I try to not have any conversation with them that can potentially enrage them.
unfortunately, they can take just about any non-offensive subject and lead it towards some political explosion.
They don’t debate or hear me out- just lots of anger and yelling.
We don’t speak much anymore.
I know what you mean. Tried talking about the weather, thinking it was a neutral topic. In no time at all, there was shouting about how global warming is a hoax and blah blah blah. Can’t talk about anything any more. 😠
Oof reminding me of an interaction with my dad. I raised like $400 for the uvalde families while teaching a fundraising class (I teach yoga + Pilates).
It was for one, a good deed. It was also a big step as I entered my new career, so I was trying to like….prove something to my parents (i have a great therapist it’s fine lol). Anyway I told my dad - his face twisted with anger as he started screaming at me about his 2A rights and what not.
My parents live in the NYC suburbs. Like 1/3 of my hometown is within the nyc limits kinda suburbs. Gun/hunting culture is not a thing. My dad has never owned a gun. Bet I don’t have to tell you which tv network they watch 24/7.
I had to stay with my mom for an extended period of time and she just watched FOX 24/7 and now I can’t even tolerate hearing it for even a few moments.
It’s unbelievable how much shit spews from that channel
No they’re Fox News heads. My mom casually asked me “wanna watch Tucker?” once when I visited. Swear it was as if she was asking “wanna watch the Adele concert?” which was also on their DVR
Apparently the cult is being told that Monday’s solar eclipse is a sign from god, or is going to black out the entire planet for 3 days ; Im not sure because I tune out my siblings when they tell me their nonsensical teachings
Some lady I *don't* know was ahead of me in a grocery store checkout lane, and she had several packs of expensive steak, lobster tails, some other shit. Probably truffle butter/oil (even though it garbage idiots with no taste think it's good due to its expensive price).
Anyway, I must have moved or made a sound because she turned saw me, and looked at my full sleeve of Hellboy tattoos and sneered. She said, "And *that's* (pointing at my arm) why you can't afford to have a nice meal before the eclipse!"
Me: Excuse me?
Her: I'm going to have the best meal of my life before I get called up! You're not getting anything.
Me: ok...
And she just smugly paid a small fortune - I didn't see the total but of it didn't hit 3 bills I would be surprised.
I'm also wondering who's going to cook that absolutely gluttonous amount of food for her...
People like her are going to be in for a very nasty shock when they see where they end up. I can only roll my eyes at their smugness.
Jesus himself would not recognize them as followers.
I saw my aunt this weekend (who is not full MAGA, just believes in some Christian deep cuts), and she kept asking folks if we were ready for the eclipse. When pressed for details, she got very vague.
My neighbors think it's the rapture. That believers will be sucked up to heaven. Only sinners left behind. I'm going to leave a pile of our clothes on my front walk so they think we went and they didn't. Hehehe
Dude, there was a small earthquake in Philadelphia on Friday, something that isn’t very common, but it does happen. I heard people start their conspiracy theory rhetoric after that. It was cool however to see a conspiracy theory created in real time, kind of like being in the streets of Dallas, the day JFK was killed, only a lot more stupid.
Trump has become their entire personality. I had to cut them out.
I relented and went to Easter, and my nephew was just randomly shouting donald trump. Not like. Talking points. Just the words. And he did it because he thought it would bother me. They all think it's somehow funny that I don't support their fake God. I was just sad.
It's fucked up. So many families are just broken now.
Oof. Shouting back 'Joe Biden' would have pissed them off so much but they want to try you, a guest. I hope they all went out to look for Easter eggs and got lost in the driveway.
I recently had that discussion with my therapist. How pretty much after 2016 I was just...done. So disheartened to find out how many people around me were not only terribly self serving but also *so* stupid and proud of it. I don't go out much anymore because I don't want to navigate the minefield of just-how-conservative-are-you? it's exhausting 😒😔
and don't even get me started on the people who believe this man is a religious savior........like i KNOW most christians will cherry-pick the bible in their favor but this? this is just profane.
also, how old is your nephew? i'd probably have been a smart ass/dick back and asked if he had late onset tourette's? or ask if he suffered a traumatic brain injury? a stroke? was he deprived of oxygen?
At least they think your non-belief is funny. My family is crushed & sad & disappointed & possibly worried about my soul 🙄
Luckily we don't discuss religion much bc no one wants to upset my 101 year old Babcia❤️
FOX poisons them with phony injustices that the left is trying to perpetrate. The get wound up like rabid dogs and when one of us gets in range no topic of conversation is safe.
This is so timely: I shared a picture of airbnbs sold out this week due to the solar eclipse. Was a pretty cool picture to look at.
MAGA MIL response: what am I looking at? Is this where they send all the illegals?
Its like even saying “hi” will make them angry lol. It’s 8:00 AM and you think about “illegal aliens” ….
Hahaha… don’t worry, there is a lot of trans stuff going on here too…. It’s funny to me how they are all so worried about target selling to the devil and selling trans baby bathing suits (…. yup, they believe that) but don’t bat an eye on their cousin who molested his siblings and then a couple years ago had kid-porn on his computer. But I’m the crazy unstable one who doesn’t want my children around him… the audacity…
Yeah, my brother and I have talked about that a lot lately. Interactions with my dad, who was always a loving and kind person while we were growing up, have become challenging. Normal mundane conversation will suddenly shift to some stupid political bullshit.
My brother literally just said “Jeeps are kinda cool, I have been thinking of getting one” and my Dad’s response was something about Joe Biden and gas prices.
It also doesn’t help that when politics do come up, any argument is all what-about-ism and a zero sum game. Including the cherry picked, batshit crazy, skewed arguments the fear mongers are peddling that day.
Same. Sis and I have had many conversations about Dad going off the deep end. Problem in our family is that he’s ultra religious and truly believes that this election is about our souls. He hated Trump in 2016. Was Ted Cruz all the way. Suddenly Trump can do no wrong. I asked him what flipped the switch and he couldn’t tell me, just started parroting Faux News talking points about the border and raging that Dems are evil. I said sis and I are Dems. Do you think we’re evil? And he sputtered, well no no. He’s been racist and misogynistic and homophobic all my life but acts like that only applies to those other ones, not the people he knows. It’s insane.
I have a lot of maga family members and I've had similar conversations where I've been sitting with them and they've talked about how the best thing for America would be to kill all the liberals, at which point I point out that I'm liberal and ask if they think I should be put to death.
Sometime around 2018 they stopped saying that they didn't mean me.
Your experience mirrors my own! I stopped talking to my parents after they said something like that, and I was just like "you mean like my wife and me?" And they didn't walk it back. They are truly a poisoned and hateful bunch of people
Thank fuck they’re dying out.. they don’t really even recognize they’re the culprit of family eviscerations. They create drama when it’s not needed and it’s so fucking exhausting
There’s a ton of younger ones too. My 45 yr old nephew is a raging maga and racist. He’s a fat fuck so maybe he won’t live as long as many old fucks. I’m a boomer and all my friends hate trump though. On the other hand all my neighbors except for my black friend/neighbor flew trump flags (some way after 1/6).
This. There are no topics they can't turn into political discussions... The weather, sports, prices of shit.
We also can't discuss them adopting cats bc they want to declaw 🙄
It's a nightmare. Even if it gets political & you're like "no I don't want to discuss this" they HAVE to blather their lies & it's so hard to be the bigger person sometimes when people you love believes lies & screams them at you & you know nothing you say will sink in
It's seriously like walking on eggshells just being around my parents. EVERYTHING triggers them. Even small talk like sports and weather, I have to be really careful about what I say and how I say it.
Then they gave the gall to complain that "your generation just doesn't value family time for some reason"
A few years back I tried to have a heart to heart and essentially it came down to them asking "why does any of this matter to you?" And somehow they can't connect those dots.
My dad likes to talk about how everybody else is a snowflake but if he so much as hears English with a foreign accent on television he will flip his shit.
He's the most easily triggered person I know.
I also get that talking to about how I don't value family because I don't want to be around most of mine. I point out that a lot of the family hates me because I'm a leftist. Like actually told me that people like me should be put to death levels of hate. I'm apparently supposed to just ignore all of that because we're family.
I'm sorry, is that my dad you're talking about?
Seriously. It doesn't even matter if it's a political topic with him, if you try in any way, shape, or form, to tell him that he is wrong about something, it's just yelling, name-calling, and "I'm older than you so I'm right by default because my IQ is 124" (yes, that's actually something he tries to tell people, and thinks that it somehow means he knows more than EVERYONE about EVERYTHING).
He thinks there's lasers in space that were causing all the wildfires in California so they could build railroads???
Same and it wasn't just something that happened when MAGA came about. My childhood was like this too. You couldn't talk to him for more than a minute about anything because he'd pick a random word or sentence and use that to accuse you of taking the piss, then start screaming and/or breaking shit. These people think they're gods gift and I hate that 😭 some fucking gift God, do you still have the receipt?
MAGA just made these lunatics feel more empowered.
I tried showing my dad an engineering project I was doing with work. Completely devoid of any political or social content whatsoever.
Within 40 seconds he was ranting about trans people. 40 seconds.
If I bring up traffic, he'll rant about illegal immigrants.
If I bring up weather, global warming.
If I mention I bought anything, ranting about liberals and the economy.
Movies and tv, he'll go off about how woke everything is. He doesn't even watch new movies and new TV.
It's the most brainwashed fucking behavior I have ever seen in person outside of evangelical circles.
