats or whatever, you cannot argue for the legitimacy of Trump and his presidency.
A lot of this is due to the blatantly undemocratic actions Republicans have been taking to maintain their hold on power. There was a lot of this sort of familial strife during the run-up to the Civil War.<p>Both sides, for different reasons, feel increasingly frustrated that their political wills aren't being fulfilled, and Trump's pure recklessness in, basically stating that he won't accept any result that isn't a victory, is making Democrats feel that nothing short of a landslide will ensure that this mess won't get worse.<p>Peaceful power transitions have historically been one of America's great advantages, look to our Southern neighbor for just how not having that can hold us back.
> “ “The damage is done. In people’s minds, Trump is a monster. It’s sad. There are people not talking to me anymore, and I’m not sure that will change,” said Gomez, who is a fan of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants and handling of the economy.”<p>The real shame here is that she seems to mistakenly think her son is actively cutting her out. If she views Trump’s actions towards immigrants as defensible or even good, which is something that at this point is just utterly incompatible with the basics of civil society, then her own actions are <i>forcing</i> people away from her.<p>It’s sad to see people clinging to aspects of Trump, going down with the ship like this, still so lacking of self-awareness of the extreme degree of (not hyperbole) fascist violence inherent in Trump’s presidency, that she can’t realize this is entirely and unequivocally her own doing.<p>I wish we were still at a point where it was ideologically tractable to vote for Trump not because you like him but because of benign centrist Republican ideas, like generally lower taxes or states rights (regardless of the debates around these, at least they are legitimate, debatable aspects of the moderate Republican core).<p>But we are waaaay past that possibility, to the point where a vote for Trump that claims to be based on other innocuous, normal-time-debatable right-leaning issues is no longer that, and is literally (again, not hyperbole) a tacit vote for fascism and anti-science.