Hey all. Getting right to it:
Last November, a majority of my wife’s family voted trump. I immediately made known my disgust and that I had no interest in maintaining relationships with any of them. My wife is equally appalled, but family is important to her and she chooses to compartmentalise it for the sake of their relationships. That’s her call. Typically, her mother comes to stay at our house for an extended period as we live far away, and this year I tolerated her being here for the sake of my wife.
But now, thinking about the next visit and how bad things have gotten, I can’t even stand the thought of having her in my house, let alone being in the same room as her. I really don’t want her here at all, but I will again tolerate her for my wife’s sake. However I think it’s likely that I will make myself pretty scarce during that time.
So the ethics question is - given that I expressed my distaste after the election but still remained cordial, is it ok, ethically speaking, to become more resentful as the consequences of their actions become more apparent? Or, given that what has happened since is pretty much out of everyone’s hands, am I locked in to the level of hostility I showed immediately after?
I guess the distilled version is - a person does X, I express disapproval. Is it ethical to express MORE disapproval as additional unforeseen consequences of X become apparent?
Thanks for your thoughts!
Edit to Clarify - My mother in law is not MAGA and I don’t think she’s enjoying any of it. She thinks we can “just not talk about it” and everything will be fine. However she has become more racist and judgemental (anti-trans etc) in recent years. Hates Joe Biden and Kamal Harris but can’t or won’t say why. Thanks for the responses so far and I’ll try to respond, but I’m about to start work shortly.
Disclaimer: I’m not American so will never understand your culture towards politics as well.
I don’t think it’s fair to point at every bad thing Trump has done so far and say that’s the fault of your MIL for voting for Trump. The way I see it as a non-American, Trump did say he was going to be a racist xenophobic piece of shit on his election campaign, but the media heavily downplayed this, and Trump still tricked and lied to everyone. Politics is weird like that: you can theoretically campaign on one thing but then throw everything out and do the opposite once you get elected.
Hating Kamala and Biden is a fair opinion to hold as well. I consider a vote for them as picking the lesser of the 2 evils, rather than voting on what’s best for America, because both parties seemed awful to me (a non-American).
I think it’s important that you try to at least understand and empathise with why your MIL voted Trump in the first place. You were very light on those details in your post, which I suspect is because you’re very quick to judge someone based on who they vote for.
Maybe she really hated one policy from the democrats so voted for Trump? Maybe she bought all the lies Trump told during his campaign and regrets her vote strongly? Maybe she’s a single-issue person who voted for Trump because of one policy and ignored everything else?
I don’t really appreciate the way this comment equivocates the openly racist adjudicated rapist accused pedophile Trump with Biden and Harris.