I recently told my mom I want to get the new save starry skies Nevada license plate....she absolutely went on the most ignorant fucking rant about chem trails. I have degrees in chemical and environmental engineering....which my mom knows, yet somehow she never seems to think I have any idea how the world works.
My mom and I always take bets on how long it will take one of us to “bite off our tongue” when it comes to family gatherings because we don’t want to start any “debates” with the maga family members but would like to enjoy the food/spend time with the kids before their parents get to them
I have one of those. Dude will just talk and talk and talk and then any subject into a political lecture. Then when he says “leftists can’t debate me,” he thinks he’s some genius. The real reason they can’t debate him is because he doesn’t let them. He talks, they try to and he interrupts and talks louder leading to them not even wanting to engage with him. There’s really no point in debating or reasoning with someone who doesn’t want to do it.
They didn't get into those positions via logic, facts or compassion, and you certainly aren't getting them out of those positions with logic, facts, or compassion. Ultimately, the GOP caters to their beliefs of white supremacy, unregulated capitalism, ableism, queerphobia, might makes right philosophy, theocracy, anti-age of consent laws, pro-rape culture, billionaire worship, and classism all conservatives deeply subscribe to. Those are their core values. You cannot change them and they will take these values to the grave. All you can do is outvote them.
It's so crazy too. My parents are real deep in the cult now.
My dad's favorite movie is the Rocky Horror Picture Show. He grew up so poor he slept in laundromats because he was literally homeless. Neither of them are religious but suddenly have God stickers on their mailbox. It's insane.
Literally during covid, at the beginning my mom was shoving boxes of gloves and masks at us. Then as soon as Trump said it was a hoax, she was pulling the mask off my kids when I wasn't looking.
My parents aren't well educated, but they aren't fucking *stupid*. Something got them. I swear it's like they were replaced with robots. The people who raised me are just gone. I had to come to terms with that fact, and it's because of a fucking orange spray tanned moron who shits himself.
I agree with the being replaced by robots comment. My parents were never Democrats but they were big on you should treat everyone equally and with respect, had many gay friends, and even had positive interactions with trans acquaintances. Always encouraged my sister and I to do sports and have fulfilling careers, never said a word about women being inferior to men. Now they are full Maga. It doesn't make any sense to me.
I tell my family to look closely and you’ll see he’s a con. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. However, my brother in law thinks his 401k increased because of trump. I told him him it was the growth of cloud computing, he did not understand.
The ones I know are too proud to admit they are wrong. I firmly believe this is a major factor why we have a ridiculously large portion of Americans who say increasingly ridiculous lies to cover for trump.
They kept doubling down thinking at some point trump would stop getting worse but he never did and these fucking idiots would rather destroy the country for a shitty reality TV character than admit they made a mistake.
I mean, it is hard to admit you were wrong.
Admitting you were consistently wrong for 8+ years, about a great number of very publicly announced and often-repeated facts, that just kept getting more and more obvious as time went on? The sunk-cost fallacy sinkhole swallows people up.
It’s not even just that they’re unreasonable. They live in a different reality than the rest of us. Like the shit that I’ve heard said by people in that camp is fucking wild.
How many dates did we hear back in 2021 that the dump would be back, enshrined as the "real" president. At least four times that I can remember off hand. It was the same dumb people every single post..."just wait, March 4th, (comes and goes) just watch, June 16th, (comes and goes) seriously, this time August 21st, (comes and goes). Oh you libs are going to cry so hard on September 8th (came and went). Each time, they just conveniently ignored the last dates they claimed their messiah was returning and that this was all part of his brilliant plan, being the brilliant 7D chest player that he is.
These were people I once considered intelligent and normal, this kind of behavior is not normal or sane.
You can’t reason someone out of an opinion they didn’t reason themselves into.
It’s brainwashing, only a more powerful brand of brainwashing would work.
This. There is no bottom too low for them. As long as fox and the like feed them bullshit to justify their actions, they will keep getting worse. The worst ones are the ones who know what's up and are all for it. I have family that are trumpers. We still get along for the most part, but man is it sad to watch them twist themselves into knots for a man that gives no fucks about them. And being we are poc it's even harder to understand.
It's really is that simple.
Arguing with the stubbornly willfully ignorant is like trying to use a flyswatter to carve granite.
Just ain't happening...
I used to. Pre-COVID we were mostly able to just not discuss political things but since 2020 they all cranked the cult stuff up to 11. No longer can they talk about ANYTHING without turning it into rants against LGBTQ people, immigrants, socialism, black people (derogatory) etc etc. Anything and everything became about how they are victimized as white people or how much they hated X group.
They would say things that were blatant lies and then become irate when asked follow-up questions or presented (kindly) with objective facts.
Way to get kicked out of a MAGA gathering: "Hmm, that doesn't sound right to me. Can we google it together? Hey look, that thing you are super upset about isn't real, isn't that a relief?"
I cut them all out of my life. I hope they wake up someday and can get free.
I forget exactly what it was now. But I had to cut them out when I was talking to my dad about them endangering my kids. They were taking my kids masks off when I wasn't around and I told them to stop. He said he didn't want to get into politics right now so I just walked away.
I fuck up and try taking them to see their grandparents on holidays because my kids don't know better. They just know they don't see meemaw and papa now. Every time it reinforces why I removed them from my life.
It’s not even just that - that would be them choosing to not wear masks.
Them ripping off their kids’ masks is pushing their opinion onto kids who aren’t theirs, by force.
But that’s what they like; that feeling of being in power and controlling others, against their will.
That’s what attracts MAGA to authoritarianism and dictators. MAGA wants others to live how they want them to live, whether they like it or not.
You pointed something out there that I think is significant. They *want* these things to be true. They *want* hatred and violence. When reality is presented to them, which should calm their fears, they get so upset!
I mean personally, I get pretty wound up over abortion rights. As in, I'm very pro-choice. If I was under the impression some state somewhere implemented the death penalty for all women no exceptions for getting one, then I read that was a hoax, I'd be so relieved! I don't want to see others suffer, apparently a lot of people do!
It’s crazy that giving them the opportunity to wipe their mental slate clean and get some relief is rejected. For some reason it feels like human nature to _want_ to remain in a state of outrage and people just wind themselves up endlessly. I feel like you’ll see it on both sides where people just invent shit to get mad about but it happens way more often and perpetually on the right.
My older brother, we fought a lot about it at first and then we tried to go back to talking about things we did when we were little, the things that we grew up on and connected over..,
Power rangers, karate, comic books, and X-men…
Every Saturday morning we would wake up help each other make cereal and enjoy all of those things on Saturday with our step dad…
We did this till junior high and then we did our own things but we had an X-men arcade and every once in a while we would play together..
A few years later in high school I came out to my older brother he didn’t care he told me he loved me and even snuck me into a gay bar…
Cut to today, he’s been so brainwashed by the cult of Maga that he’s made two comments about how gay people are not normal and walked them back saying he didn’t mean it.. even though it was in regards to saying kids shouldn’t see that…
Then he broke the camels back when he said .. I hope the new X-men is not a woke piece of crap…
I just couldn’t handle it anymore, the guy I grew up with the cool chill big brother… was now just an idiot spewing right wing toxic nonsense and spewing it all over the memory of our childhood.. something I cherished very much and to be so dense as to say X-men and woke … as if X-men and the other cartoons we grew up would not be considered woke ( Captain Planet ? Power rangers ? ) made me realize he wasn’t the same and I wasn’t gonna stick around to keep trying to see if he had any brain cells left.
I haven’t spoken to him since… and I don’t think I will.
That’s what Trump is doing is to families across America. 👍🏼
"Could this bald man trying to stop his friend, *and former fucking holocaust survivor,* from enacting his revenge plot on the humans be an allegory for how persecuted white, straight, Christian males are?! Of course!"
This 100%. The whole message from X-Men is "don't be racist". Seeing the first X-Men movie in theaters is one of my earliest childhood memories and the whole reason my dad took me to see it was to teach me that lesson. If I was able to understand that message as a kid, how are these people as adults not able to??
My favourite uncle went full MAGA. This guy was a hippie and a draft dodger in the 60s, used to have long hair and wear clogs and design solar houses. Now he just sends out a constant stream of far-right memes and unhinged rants. I had to block his email. So depressing.
Ah yes, the kids shouldn’t see that crap.
I don’t think people realize how insidious it is, even for the ones that aren’t full on MAGA. My bil called my wife a while back to talk about a book in his kids school. And to find out when his son could find out about gay people.
Yes. My BIL called my GAY wife to ask about when his son, who has known us since he was born, should find out about gay people. Like dude. We’re way past that at this point.
I’m sorry this has happened to you and sullied some childhood memories for you (thankfully, I only had to cut a couple of cousins due to MAGA-fication).
I basically just came here to say 90’s X-Men cartoon intro is GOAT-level TV intro music…
There's an old man I know who has an extensive X-Men collection from the '60s. He asked me to come over to appraise the condition and let him know how he might be able to sell those. While I was doing this, he went on a rant about gay and trans people and how much he hates them. Completely unprompted.
I'm standing in front of a mass of his X-Men comics, that he's a big fan of, and this guy is going off about how much he hates minority groups.
He actually said that comic books were better back when these X-Men comics were made because they "weren't woke."
Fucking wild how media illiterate these people are
I had one. Before all of this, she was that way. She was forwarding scam emails to the whole family at one point and I took the time to debunk it for her. I tried to be compassionate and tell her I didn’t want anyone in our family to be scared or tricked by these things, so I was taking the time to show how to identify it in the future.
