-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
It Might Be Time To Cut My Right-Wing, Trump-Loving In-Laws Out Of My Kids’ Lives
- Thread starter Exellus
- Start date
Yeah, and it's yours, dude.
Turning a blind eye to overt racist and horrible behavior is, in fact, overtly racist and horrible.
Do whatever you want, but criticizing other people for not tolerating hatred and bigotry is a real bad take.
do it and dont regret it for a second.
i think people place waaaay too much importance on the concept of "family", particularly when it comes to blood relations, as a general thing. they're just people. i cut every member of my family except for my mother out of my life - which is nothing to do with her being my blood relation and everything to do with her being an incredible human being - and it's been nothing but wonderful. they did not add anything significant to my life, so why keep them around? blood is just red water - its NOTHING.
same goes for friends and friend groups - people feel obligated and bound to stick around people who just genuinely arent good for them as time goes on because... why, exactly? they "knew each other for a long time"? get outta here.
do they support and vote and by that association encourage someone who DOES want other races gone? then id say, yes, there's a good chance they're not rad.
its not always the overtly monstrous that is the most destructive. its the people who nod their heads quietly from their armchairs when they see people being rounded up to be stuffed into cages, and the people who raise their beers and say "they deserved it for breaking the law" when a black dude is murdered for selling cigarettes, and the people who vote for politicians who work to maintain that status quo. you dont have to pull a trigger - you just have to be okay with the people who do.
i think people place waaaay too much importance on the concept of "family", particularly when it comes to blood relations, as a general thing. they're just people. i cut every member of my family except for my mother out of my life - which is nothing to do with her being my blood relation and everything to do with her being an incredible human being - and it's been nothing but wonderful. they did not add anything significant to my life, so why keep them around? blood is just red water - its NOTHING.
same goes for friends and friend groups - people feel obligated and bound to stick around people who just genuinely arent good for them as time goes on because... why, exactly? they "knew each other for a long time"? get outta here.
do they support and vote and by that association encourage someone who DOES want other races gone? then id say, yes, there's a good chance they're not rad.
its not always the overtly monstrous that is the most destructive. its the people who nod their heads quietly from their armchairs when they see people being rounded up to be stuffed into cages, and the people who raise their beers and say "they deserved it for breaking the law" when a black dude is murdered for selling cigarettes, and the people who vote for politicians who work to maintain that status quo. you dont have to pull a trigger - you just have to be okay with the people who do.
And I think cutting out your family for voting for Trump is a bad take.
I'll mention that the only family members I have that like Trump are my dad, uncle, cousin (and I assume his dad but honestly don't know) Out of all of them my Cousin is probably the worst one since he posts about Trump all the time on snapchat. I don't talk to him at all but if our families were having a get together I wouldn't go out of my way to avoid him. We'd probably avoid politics but if it came up I woudn't shy from calling him out. I'd rather do that than just actively ignore him or refuse to go to the event.
For my dad and uncle, 99% of the time they don't talk about anything political. They come from a religious, rural upbringing in Poland. They work manual labor as carpenters/contractors. My dad said he didn't see a black person in real life until he moved to the states in 1992/1993. No college education, just whatever school was in his hometown.
Him being a carpenter, it makes sense that he would support a candidate in favor of removing undocumented workers since it does actually affect him. The social issues on the left are largely a mystery to him BECAUSE of his upbringing. Honestly I think the only reason he leaned to the right is because he grew up in communist poland. To him, capatlism seems like a dream. That being said, he still supports free college and healthcare since Poland has that now.
I think everyone is looking at these issues WAY too Black and White.
You can challenge your family members on these issues when they come up. But just cutting them out of your life seems insane to me. And I'm not even that big of a family guy either. My mom and dad are begging me to come visit them but to be honest I just don't want to spend the money + time off to do that when I can do more fun stuff.
But I still love them and it would take a lot more than my dad watching Fox news to cut them out of my life.
The only people who support Trump are irredeemable and dangerous trash. I don't let them be around me and if I had kids I wouldn't let them within 100 yards of them. I've kicked my own dad out of my house for being a racist piece of shit while he was still alive and I certainly wouldn't let any in-laws around either.
I'm sure your black, LGBTQ, and disabled friends think that's totally cool of you.
A lot of white Americans just can't cope with the the massive demographic change that the country is undergoing. Trumpism is a manifestation of that.
