I have 2 GOP parents, one that voted Trump originally and one that did not. Over the last 9 years, I have watched them both travel down the MAGA pipeline to become visibly fascist. The parents who taught me racism was wrong and to have empathy for others, have become openly hostile about immigrants, Muslims, and even parrot the Nazi “great replacement” theory.

Part and parcel with this, they refuse to have any discussions about the facts – like immigrants not stealing and eating people’s pets. They won’t hear it, they won’t even engage in the conversation…they just get angry and loud the second they hear anything that doesn’t fit into the Fox News narrative. Can you relate? How are you dealing with it in your relationships with your parents?

  • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
    3·
    19 hours ago

    there’s entire swaths of the US where it can be dangerous to even believe otherwise because everyone around you has their beliefs so intertwined with beating their enemy (communists/the left/atheism, etc.) that at best, you will lose your family, your friends, all your support networks, and at worst, you’ll have the devil beaten out of you if you even entertain leaving.

    If there’s something that religion has refined more than anything else, it’s giving people a ‘group’ to belong to that very easily erects a wall against anyone who isn’t in the belief system. The mormons weaponize it, jehovah’s witnesses use it as a ball-and-chain, the muslims use weapons (and honor killings) to enforce it, christians (in america) have the social groups that are only loosely tied to the church and should be completely independent wrapped in the silk of a few powerful members of both and use the soft power of withholding charity to keep people in, (zionist) jews have israel… it’s all sickening.