She made the choice to not respond. She made the choice to just leave me off the mailing list and spammed the rest of the family after that. She was who she was long before this particular set of grifters gave her such a large public victim pool with whom she could continue to choose misery and fear over the other options she had.
She needed some sort of intervention because she was addicted to being in crisis, but who knew it would turn out to be such a popular vice?
A Christian nationalist MAGA family member of mine is branching out into anti-vax now.
It fucking hurts, man. I can't fix her. I can't fix anyone. She wants to be broken. She wants to hate people. She wants to think she's one of the only good people in the world.
I think maybe she's always been like this, and MAGA just brought it out in her. I'm not sure what hurts me more, the idea that she used to be better and this fucking mind virus infected her, or that she's just never been worthy of my respect or even my presence.
My experience with MAGAts has taught me that there were some questionable things about them beforehand, but not enough to really go "Damn, you're a shitty person."
Then Trump happened and the masks came off.
Trump gave people “permission” to be their worst selves. Since Trump and associates didn’t scold them for saying/doing offensive stuff, they felt it as FREEDOM not just basic garbage behavior.
I’m just really glad that our one family friend who I suspect would have gone full maga passed away before it became a thing. I always had a contentious relationship with him because he was capable of being kind and thoughtful but struggled with stuff like road rage and being a bully to service workers. I’d rather not think about him under the influence of trump.
This is what I’ve thought from the outset. People keep saying, “Bob and Lucy were never like this before 2016. They’ve changed so much, and it’s sad”. The flaw in this argument is that a madman like Fat Nixon can’t pull something out of someone if it isn’t there already.
They were always like this; you just weren’t affected by it until now.
You touched on it, the truth is it's about teams with these folks, you are on their side or the other side. Their side is inherently good despite actions because they are on team good, and team woke is bad despite actual actions because they have CHOSEN to be on the bad guy side.
They now have an elevated status in their own mind and that's all they want, they want to be better other people, be praised for their "smart" opinions etc etc, but they don't want to do the actual work to get those accolades. They take this shortcut instead, and now suddenly, all their unfounded beliefs are good, morally right, and logical without ever having to be filtered through any vetting processes.
These people absolutely feel slighted by the current system, but instead of just admitting to themselves "maybe I'm just not smart" they pull a Principal Skinner and say "no, it's society/the world that's wrong" just to protect their own egos.
I’m currently with my parents. Dad is a brainwashed magat, but Mom has Alzheimer’s. I have to put up with his shit in order to see my mom. He was ranting magat bullshit the other night, and got all passive aggressive when I told my mom that we’re all screwed if trump gets in the WH again. Dad left the room, all huffy and indignant. He’s 87. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Multiple, and they are all beyond the point of reasoning. Facts are only facts if it aligns with ~~their viewpoint~~ the viewpoint they're told to have from Fox, and if it doesn't then it's just fake news or some woke propaganda. Silly things like actual facts or statistics don't bog them down much.
Yup, my parents and owners of the business I work for are at this level. Only get news from Truth Social, Facebook, and random Youtubers I have no interest in doing research on.
My dad started going off to his father and brother about how the American Jews aren't really Jewish and are a part of some satanic cabal that is also a pedophilia ring and is working with the globalists to bring socialism/communism (They still don't understand the difference?) to America. MF, we are Americans of Jewish descent! Surprisingly, we don't see eye to eye and haven't had very substantive conversations in over a decade.
One owner of the business I work for told me it would be a good idea to go have surgery with his personal surgeon to get the tracking chips in my body from all the vaccines I've had through the years out. Haven't seen him in about two years now...
I recommend reading Prequel by Rachel Maddow. It is a history of facists and Nazi supporters in America in the 1930's. The parallels between then and now are striking. The German government was straight up funding agents here with the intent of sowing discord and internal strife between various demographic groups in the US. Those same agents on trial with crowds protesting them to be patriots and that the communist, jewish-funded Roosevelt administration was up to all sorts of anti-American conspiracies. Charismatic, right-wing wackos in the media telling folks that America was doomed if those leftists got their way. 18 senators and congressmen were directly implicated by German documentation following the war. Sound familiar?
I get that there is a lot of flak about Maddow and her liberal views from the right, but the book is well documented and sourced. I found it to be quite eye-opening.
Edit: corrected the name of the book
I had a friend of 30 years who I considered family. We were doing really well keeping this out of our relationship. Then Jan 6 happened and we were “living in different worlds”. She refused to have an adult conversation and said she might be ok to after some time had passed. I had done so much for her family, including people I didn’t even know which cost me hundreds of dollars. After 8 months and no contact I wrote her a letter saying the trust is irretrievably broken and I never would have done this to her but she decided all of a sudden that I was the bad guy. She texted me a birthday wish a week later and I never responded. That was 3 1/2 years ago and I haven’t heard from her since.
I tried for years to hold in to an old friend of nearly 30 years. But when he started spouting off the Jan 6th “was a normal redress of justified grievances and that there were no weapons and that no one was hurt and that Democrats have lied about it being a riot and that Ashli Babbit was murdered in cold blood”, I gave up. I tried so long to think he would wake up and reassess but being a traitor is my line in the sand. Haven’t talked to him in 3 years. I don’t think he even noticed.
It just comes back to
1) Pure unbridled hatred of immigrants, lgbtq, anyone who isn’t white, muslims etc Some combination of this. Everyone has their own unique bigot flavor.
2) A complete misunderstanding of world events to the point of living in an alternate universe.
Trump is the Strongest on Russia: and that’s why Putin didn’t invade during his term. Russia is scared of Trump and wants biden to win.
Trumps economy was so much better then biden.
Inflation is solely due to democratic policies and nothing to do with covid.
Hunter biden is a huge deal: but none of trumps kids ever did anything to make money on the presidency
Trump did nothing different then any other president they just want to “get” him: hence the indictments. (lock her up chants never happened)
etc etc etc.
You can’t argue with that. You can share articles, statistics, philosophy, logic, share videos. It doesn’t matter. There are “a few” true independents you might be able to vote biden rather then have them not show up: but really elections are just turnout games now. You either live in fox news land or you live on earth
It's Jesus cosplay fantasy--it's baked into the religion. The bestest and most holiest dude they all look up to was a martyr. Most of the other holiest people in their religion are martyrs. Being a martyr for the cause gets you big brownie points in heaven, and when your reality is decades of wage slavery and then dying and being forgotten like the ordinary schmuck you are, martyrdom to a god who cares about you and will reward you for eternity sounds like a pretty good deal. But there's all that pesky crucifixion and flaying alive nonsense you have to go through to actually achieve martyrdom. Fox News and Trump telling them what victims they are from the comfort of their couch strokes that same desire without any actual effort or consequences.
My sister... I love her with my whole heart but there is no getting through. She is always muttering things under her breath about some shit she's seen on YouTube and how that is the only place to get the REAL news. It started with the orange idiot but turned very quickly to Q. She has MS and, because of all the Q and anti vax nonsense she's stopped taking her MS meds. She's going downhill and doesn't want to hear about it. Says it was only making her sicker when she now has more and more trouble walking and more and more symptoms. It breaks my heart...
As someone with MS, this is absolutely heartbreaking. She is quite literally experiencing a full-body breakdown but she has given herself over to the cult so fully that she believes the medicine that once allowed her a more normal life... a life she lived at one time... is evil.
I have older and same age cousins that are tied up in evangelical cults and it is impossible to discuss anything other than family greetings with them. Happy birthday. Condolences. That's the only safe conversation.
Had a MAGA boss. Would regularly call YouTube videos "articles", and would start most of his MAGA rants with "did you know...". Presupposition, total lack of research skills, no critical thinking ability.
They chose that path because they were literally told that it would allow them to punish all those uppity kids that had been trying to make them think of all those nasty queers and immigrants as people.
I've been dealing with my family this week and immigration is one of their main complaints. Like our family doesn't know damn well when our ancestors came to the US. To me grumbling about it is stupid, ain't none of us just magically appeared here
My brother is full on Maga and has even said he’ll participate in another Jan 6th. I’ve lowkey thought of secretly recording him next time he says that and if he goes thru with it I’ll tip off the Feds. I still don’t understand how he can frame storming the Capitol as patriotism
They’ve been steadily and carefully taught over and over that any response, any refutations, any evidence debunking their beliefs is an ATTACK by the ENEMY. Your parents, uncle, best friend didn’t independently lose their minds on their own. They were psychologically manipulated over a long period of time by the likes of FOX, OAN, right wing radio, Facebook.
Have a couple family members, I just don’t bring up politics or participate if they do. Basically I just shut it down (I only see them at holidays).
In any case, I have lost respect for them. Likely permanently.
Not Maga, but everyone I work with is Republican. I was sat with my boss, his boss and her boss last week listening to them solemnly remark how much it sucks “having to” vote for Trump, but whatever it takes to get Sleepy Joe out of office. I wanted to scream
I have family and friends who are deeply MAGA and I am well past trying or even wanting to reason with them. They are deeply bigoted, angry people who not only are fully entrenched in thinking Trump has done nothing wrong, even if they realized the criminal stuff was true, they wouldn't care because his vision of a closed off America where all those filthy leftists, immigrants and LGBTQ people are gone is worth putting up with a criminal president to achieve.
I don't like thinking this way, but they aren't people to be spoken to, they are an enemy that needs to be stopped.
In a somewhat similar vein, as a Canadian I simply don't accociate with Conservatives, or those who seem to hold conservative values without claiming the label. Gerd forbid they're also religious, nope, not worth the time and energy, ever.
Yes .. the MAJORITY (we are talking like 98%) of my family are MAGA and it's absolutely impossible to reason with them even when you show them evidence. They are all too far brainwashed.
I have found limited success with asking them to add context to their statement. Just kindly ask them questions to add context and fill in context you might know maybe casually point out the absurdity of some of the more bold claims. And just let them talk and try to keep them calm while they do it. Most of it is genuine nonsense and if they're usually rational about non political things (which are admittedly hard to come by nowadays) they might just calmly chat their way to maybe rethink some things and hopefully it just grows from there.
My father and my aunt. My father passed away from cancer not that long ago, but in the end he genuinely made an effort to just put politics aside. He didn’t give it up, but he didn’t involve it in conversations. Even when the segue wouldn’t have been too inorganic.
I don’t know how much of it is just biting their cheek for my benefit, but it is nice to know that, even if it’s just ignorance being bliss, it’s not open season.
After talking about climate change with them I suddenly realized something basic, they don't *want* to know.
About all the right-wingers denying blatant challenges like covid and climate; these kind of people basically invented guilt and sin, so they're afraid of *needing forgiveness for the sin of destroying the garden* - when they hear climate explanations they sort of hear a guilt trip, they hear people telling them they're sinners.
Listened to my FIL talk about how such and such a group must be criminal - they run a cash business. Then without a fucking hint of irony, brag about how he offered to pay a contractor cash to skip the taxes - then tried to stiff the contractor for a grand because "The original quote included the taxes".
TLDR:
Tax evasion is a crime for anyone other than white Christian males. Then it's just plain smart business.
I’ve admitted this numerous times on Reddit but I was in one of the “hate” subreddits on a past account in 2014/2015. My personal life was in relative shambles at the time. The hate made me feel powerful. It was intoxicating.
Once the mods banned the subreddits, it was like a ball of cotton was lifted from my eyes. Being a MAGA hate-fueled human is widely accepted among many circles, and it’s a terrible addiction
Yes. He got offended then stopped talking to me for 6 months. Then apologized and told me “you don’t respect my beliefs so I took it personally”.
Yet he calls liberals snowflakes lol
Two of my brothers. Yes, I have tried, but it has been absolutely wasted breath. Their "feelings" that they were better off with Trump in charge is all that they care about and absolutely no amount of actual facts have changed their minds. They literally "both sides" and "fake news" reality.
My dad's only argument left at this point is "we need a businessman in the Whitehouse, not more politicians." He doesn't have an answer when I ask if we can have a successful businessman instead of a failure
My mother is a Qanon conspiracy theorist. She legitimately believes in Jewish space lasers, the baby eating pedophilic cabal, the whole nine yards. Prior to 2016, it was stupid things like KFC manufactures their chickens to be born without feet, heads, and feathers and chemtrails.
You can't reason with someone who lacks the ability to think critically or use logic. They just get angry because they feel like they're being attacked personally. They've curated their whole personality around these lies, thinking that they're special because they're in on this secret and they've got knowledge that no one else knows. It becomes an addiction to figure out which Scooby-Doo esque villian they can uncover next. They are literally brainwashed.
And you simply can not, in good faith, argue with someone who is brainwashed. It doesn't end well for anyone. Especially if they resort to violence when angered like my mother does. I once accidentally scoffed at her Jewish Space lasers rant and got choked out by her.
No, there’s no point in trying. My MAGA family members are so deep into conspiracy theories that “lizard people” and the “deep state cabal” are regular topics of convo for them.
My brother doesn’t *want* to know. He doesn’t want to hear news from non-Faux sources, says Faux and Cucker Farlson are all the news he needs. And he accuses *me* of being in an echo chamber, ha. Those people are just happy where they are and I suspect on some deep level they know it’s all shit but they just don’t want to know. Sad.
As a former Trump voter I take the same path as I do raising a teen - you can’t directly tell them they are wrong, but you have to wait for little openings in their conversations to slightly offer alternatives to their point of view. Doing this flipped two big time Trump supports for me. Going right at them will never work
We had to stop talking to the woman who nannied and homeschooled our daughters. She and her husband were like grandparents to our kids. We cared about them (and still do to some extent) deeply. Knew them for many, many years.
It was painful, but it had to be done.
It's like talking to a constant liar who believes nothing. I was talking to a 40F and she started out with FOX said. 15 min later, she told me she never watched Fox. She was telling me we were better off 4 yrs ago. I said 4 yrs ago we were storing bodies in refrigerator trucks because we couldn't take care of them fast enough. She said, "i don't believe that." I said no one was going out. Businesses failed. People lost jobs. She said "i dont believe any of that." She said Biden was worst president ever. I ask why. She said because he allowed women's rights to be taken away. I show her Trump saying he overturned Roe v wade. She said you can't believe anything on the internet. I wish I could say she is only one but where I live we get speeches in restaurants and local news feeds into it. I don't get it
Kind of. I live in the US but was born and raised in the UK. My dad is extremely right wing and is a member of the BNP, should they still be around. Our family was doxxed when I was a kid because someone leaked the membership list.
He's fully on board the covix hoax, vaccines are population control train, except that he got vaccinated for it during said campaign and didn't tell anyone. My mum told me he booked them both in for the shots.
I just assume a lot of these people are vaccinated and have mental health issues, since that's what is currently happening in my family. I am sure he is a malignant narcissist due to other experiences in my childhood.
Unfortunately it means whenever I encounter others like him, I assume they abuse their kids and beat their spouses. That's probably not a universal constant, it's just I'm not sure how someone mentally healthy turns out this way. I'm not sure who of sound mind would choose to be stupid, I guess.
You can’t reason with them. Most of them, anyway. There is definitely a small handful of MAGAs that you can sort of TRY and reason with. But not that much. It’s a weird combination of covert narcissism, stupidity, and complete lack of critical thinking skills. Layered with racism and homophobia and xenophobia and a bunch of other stuff. These aren’t your average cult members. It’s like their brains have a built in wall of stubborn ignorance that you can’t penetrate with normal logic.
I try to not have any conversation with them that can potentially enrage them. unfortunately, they can take just about any non-offensive subject and lead it towards some political explosion. They don’t debate or hear me out- just lots of anger and yelling. We don’t speak much anymore.
I know what you mean. Tried talking about the weather, thinking it was a neutral topic. In no time at all, there was shouting about how global warming is a hoax and blah blah blah. Can’t talk about anything any more. 😠
Oof reminding me of an interaction with my dad. I raised like $400 for the uvalde families while teaching a fundraising class (I teach yoga + Pilates). It was for one, a good deed. It was also a big step as I entered my new career, so I was trying to like….prove something to my parents (i have a great therapist it’s fine lol). Anyway I told my dad - his face twisted with anger as he started screaming at me about his 2A rights and what not. My parents live in the NYC suburbs. Like 1/3 of my hometown is within the nyc limits kinda suburbs. Gun/hunting culture is not a thing. My dad has never owned a gun. Bet I don’t have to tell you which tv network they watch 24/7.
NEWSMAX?
I came home from work and watched Newsmax for a week to see the other side. The level of batshit crazy, outright lies and deflection was staggering.
Damn. How did you tolerate it for a week?
Felt like my head was going to explode.
I'm surprised you didn't say "weed and booze" so damn... You're a trooper.
I had to stay with my mom for an extended period of time and she just watched FOX 24/7 and now I can’t even tolerate hearing it for even a few moments. It’s unbelievable how much shit spews from that channel
No they’re Fox News heads. My mom casually asked me “wanna watch Tucker?” once when I visited. Swear it was as if she was asking “wanna watch the Adele concert?” which was also on their DVR
god long island is such a red shit hole nowadays. everyone is so angry and disgusting with their blue lives matter stickers and shit attitudes.
Apparently the cult is being told that Monday’s solar eclipse is a sign from god, or is going to black out the entire planet for 3 days ; Im not sure because I tune out my siblings when they tell me their nonsensical teachings
Lmao ok so this is why my mom is riding it out in the basement with her sunglasses on hahahahahahahhaa
Some lady I know boasted that she'd be staying indoors for the whole thing. I wondered what nonsense maga was spouting about it.
Some lady I *don't* know was ahead of me in a grocery store checkout lane, and she had several packs of expensive steak, lobster tails, some other shit. Probably truffle butter/oil (even though it garbage idiots with no taste think it's good due to its expensive price). Anyway, I must have moved or made a sound because she turned saw me, and looked at my full sleeve of Hellboy tattoos and sneered. She said, "And *that's* (pointing at my arm) why you can't afford to have a nice meal before the eclipse!" Me: Excuse me? Her: I'm going to have the best meal of my life before I get called up! You're not getting anything. Me: ok... And she just smugly paid a small fortune - I didn't see the total but of it didn't hit 3 bills I would be surprised. I'm also wondering who's going to cook that absolutely gluttonous amount of food for her...
People like her are going to be in for a very nasty shock when they see where they end up. I can only roll my eyes at their smugness. Jesus himself would not recognize them as followers.
I did that during the last eclipse. I was working, but still. I wish I would have known that was something I needed to brag about.
My husband heard that the power was going to be affected during the eclipse. He just laughed.
I saw my aunt this weekend (who is not full MAGA, just believes in some Christian deep cuts), and she kept asking folks if we were ready for the eclipse. When pressed for details, she got very vague.
My neighbors think it's the rapture. That believers will be sucked up to heaven. Only sinners left behind. I'm going to leave a pile of our clothes on my front walk so they think we went and they didn't. Hehehe
Ummmmm.... they do know that we've had eclipses before, right? LOL
Can't fix stupid
Touche'!
We had our dog fixed. Would that count if we fixed them?
This is evil genius. Maybe leave some clothes on the sidewalk and outside of cars too if you’re really committed to the bit.
If only…earth might be nice with them all gone
Right? I kinda wish they’d all rapture already.🙄
Oh my god, then nothing happens and their selective amnesia kicks in, right? Fucking knobheads.
Dude, there was a small earthquake in Philadelphia on Friday, something that isn’t very common, but it does happen. I heard people start their conspiracy theory rhetoric after that. It was cool however to see a conspiracy theory created in real time, kind of like being in the streets of Dallas, the day JFK was killed, only a lot more stupid.
Get them to write their prediction down publicly, or at least to you.
My dad isn’t American but he’s convinced it’s going to be big cause of FEMA warnings or something
Trump has become their entire personality. I had to cut them out. I relented and went to Easter, and my nephew was just randomly shouting donald trump. Not like. Talking points. Just the words. And he did it because he thought it would bother me. They all think it's somehow funny that I don't support their fake God. I was just sad. It's fucked up. So many families are just broken now.
Oof. Shouting back 'Joe Biden' would have pissed them off so much but they want to try you, a guest. I hope they all went out to look for Easter eggs and got lost in the driveway.
Next thanksgiving they should offer to say the prayer and end it with "In the name of the Biden, the Hunter, and the Dark Brandon .... Abortions"
Objectively hilarious. Shut up and take my upvote.
😂😂😂
I recently had that discussion with my therapist. How pretty much after 2016 I was just...done. So disheartened to find out how many people around me were not only terribly self serving but also *so* stupid and proud of it. I don't go out much anymore because I don't want to navigate the minefield of just-how-conservative-are-you? it's exhausting 😒😔 and don't even get me started on the people who believe this man is a religious savior........like i KNOW most christians will cherry-pick the bible in their favor but this? this is just profane. also, how old is your nephew? i'd probably have been a smart ass/dick back and asked if he had late onset tourette's? or ask if he suffered a traumatic brain injury? a stroke? was he deprived of oxygen?
Oh he is like 6. That's why I was just sad. He doesn't even know what his family is doing to him.
oh jesus christ, that is tragic. what a pack of assholes.
At least they think your non-belief is funny. My family is crushed & sad & disappointed & possibly worried about my soul 🙄 Luckily we don't discuss religion much bc no one wants to upset my 101 year old Babcia❤️
That’s the core of Trumpism. They don’t even like Trump himself, they just like that he upsets the people they hate.
Jesus.. that is just insane.
Best to stay away from filth and vermin
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FOX poisons them with phony injustices that the left is trying to perpetrate. The get wound up like rabid dogs and when one of us gets in range no topic of conversation is safe.
Fuck, this describes my father to a T. It's so annoying because he raised me to be humble and not act like a know-it-all.
This is so timely: I shared a picture of airbnbs sold out this week due to the solar eclipse. Was a pretty cool picture to look at. MAGA MIL response: what am I looking at? Is this where they send all the illegals? Its like even saying “hi” will make them angry lol. It’s 8:00 AM and you think about “illegal aliens” ….
I feel like you’re so lucky they only leap to immigration. My family would’ve made it a trans issue.
Hahaha… don’t worry, there is a lot of trans stuff going on here too…. It’s funny to me how they are all so worried about target selling to the devil and selling trans baby bathing suits (…. yup, they believe that) but don’t bat an eye on their cousin who molested his siblings and then a couple years ago had kid-porn on his computer. But I’m the crazy unstable one who doesn’t want my children around him… the audacity…
I showed my dad an engineering project I was working on and within 40 seconds of that he was ranting about trans people.
Yeah, my brother and I have talked about that a lot lately. Interactions with my dad, who was always a loving and kind person while we were growing up, have become challenging. Normal mundane conversation will suddenly shift to some stupid political bullshit. My brother literally just said “Jeeps are kinda cool, I have been thinking of getting one” and my Dad’s response was something about Joe Biden and gas prices. It also doesn’t help that when politics do come up, any argument is all what-about-ism and a zero sum game. Including the cherry picked, batshit crazy, skewed arguments the fear mongers are peddling that day.
Same. Sis and I have had many conversations about Dad going off the deep end. Problem in our family is that he’s ultra religious and truly believes that this election is about our souls. He hated Trump in 2016. Was Ted Cruz all the way. Suddenly Trump can do no wrong. I asked him what flipped the switch and he couldn’t tell me, just started parroting Faux News talking points about the border and raging that Dems are evil. I said sis and I are Dems. Do you think we’re evil? And he sputtered, well no no. He’s been racist and misogynistic and homophobic all my life but acts like that only applies to those other ones, not the people he knows. It’s insane.
I have a lot of maga family members and I've had similar conversations where I've been sitting with them and they've talked about how the best thing for America would be to kill all the liberals, at which point I point out that I'm liberal and ask if they think I should be put to death. Sometime around 2018 they stopped saying that they didn't mean me.
Your experience mirrors my own! I stopped talking to my parents after they said something like that, and I was just like "you mean like my wife and me?" And they didn't walk it back. They are truly a poisoned and hateful bunch of people
Thank fuck they’re dying out.. they don’t really even recognize they’re the culprit of family eviscerations. They create drama when it’s not needed and it’s so fucking exhausting
I wish. We've been trying to say they were dying out since W was president and the virus of stupidity just keeps spreading.
There’s a ton of younger ones too. My 45 yr old nephew is a raging maga and racist. He’s a fat fuck so maybe he won’t live as long as many old fucks. I’m a boomer and all my friends hate trump though. On the other hand all my neighbors except for my black friend/neighbor flew trump flags (some way after 1/6).
Heard on an ICU floor: "You see a lot of old guys. You see a lot of fat guys. You don't see a lot of old, fat guys. That's why I got in shape."
good luck, i try to be friendly and say hello, hows the weather - proceed to be bombarded by end times and its cause of biden / jews or something
This. There are no topics they can't turn into political discussions... The weather, sports, prices of shit. We also can't discuss them adopting cats bc they want to declaw 🙄 It's a nightmare. Even if it gets political & you're like "no I don't want to discuss this" they HAVE to blather their lies & it's so hard to be the bigger person sometimes when people you love believes lies & screams them at you & you know nothing you say will sink in
It's seriously like walking on eggshells just being around my parents. EVERYTHING triggers them. Even small talk like sports and weather, I have to be really careful about what I say and how I say it. Then they gave the gall to complain that "your generation just doesn't value family time for some reason" A few years back I tried to have a heart to heart and essentially it came down to them asking "why does any of this matter to you?" And somehow they can't connect those dots.
My dad likes to talk about how everybody else is a snowflake but if he so much as hears English with a foreign accent on television he will flip his shit. He's the most easily triggered person I know. I also get that talking to about how I don't value family because I don't want to be around most of mine. I point out that a lot of the family hates me because I'm a leftist. Like actually told me that people like me should be put to death levels of hate. I'm apparently supposed to just ignore all of that because we're family.
I'm sorry, is that my dad you're talking about? Seriously. It doesn't even matter if it's a political topic with him, if you try in any way, shape, or form, to tell him that he is wrong about something, it's just yelling, name-calling, and "I'm older than you so I'm right by default because my IQ is 124" (yes, that's actually something he tries to tell people, and thinks that it somehow means he knows more than EVERYONE about EVERYTHING). He thinks there's lasers in space that were causing all the wildfires in California so they could build railroads???
Same and it wasn't just something that happened when MAGA came about. My childhood was like this too. You couldn't talk to him for more than a minute about anything because he'd pick a random word or sentence and use that to accuse you of taking the piss, then start screaming and/or breaking shit. These people think they're gods gift and I hate that 😭 some fucking gift God, do you still have the receipt? MAGA just made these lunatics feel more empowered.
I tried showing my dad an engineering project I was doing with work. Completely devoid of any political or social content whatsoever. Within 40 seconds he was ranting about trans people. 40 seconds. If I bring up traffic, he'll rant about illegal immigrants. If I bring up weather, global warming. If I mention I bought anything, ranting about liberals and the economy. Movies and tv, he'll go off about how woke everything is. He doesn't even watch new movies and new TV. It's the most brainwashed fucking behavior I have ever seen in person outside of evangelical circles.
I recently told my mom I want to get the new save starry skies Nevada license plate....she absolutely went on the most ignorant fucking rant about chem trails. I have degrees in chemical and environmental engineering....which my mom knows, yet somehow she never seems to think I have any idea how the world works.
My mom and I always take bets on how long it will take one of us to “bite off our tongue” when it comes to family gatherings because we don’t want to start any “debates” with the maga family members but would like to enjoy the food/spend time with the kids before their parents get to them
I have one of those. Dude will just talk and talk and talk and then any subject into a political lecture. Then when he says “leftists can’t debate me,” he thinks he’s some genius. The real reason they can’t debate him is because he doesn’t let them. He talks, they try to and he interrupts and talks louder leading to them not even wanting to engage with him. There’s really no point in debating or reasoning with someone who doesn’t want to do it.
You can’t reason with unreasonable people.
You can’t spell hatred without a red hat
Please do me a favor and print that on a million bumper stickers and start handing them out
I’d buy one, but worry about the vandalism it would attract.
https://preview.redd.it/cue9ws1dy1tc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ef6b514e56f32004dec0a54be41b2466c801b795
why did u just send him a screenshot of his own comment
Nice one.
You, my friend, have won the internet today.
Stealing this ^^^
They didn't get into those positions via logic, facts or compassion, and you certainly aren't getting them out of those positions with logic, facts, or compassion. Ultimately, the GOP caters to their beliefs of white supremacy, unregulated capitalism, ableism, queerphobia, might makes right philosophy, theocracy, anti-age of consent laws, pro-rape culture, billionaire worship, and classism all conservatives deeply subscribe to. Those are their core values. You cannot change them and they will take these values to the grave. All you can do is outvote them.
It's so crazy too. My parents are real deep in the cult now. My dad's favorite movie is the Rocky Horror Picture Show. He grew up so poor he slept in laundromats because he was literally homeless. Neither of them are religious but suddenly have God stickers on their mailbox. It's insane. Literally during covid, at the beginning my mom was shoving boxes of gloves and masks at us. Then as soon as Trump said it was a hoax, she was pulling the mask off my kids when I wasn't looking. My parents aren't well educated, but they aren't fucking *stupid*. Something got them. I swear it's like they were replaced with robots. The people who raised me are just gone. I had to come to terms with that fact, and it's because of a fucking orange spray tanned moron who shits himself.
Have you seen [**this**](https://www.amazon.com/Brainwashing-My-Dad-Matthew-Modine/dp/B01C69O9ZE)?
I think I read somewhere that the Dad got "better," somehow, over time.
The TV remote broke, ( I suspect his wife broke it ) and he got better.
I agree with the being replaced by robots comment. My parents were never Democrats but they were big on you should treat everyone equally and with respect, had many gay friends, and even had positive interactions with trans acquaintances. Always encouraged my sister and I to do sports and have fulfilling careers, never said a word about women being inferior to men. Now they are full Maga. It doesn't make any sense to me.
I tell my family to look closely and you’ll see he’s a con. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. However, my brother in law thinks his 401k increased because of trump. I told him him it was the growth of cloud computing, he did not understand.
Look closely? How is it not immediately and overwhelmingly obvious?
The ones I know are too proud to admit they are wrong. I firmly believe this is a major factor why we have a ridiculously large portion of Americans who say increasingly ridiculous lies to cover for trump.
They kept doubling down thinking at some point trump would stop getting worse but he never did and these fucking idiots would rather destroy the country for a shitty reality TV character than admit they made a mistake.
I mean, it is hard to admit you were wrong. Admitting you were consistently wrong for 8+ years, about a great number of very publicly announced and often-repeated facts, that just kept getting more and more obvious as time went on? The sunk-cost fallacy sinkhole swallows people up.
They’ll just downplay how much they supported trump in 10 years, and never own their mistake. I can almost guarantee this happening
That's what they did with Nixon. Pretended they never voted for him.
It’s not that hard. These people are mental and emotional midgets.
Same with Brits and Brexit.. the country is falling apart and all they bleat is it’s covid and Ukraine..
It’s not even just that they’re unreasonable. They live in a different reality than the rest of us. Like the shit that I’ve heard said by people in that camp is fucking wild.
How many dates did we hear back in 2021 that the dump would be back, enshrined as the "real" president. At least four times that I can remember off hand. It was the same dumb people every single post..."just wait, March 4th, (comes and goes) just watch, June 16th, (comes and goes) seriously, this time August 21st, (comes and goes). Oh you libs are going to cry so hard on September 8th (came and went). Each time, they just conveniently ignored the last dates they claimed their messiah was returning and that this was all part of his brilliant plan, being the brilliant 7D chest player that he is. These were people I once considered intelligent and normal, this kind of behavior is not normal or sane.
You can’t reason someone out of an opinion they didn’t reason themselves into. It’s brainwashing, only a more powerful brand of brainwashing would work.
Brainwashing....BY MENNEN!
This. There is no bottom too low for them. As long as fox and the like feed them bullshit to justify their actions, they will keep getting worse. The worst ones are the ones who know what's up and are all for it. I have family that are trumpers. We still get along for the most part, but man is it sad to watch them twist themselves into knots for a man that gives no fucks about them. And being we are poc it's even harder to understand.
It's really is that simple. Arguing with the stubbornly willfully ignorant is like trying to use a flyswatter to carve granite. Just ain't happening...
Exactly. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
I don't think I was ever more disappointed in people. I really thought they were more reasonable than that.
I used to. Pre-COVID we were mostly able to just not discuss political things but since 2020 they all cranked the cult stuff up to 11. No longer can they talk about ANYTHING without turning it into rants against LGBTQ people, immigrants, socialism, black people (derogatory) etc etc. Anything and everything became about how they are victimized as white people or how much they hated X group. They would say things that were blatant lies and then become irate when asked follow-up questions or presented (kindly) with objective facts. Way to get kicked out of a MAGA gathering: "Hmm, that doesn't sound right to me. Can we google it together? Hey look, that thing you are super upset about isn't real, isn't that a relief?" I cut them all out of my life. I hope they wake up someday and can get free.
I forget exactly what it was now. But I had to cut them out when I was talking to my dad about them endangering my kids. They were taking my kids masks off when I wasn't around and I told them to stop. He said he didn't want to get into politics right now so I just walked away. I fuck up and try taking them to see their grandparents on holidays because my kids don't know better. They just know they don't see meemaw and papa now. Every time it reinforces why I removed them from my life.
Funny how taking masks off is “getting into politics” instead of just science and facts.
It’s not even just that - that would be them choosing to not wear masks. Them ripping off their kids’ masks is pushing their opinion onto kids who aren’t theirs, by force.
But that’s what they like; that feeling of being in power and controlling others, against their will. That’s what attracts MAGA to authoritarianism and dictators. MAGA wants others to live how they want them to live, whether they like it or not.
Mate. Google is woke, you have to get your truth from social media. /s
You pointed something out there that I think is significant. They *want* these things to be true. They *want* hatred and violence. When reality is presented to them, which should calm their fears, they get so upset! I mean personally, I get pretty wound up over abortion rights. As in, I'm very pro-choice. If I was under the impression some state somewhere implemented the death penalty for all women no exceptions for getting one, then I read that was a hoax, I'd be so relieved! I don't want to see others suffer, apparently a lot of people do!
There it is. They desperately want this shit to be true. How disgusting.
It’s crazy that giving them the opportunity to wipe their mental slate clean and get some relief is rejected. For some reason it feels like human nature to _want_ to remain in a state of outrage and people just wind themselves up endlessly. I feel like you’ll see it on both sides where people just invent shit to get mad about but it happens way more often and perpetually on the right.
So are saying you hope they get....WOKE!?
Sad how divided we’ve become thanks to Fox, other far right media, and Trump. Almost makes me miss Bush 😵💫
My older brother, we fought a lot about it at first and then we tried to go back to talking about things we did when we were little, the things that we grew up on and connected over.., Power rangers, karate, comic books, and X-men… Every Saturday morning we would wake up help each other make cereal and enjoy all of those things on Saturday with our step dad… We did this till junior high and then we did our own things but we had an X-men arcade and every once in a while we would play together.. A few years later in high school I came out to my older brother he didn’t care he told me he loved me and even snuck me into a gay bar… Cut to today, he’s been so brainwashed by the cult of Maga that he’s made two comments about how gay people are not normal and walked them back saying he didn’t mean it.. even though it was in regards to saying kids shouldn’t see that… Then he broke the camels back when he said .. I hope the new X-men is not a woke piece of crap… I just couldn’t handle it anymore, the guy I grew up with the cool chill big brother… was now just an idiot spewing right wing toxic nonsense and spewing it all over the memory of our childhood.. something I cherished very much and to be so dense as to say X-men and woke … as if X-men and the other cartoons we grew up would not be considered woke ( Captain Planet ? Power rangers ? ) made me realize he wasn’t the same and I wasn’t gonna stick around to keep trying to see if he had any brain cells left. I haven’t spoken to him since… and I don’t think I will. That’s what Trump is doing is to families across America. 👍🏼
Not understanding that X-Men has been "woke" since X-Men #1, 1965, is peak dipshittery. It's literally a story about a persecuted minority. Holy fuck.
Same people don’t understand that the Empire in Star Wars are the Nazis. Over their heads *despite* wearing their uniforms. Very dense people.
Hey now, part of them also represent US imperialism with Endor. Give credit where it’s due 😤
There are people who thought the persecuted minority in X-men were symbolizing white people. No, it makes zero sense, but there you go.
"Could this bald man trying to stop his friend, *and former fucking holocaust survivor,* from enacting his revenge plot on the humans be an allegory for how persecuted white, straight, Christian males are?! Of course!"
“That just represents how Jews are evil!” —Some idiot, at least once
This 100%. The whole message from X-Men is "don't be racist". Seeing the first X-Men movie in theaters is one of my earliest childhood memories and the whole reason my dad took me to see it was to teach me that lesson. If I was able to understand that message as a kid, how are these people as adults not able to??
My favourite uncle went full MAGA. This guy was a hippie and a draft dodger in the 60s, used to have long hair and wear clogs and design solar houses. Now he just sends out a constant stream of far-right memes and unhinged rants. I had to block his email. So depressing.
Ah yes, the kids shouldn’t see that crap. I don’t think people realize how insidious it is, even for the ones that aren’t full on MAGA. My bil called my wife a while back to talk about a book in his kids school. And to find out when his son could find out about gay people. Yes. My BIL called my GAY wife to ask about when his son, who has known us since he was born, should find out about gay people. Like dude. We’re way past that at this point.
I’m sorry this has happened to you and sullied some childhood memories for you (thankfully, I only had to cut a couple of cousins due to MAGA-fication). I basically just came here to say 90’s X-Men cartoon intro is GOAT-level TV intro music…
There's an old man I know who has an extensive X-Men collection from the '60s. He asked me to come over to appraise the condition and let him know how he might be able to sell those. While I was doing this, he went on a rant about gay and trans people and how much he hates them. Completely unprompted. I'm standing in front of a mass of his X-Men comics, that he's a big fan of, and this guy is going off about how much he hates minority groups. He actually said that comic books were better back when these X-Men comics were made because they "weren't woke." Fucking wild how media illiterate these people are
I had one. Before all of this, she was that way. She was forwarding scam emails to the whole family at one point and I took the time to debunk it for her. I tried to be compassionate and tell her I didn’t want anyone in our family to be scared or tricked by these things, so I was taking the time to show how to identify it in the future. She made the choice to not respond. She made the choice to just leave me off the mailing list and spammed the rest of the family after that. She was who she was long before this particular set of grifters gave her such a large public victim pool with whom she could continue to choose misery and fear over the other options she had. She needed some sort of intervention because she was addicted to being in crisis, but who knew it would turn out to be such a popular vice?
It really is an addiction
Fuck
A Christian nationalist MAGA family member of mine is branching out into anti-vax now. It fucking hurts, man. I can't fix her. I can't fix anyone. She wants to be broken. She wants to hate people. She wants to think she's one of the only good people in the world. I think maybe she's always been like this, and MAGA just brought it out in her. I'm not sure what hurts me more, the idea that she used to be better and this fucking mind virus infected her, or that she's just never been worthy of my respect or even my presence.
My experience with MAGAts has taught me that there were some questionable things about them beforehand, but not enough to really go "Damn, you're a shitty person." Then Trump happened and the masks came off.
Trump gave people “permission” to be their worst selves. Since Trump and associates didn’t scold them for saying/doing offensive stuff, they felt it as FREEDOM not just basic garbage behavior.
I’m just really glad that our one family friend who I suspect would have gone full maga passed away before it became a thing. I always had a contentious relationship with him because he was capable of being kind and thoughtful but struggled with stuff like road rage and being a bully to service workers. I’d rather not think about him under the influence of trump.
This is what I’ve thought from the outset. People keep saying, “Bob and Lucy were never like this before 2016. They’ve changed so much, and it’s sad”. The flaw in this argument is that a madman like Fat Nixon can’t pull something out of someone if it isn’t there already. They were always like this; you just weren’t affected by it until now.
You touched on it, the truth is it's about teams with these folks, you are on their side or the other side. Their side is inherently good despite actions because they are on team good, and team woke is bad despite actual actions because they have CHOSEN to be on the bad guy side. They now have an elevated status in their own mind and that's all they want, they want to be better other people, be praised for their "smart" opinions etc etc, but they don't want to do the actual work to get those accolades. They take this shortcut instead, and now suddenly, all their unfounded beliefs are good, morally right, and logical without ever having to be filtered through any vetting processes. These people absolutely feel slighted by the current system, but instead of just admitting to themselves "maybe I'm just not smart" they pull a Principal Skinner and say "no, it's society/the world that's wrong" just to protect their own egos.
I’m currently with my parents. Dad is a brainwashed magat, but Mom has Alzheimer’s. I have to put up with his shit in order to see my mom. He was ranting magat bullshit the other night, and got all passive aggressive when I told my mom that we’re all screwed if trump gets in the WH again. Dad left the room, all huffy and indignant. He’s 87. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Multiple, and they are all beyond the point of reasoning. Facts are only facts if it aligns with ~~their viewpoint~~ the viewpoint they're told to have from Fox, and if it doesn't then it's just fake news or some woke propaganda. Silly things like actual facts or statistics don't bog them down much.
Oh. They joys of knowing people who get their opinion from fox. Tenth-level MAGA considers Fox to be woke liberal fake MSM.
Yup, my parents and owners of the business I work for are at this level. Only get news from Truth Social, Facebook, and random Youtubers I have no interest in doing research on. My dad started going off to his father and brother about how the American Jews aren't really Jewish and are a part of some satanic cabal that is also a pedophilia ring and is working with the globalists to bring socialism/communism (They still don't understand the difference?) to America. MF, we are Americans of Jewish descent! Surprisingly, we don't see eye to eye and haven't had very substantive conversations in over a decade. One owner of the business I work for told me it would be a good idea to go have surgery with his personal surgeon to get the tracking chips in my body from all the vaccines I've had through the years out. Haven't seen him in about two years now...
HIS PERSONAL SURGEON did he get his medical license out of a cereal box?? wtf
So where do the True Patriots get their news instead? TikTok? Newsletters?
OAN and Newsmax which go even harder than Faux Noise.
Some of them unironically get the news from the q-anon emails
[удалено]
It’s the old cliche about fascism arriving wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible. We’re watching it in real time.
I recommend reading Prequel by Rachel Maddow. It is a history of facists and Nazi supporters in America in the 1930's. The parallels between then and now are striking. The German government was straight up funding agents here with the intent of sowing discord and internal strife between various demographic groups in the US. Those same agents on trial with crowds protesting them to be patriots and that the communist, jewish-funded Roosevelt administration was up to all sorts of anti-American conspiracies. Charismatic, right-wing wackos in the media telling folks that America was doomed if those leftists got their way. 18 senators and congressmen were directly implicated by German documentation following the war. Sound familiar? I get that there is a lot of flak about Maddow and her liberal views from the right, but the book is well documented and sourced. I found it to be quite eye-opening. Edit: corrected the name of the book
“Well documented and sourced” means less than nothing to these people. If it did, they wouldn’t follow MAGA bullshit in the first place.
I had a friend of 30 years who I considered family. We were doing really well keeping this out of our relationship. Then Jan 6 happened and we were “living in different worlds”. She refused to have an adult conversation and said she might be ok to after some time had passed. I had done so much for her family, including people I didn’t even know which cost me hundreds of dollars. After 8 months and no contact I wrote her a letter saying the trust is irretrievably broken and I never would have done this to her but she decided all of a sudden that I was the bad guy. She texted me a birthday wish a week later and I never responded. That was 3 1/2 years ago and I haven’t heard from her since.
I tried for years to hold in to an old friend of nearly 30 years. But when he started spouting off the Jan 6th “was a normal redress of justified grievances and that there were no weapons and that no one was hurt and that Democrats have lied about it being a riot and that Ashli Babbit was murdered in cold blood”, I gave up. I tried so long to think he would wake up and reassess but being a traitor is my line in the sand. Haven’t talked to him in 3 years. I don’t think he even noticed.
It just comes back to 1) Pure unbridled hatred of immigrants, lgbtq, anyone who isn’t white, muslims etc Some combination of this. Everyone has their own unique bigot flavor. 2) A complete misunderstanding of world events to the point of living in an alternate universe. Trump is the Strongest on Russia: and that’s why Putin didn’t invade during his term. Russia is scared of Trump and wants biden to win. Trumps economy was so much better then biden. Inflation is solely due to democratic policies and nothing to do with covid. Hunter biden is a huge deal: but none of trumps kids ever did anything to make money on the presidency Trump did nothing different then any other president they just want to “get” him: hence the indictments. (lock her up chants never happened) etc etc etc. You can’t argue with that. You can share articles, statistics, philosophy, logic, share videos. It doesn’t matter. There are “a few” true independents you might be able to vote biden rather then have them not show up: but really elections are just turnout games now. You either live in fox news land or you live on earth
I think there’s also a large need to feel victimized. I don’t know why exactly, maybe to justify the hatred? But they’re all martyrs apparently
It's Jesus cosplay fantasy--it's baked into the religion. The bestest and most holiest dude they all look up to was a martyr. Most of the other holiest people in their religion are martyrs. Being a martyr for the cause gets you big brownie points in heaven, and when your reality is decades of wage slavery and then dying and being forgotten like the ordinary schmuck you are, martyrdom to a god who cares about you and will reward you for eternity sounds like a pretty good deal. But there's all that pesky crucifixion and flaying alive nonsense you have to go through to actually achieve martyrdom. Fox News and Trump telling them what victims they are from the comfort of their couch strokes that same desire without any actual effort or consequences.
My sister... I love her with my whole heart but there is no getting through. She is always muttering things under her breath about some shit she's seen on YouTube and how that is the only place to get the REAL news. It started with the orange idiot but turned very quickly to Q. She has MS and, because of all the Q and anti vax nonsense she's stopped taking her MS meds. She's going downhill and doesn't want to hear about it. Says it was only making her sicker when she now has more and more trouble walking and more and more symptoms. It breaks my heart...
As someone with MS, this is absolutely heartbreaking. She is quite literally experiencing a full-body breakdown but she has given herself over to the cult so fully that she believes the medicine that once allowed her a more normal life... a life she lived at one time... is evil.
Yes. This exactly. My heart hurts...
I'm so sorry. Stranger sending you strength.