In many cases it's less about outright racism or hated of others than about not wanting to feel like a privileged position is being lost... often, I think, it's just embracing someone who makes them feel like they aren't yet on the lowest rung of the societal ladder.
Not sure that that helps, but I think it does for me... to understand that the embrace of Trump comes from (ignorant) insecurity and not necessarily hate.
In many cases it's less about outright racism or hated of others than about not wanting to feel like a privileged position is being lost... often, I think, it's just embracing someone who makes them feel like they aren't yet on the lowest rung of the societal ladder.
Not sure that that helps, but I think it does for me... to understand that the embrace of Trump comes from (ignorant) insecurity and not necessarily hate.
Our closest family friend is middle eastern. They are still close friends. Because hey, not everything is about politics. There's more to life than that.
All these responses tell me is you guys really need to get out of this damn echo chamber bubble. Democrats and Republicans coexist ALL THE TIME. My mom hates trump but she's not divorcing my dad over it. I went on a river float with my gf's sisters fiancé who is a republican. We drank some beers, had some laughs, argued about guns, and then had some more laughs.
Not every republican is a damn MAGA charicature.
But now I guess Era thinks I'm some racist for not cutting these people out of my life. FOH.
You just come off as a privileged white dude. Sorry. To constantly downplay how important politics are is an almost uniquely white thing, because for you and a lot of your friends and family, they're more academic than things that really impact your quality of life one way or another. But for the disenfranchised, it's literally their lives on the line. Police brutality, erasure of trans folks, demonization of immigrants, and so on.
I am *not* criticizing you for not allowing politics to get in the way of your family relationships. That's fine. But I *am* criticizing you for sitting there and telling others that their fears and pain aren't important, and you think they should be ignored because arbitrary DNA ties somehow overrule those concerns. In addition, the author is specifically concerned because of the influence those people could be on an impressionable two-year-old, who obviously can't "just challenge them on their beliefs".
I recommend just leaving the thread, dude. It's not gonna go well for you here.
Last edited:
I just want to understand something. If they liked Hitler and turned a blind eye to what he did, but are not overtly racist or horrible, that would be fine with you too?
Trump is no Hitler, but he's pretty bad and approaching it. I just want to understand your logic.
Those things have an overlap of at least 99%.
Venn diagram with a single circle and all that.
My dad's family is broken in 2 sides, but my mom's family is a pro-Bolsonaro stronghold (you can read it as a "pro-Trump", no difference at all).
What terrifies me is how normalized hate speech has become, people lunching on a Sunday and saying that "why is the TV allowed to show a gay kiss?" (Yes, "a gay kiss" as in "one gay kiss", imagime if there were lots of kisses...) or any other kind of hatred expressed in a not so direct way.
The Fake News chapter deserves it's own book of stories, these people are so brainwashed that even if you manage to prove that they believed in a fake, they will just forget about it and move over to the next "alternative fact", usually from the same "source". And yes, there is a high correlation between all those things and how religious they say they are (I wish they truly were!)
What terrifies me is how normalized hate speech has become, people lunching on a Sunday and saying that "why is the TV allowed to show a gay kiss?" (Yes, "a gay kiss" as in "one gay kiss", imagime if there were lots of kisses...) or any other kind of hatred expressed in a not so direct way.
The Fake News chapter deserves it's own book of stories, these people are so brainwashed that even if you manage to prove that they believed in a fake, they will just forget about it and move over to the next "alternative fact", usually from the same "source". And yes, there is a high correlation between all those things and how religious they say they are (I wish they truly were!)
My mother fractured her ankle, and my father has bad knees and doesn't get around all that well himself so I've had to move back home and take care of them in the evening until mom can get back on her feet like normal.
So I've had to listen to Fox News every evening and hear my fathers racist rants at everything on the news and to say that its literally stomach turning is an understatement. He has lost his fucking mind. It's really sad. There is no fact or datapoint that can pierce his prejudice and bring him back to reality, he's just gone for good.
He was never progressive, but he also wasn't anywhere near this well, deplorable, until Trump.
So I've had to listen to Fox News every evening and hear my fathers racist rants at everything on the news and to say that its literally stomach turning is an understatement. He has lost his fucking mind. It's really sad. There is no fact or datapoint that can pierce his prejudice and bring him back to reality, he's just gone for good.
He was never progressive, but he also wasn't anywhere near this well, deplorable, until Trump.
Honestly, even if his policies are completed decimated, the scar he left on so many American families may not heal for decades. I didn't live through it but, even during Vietnam, I feel like family was still family. But these assholes somehow ruined that.
