this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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It's crazy becuase I went from radlib going into college to DemSoc coming out and now I'm floating between ML and Anarchism. They were Bushites and then when Trump became a thing, they both just hard pushed right. Both parents are extremely bigoted but I used to think my mom at least cared about some things. My dad has always been a sort of locked box(I think he's undiagnosed ASD) but my mom spent all of Trump's first term posting stuff about Trump and just misinfo all over. I spent a good long time trying to deprogram here via explaining why the misinfo was wrong, but she'd delete my comments or friends and family would attack me over it.
The one that stands out was the "no dems at Lincoln's Emancipation speech". I was explaining that this was befor the party switch-a-roo and that those that attended were progressives, not conservative, and that that was the lens that this should be viewed through. One of her friends was like "why can't she just post stuff without being attacked?" I was like, "she keeps posting easily debunkable shit?"
When George Floyd was killed my mom said "I'm glad he died." and was buying into the bullshit fent claim even though autopsy showed it was an insignificant amount. A few weeks before that I was out protesting at parks. It's wild how different we are now.
I could actually go on and on but just know my parents aren't great people. I'm no saint, but I feed the homeless and am currently working on organizing. My free time and energy is limited but I try to help out when and where I can.
I slowly moved away from them(and the rest of my family) but there was a big fight between me and my brother-in-law a few years ago on FB and it was the final straw. It was a very one sided fight too.
CW: suicide
So, I was suicidal at the time and was even planning on attempting again because I was in a very dark place. Autistic burnout for like 8 years straight, depressed over career not panning out, student debt, being a failure, undiagnosed autism, zero self care, etc. But I was causal posting socialist stuff on FB and for some reason out of the blue my BiL decided to pick a fight with me. First time even talking to me on socials and even in general. It started as a debunk war but after a while he would just start to attack me. So I'm dealing with suicidal idealation and getting bullied online. I eventually blocked him and I was the bad guy for it. But a year later he got my phone number from my brother and started shit again. I posted his number online and bitched about it some and I guess that started the Holiest of Holy Wars. My whole family pretty much started attacking me over it and I ended up nuking my FB account.After all of that, my mom will call every couple of months but the convo is always like walking on eggshells. She thinks the FB shit was just me and BiL fighting over dumb stuff or something but can't understand I was trying to check out permanently and it was compounded but the aggressiveness of my BiL's bullshit. But since then, I've been pretty much estranged from my entire family. I move further left and they all move further right.
When my parents came down to visit last, my mom was in my house for all of 5 minutes before she decided to make a dumb joke about the saw blades on the river at the TX border because "dumb Mexicans". Then she asked my then 6 year old son if he had a girlfriend.
The funniest thing I think, i that as I unpack my past more and more with my therapist, I realize that my family has always been shitty people.
Bonus: my brother claims he's a libertarian and went to prison for the thing that libertarians are memed on about so there is that.
Sorry if this reads a bit tangential.
I'm right there with you comrade
What do you do in these scenarios? I would seriously consider kicking them out; I have to fly to visit my parents and have changed my flights and left early because of comments like this. But I'm curious how others handle it.
For the racist joke, I just bluntly told her we don't do bigotry in this house. And when she asked my kid about a girlfriend, I bluntly asked her to not groom my kid lol. She acted like that was the offensive part so I replied with "He's fucking six years old. Ask him about Legos and Sonic."
This would just be the start of a bitter argument with my folks... no way I would be allowed to call their speech bigotry (accurately) without some huge defensive rant about "I would never treat them any differently face to face", as if being two-faced is a virtue
I'm extremely blunt to my mom. I have had my fair share of issues with her most of my adult life. So that and being in my house, I'm gonna set some rules out the gate. If they wanted to talk to me about disrespect, I can just kick them out of my house and tell them to have a fun drive back to Indiana from Texas. Waste of gas money to come all this way to be racist but it's their retirement