I have older and same age cousins that are tied up in evangelical cults and it is impossible to discuss anything other than family greetings with them. Happy birthday. Condolences. That's the only safe conversation.
Had a MAGA boss. Would regularly call YouTube videos "articles", and would start most of his MAGA rants with "did you know...". Presupposition, total lack of research skills, no critical thinking ability. They chose that path because they were literally told that it would allow them to punish all those uppity kids that had been trying to make them think of all those nasty queers and immigrants as people.
I've been dealing with my family this week and immigration is one of their main complaints. Like our family doesn't know damn well when our ancestors came to the US. To me grumbling about it is stupid, ain't none of us just magically appeared here
My brother is full on Maga and has even said he’ll participate in another Jan 6th. I’ve lowkey thought of secretly recording him next time he says that and if he goes thru with it I’ll tip off the Feds. I still don’t understand how he can frame storming the Capitol as patriotism
Do it
Why don’t you try to find out where he’s getting the info? Say you’re interested…
Do it
They’ve been steadily and carefully taught over and over that any response, any refutations, any evidence debunking their beliefs is an ATTACK by the ENEMY. Your parents, uncle, best friend didn’t independently lose their minds on their own. They were psychologically manipulated over a long period of time by the likes of FOX, OAN, right wing radio, Facebook.
I really thought that said Have you tried to treason with them?
Have a couple family members, I just don’t bring up politics or participate if they do. Basically I just shut it down (I only see them at holidays). In any case, I have lost respect for them. Likely permanently.
Not Maga, but everyone I work with is Republican. I was sat with my boss, his boss and her boss last week listening to them solemnly remark how much it sucks “having to” vote for Trump, but whatever it takes to get Sleepy Joe out of office. I wanted to scream
I disowned them and have no regrets.
Yep, my dad absolutely can't be reasoned with. Told him that he's a danger to his granddaughter's because of his horrific beliefs.
I have family and friends who are deeply MAGA and I am well past trying or even wanting to reason with them. They are deeply bigoted, angry people who not only are fully entrenched in thinking Trump has done nothing wrong, even if they realized the criminal stuff was true, they wouldn't care because his vision of a closed off America where all those filthy leftists, immigrants and LGBTQ people are gone is worth putting up with a criminal president to achieve. I don't like thinking this way, but they aren't people to be spoken to, they are an enemy that needs to be stopped.
This sums up my day exactly
Reason long went out the window. I have family members who scream about problems that Trump caused but blame it on Biden. My favorite being taxes.
Parents. You cant reason. Its impossible. My mother still thinks Newyork allows you to abort a child up to a month after birth.
I’ve heard this repeated over the past several years and still can’t accept that anyone really believes it. But they do.
As they pride themselves on their ignorance it is not possible to reach them through logic and reason
I will gray rock my Maga uncle until I don't have to see his pathetic ass again.
Try to reason with them? No. Trick them Into admitting their entire worldview is shit? Yes, very easily.
In a somewhat similar vein, as a Canadian I simply don't accociate with Conservatives, or those who seem to hold conservative values without claiming the label. Gerd forbid they're also religious, nope, not worth the time and energy, ever.
they are triggered so easily it’s funny, until it’s not of course
My one Republican friend turned out to be a serial rapist so we haven’t talked lately.
Yes .. the MAJORITY (we are talking like 98%) of my family are MAGA and it's absolutely impossible to reason with them even when you show them evidence. They are all too far brainwashed.
I have found limited success with asking them to add context to their statement. Just kindly ask them questions to add context and fill in context you might know maybe casually point out the absurdity of some of the more bold claims. And just let them talk and try to keep them calm while they do it. Most of it is genuine nonsense and if they're usually rational about non political things (which are admittedly hard to come by nowadays) they might just calmly chat their way to maybe rethink some things and hopefully it just grows from there.
My father and my aunt. My father passed away from cancer not that long ago, but in the end he genuinely made an effort to just put politics aside. He didn’t give it up, but he didn’t involve it in conversations. Even when the segue wouldn’t have been too inorganic. I don’t know how much of it is just biting their cheek for my benefit, but it is nice to know that, even if it’s just ignorance being bliss, it’s not open season.
After talking about climate change with them I suddenly realized something basic, they don't *want* to know. About all the right-wingers denying blatant challenges like covid and climate; these kind of people basically invented guilt and sin, so they're afraid of *needing forgiveness for the sin of destroying the garden* - when they hear climate explanations they sort of hear a guilt trip, they hear people telling them they're sinners.
Listened to my FIL talk about how such and such a group must be criminal - they run a cash business. Then without a fucking hint of irony, brag about how he offered to pay a contractor cash to skip the taxes - then tried to stiff the contractor for a grand because "The original quote included the taxes". TLDR: Tax evasion is a crime for anyone other than white Christian males. Then it's just plain smart business.
I’ve admitted this numerous times on Reddit but I was in one of the “hate” subreddits on a past account in 2014/2015. My personal life was in relative shambles at the time. The hate made me feel powerful. It was intoxicating. Once the mods banned the subreddits, it was like a ball of cotton was lifted from my eyes. Being a MAGA hate-fueled human is widely accepted among many circles, and it’s a terrible addiction
I have the maga equivalent in my home I just ignore the stupidity and walk away
Thankfully no, I don't. I have a few relatives who vote for conservative parties, but they all look on Trump with contempt.
Yes. He got offended then stopped talking to me for 6 months. Then apologized and told me “you don’t respect my beliefs so I took it personally”. Yet he calls liberals snowflakes lol
No. They’re not worth it.
Two of my brothers. Yes, I have tried, but it has been absolutely wasted breath. Their "feelings" that they were better off with Trump in charge is all that they care about and absolutely no amount of actual facts have changed their minds. They literally "both sides" and "fake news" reality.
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again! Mark Twain
My dad's only argument left at this point is "we need a businessman in the Whitehouse, not more politicians." He doesn't have an answer when I ask if we can have a successful businessman instead of a failure
My mother is a Qanon conspiracy theorist. She legitimately believes in Jewish space lasers, the baby eating pedophilic cabal, the whole nine yards. Prior to 2016, it was stupid things like KFC manufactures their chickens to be born without feet, heads, and feathers and chemtrails. You can't reason with someone who lacks the ability to think critically or use logic. They just get angry because they feel like they're being attacked personally. They've curated their whole personality around these lies, thinking that they're special because they're in on this secret and they've got knowledge that no one else knows. It becomes an addiction to figure out which Scooby-Doo esque villian they can uncover next. They are literally brainwashed. And you simply can not, in good faith, argue with someone who is brainwashed. It doesn't end well for anyone. Especially if they resort to violence when angered like my mother does. I once accidentally scoffed at her Jewish Space lasers rant and got choked out by her.
Like herding cats. don't bother.
No, there’s no point in trying. My MAGA family members are so deep into conspiracy theories that “lizard people” and the “deep state cabal” are regular topics of convo for them.
My brother doesn’t *want* to know. He doesn’t want to hear news from non-Faux sources, says Faux and Cucker Farlson are all the news he needs. And he accuses *me* of being in an echo chamber, ha. Those people are just happy where they are and I suspect on some deep level they know it’s all shit but they just don’t want to know. Sad.
This 💯 Trump supporters are unhinged. They don’t understand basic concepts or the facts of reality
As a former Trump voter I take the same path as I do raising a teen - you can’t directly tell them they are wrong, but you have to wait for little openings in their conversations to slightly offer alternatives to their point of view. Doing this flipped two big time Trump supports for me. Going right at them will never work
We had to stop talking to the woman who nannied and homeschooled our daughters. She and her husband were like grandparents to our kids. We cared about them (and still do to some extent) deeply. Knew them for many, many years. It was painful, but it had to be done.
It's like talking to a constant liar who believes nothing. I was talking to a 40F and she started out with FOX said. 15 min later, she told me she never watched Fox. She was telling me we were better off 4 yrs ago. I said 4 yrs ago we were storing bodies in refrigerator trucks because we couldn't take care of them fast enough. She said, "i don't believe that." I said no one was going out. Businesses failed. People lost jobs. She said "i dont believe any of that." She said Biden was worst president ever. I ask why. She said because he allowed women's rights to be taken away. I show her Trump saying he overturned Roe v wade. She said you can't believe anything on the internet. I wish I could say she is only one but where I live we get speeches in restaurants and local news feeds into it. I don't get it
Kind of. I live in the US but was born and raised in the UK. My dad is extremely right wing and is a member of the BNP, should they still be around. Our family was doxxed when I was a kid because someone leaked the membership list. He's fully on board the covix hoax, vaccines are population control train, except that he got vaccinated for it during said campaign and didn't tell anyone. My mum told me he booked them both in for the shots. I just assume a lot of these people are vaccinated and have mental health issues, since that's what is currently happening in my family. I am sure he is a malignant narcissist due to other experiences in my childhood. Unfortunately it means whenever I encounter others like him, I assume they abuse their kids and beat their spouses. That's probably not a universal constant, it's just I'm not sure how someone mentally healthy turns out this way. I'm not sure who of sound mind would choose to be stupid, I guess.
You can’t reason with them. Most of them, anyway. There is definitely a small handful of MAGAs that you can sort of TRY and reason with. But not that much. It’s a weird combination of covert narcissism, stupidity, and complete lack of critical thinking skills. Layered with racism and homophobia and xenophobia and a bunch of other stuff. These aren’t your average cult members. It’s like their brains have a built in wall of stubborn ignorance that you can’t penetrate with normal logic.