My mother moved from Atlanta to Hilton Head, SC last month, so that limits the amount of alone time she has to spew nonsense to her grandson.
I just wanted to say this is a beautiful story. I wish more people would take this kind of tact on these family situations, this is far more real than a lot of the advice I see for these situations.
That's kind of shitty, it wouldn't be her fault if they were. What if her parents were something worse, like abusive?
No idea if you're racist but you sure as hell are privileged and completely without actual empathy for what minority folks go through due to Republican-led and sponsored racism.
If your family's Middle Eastern friend is fine with them supporting a racist bigot, that's up to them. However, other ethnic minorities are not in the position of being white folks of Polish ancestry who are immune to the worst impacts that Trump, his administration and Republicans in general are having on their day to day lives.
To use an example, my parents and I are Indian. We've lived in the US since 1997 and been US citizens since 2008. My parents have lived in the same house in the same nice neighborhood since 2001. Since 2016, the levels of harassment my family has had to endure has increased dramatically. Shitty letters shoved in the mailbox, petty vandalism to the house, people yelling "go back to your country" at my parents when they're out on their nightly walks. My mom has stopped going on walks with my dad in their neighborhood because she doesn't feel safe. All of this behavior is happening in San Jose, CA, an otherwise very liberal and generally diverse city.
You, as a person who is likely white or white-presenting do not have to engage with this so you have no idea what it's like to see behavior like this target you and then see the sentiments that spawned it parroted back by the Republican President and politicians who hold sway over large parts of the country.
Congrats on maintaining your relationship with your father but he's definitely enabling and complicit in the behavior of these politicians. Whatever the reasons he's had for voting conservatives in, the impacts on minority people like my family are immense. That doesn't even include stuff like:
- children in fucking cages at the border
- non-white immigrants dying in ICE/CPB custody
- a dramatic rise in white nationalism and racism
- a dramatic rise in anti-semitism
...and many other negative impacts to minorities.
You're essentially looking at people being hurt and then saying "But he's my father so I gotta respect him and his views!" That is absolute horseshit and people are absolutely going to call you out on it.
Your father or other members of your family who voted for Trump may not have wanted anything in that list to happen but their continued support of Trump/Republican politics absolutely enables that sort of horrendous shit to keep happening.
If you choose to maintain the peace and not actively challenge and push back his views, you are to some degree complicit in allowing these things to happen to minorities and not doing anything about it. All so you can maintain a friendly relationship with people who would happily throw minorities under the bus because of their political leanings.
Last edited:
I do understand the privilege part. I can definitely see how people of color could feel more strongly so I definitely can't speak for how they would feel if they had a family member or friend that voted for trump. It's a good point to bring up for sure.
But I am not letting his shit slide. If he makes some stupid comment or brings it up, we challenge him on it. Both me, my sister, even my mom. I've said this multiple times in my posts.
My main point is we don't let that break our family apart because he's not one of those guys that says people should go back to their countries or shit like that. He's an immigrant and his views are he worked hard to get here and get citizenship and he feels people are cheating the system to get here and then essentially undercutting him for jobs/labor.
It comes from a place of ignorance, maybe a little selfishness, but I don't see it as coming from a place of hate. So I don't really like these sweeping generalizations and black and white comparisons where people are lumping a misguided, ignorant, but decent man with actual hateful and racist people.
Like I also said earlier, if he was constantly spouting awful shit, posting conspiracies, or hateful stuff on social media... etc. I would absolutely consider breaking off ties. I've done this with some good friends from high school. One of them just constantly shared trump stuff and would always post news stories about violent immigrants and black people. All/blue lives matter guy.
Do it and dont look back. Your courage and conviction will be a great inspiration to your children.
So between the sexual assault, the homophobia, the racism, the friendliness with white supremacists, the caging of children and separation of families, the exploitation of low-income communities, the apathy towards people in the wake of disasters, etc., what is the line you draw in which someone supporting Trump might be a toxic influence?
I agree with you however, I think it's important to keep in mind the levels that people go to, to rationalize supporting him. To us we see supporting him as being a piece of shit. Others will tell themselves anything to justify supporting him as being ok. I'm not saying that's ok and you are probably mostly right.
Exactly. I had to unfriend two people that I used to know in real life from Facebook, not because they voted for Trump, but support & excuse his awful behavior.
That's right, make excuses. It's all that racist people & Trump cultists ever do instead of taking responsibility.
Last edited: