Can I accept them? Or can I tolerate them? These are different ideas. What does “accept” or “tolerate” mean in the context of say, exposing a virulently homophobic uncle to your gay son?
I think that I’ve tolerated a lot of political choices from my family, and I think that’s good enough. I think that by and large, there are questions that haven’t really been answered yet, and circumstances that have yet to be tested.
I guess there is also the question of whether or not your loved ones accept your political believes. [ETA] Which goes to your point about a homophobic uncle and your gay son… Is it okay to go to thanksgiving and let him make snide comments to your kid, for the sake of family ties? How long and how deep does that bashing have to go on, before you can call them out (and risk being called a bigot for doing so, because that almost invariable happens).
A lot of this is because reason and discussion in politics have been replaced by blind faith. Listen to Kennedy-Nixon. They might have differing opinions and probably weren’t big fans, but the could both discuss it, reason out their arguments, present them, expect everyone to listen and then decide the arguments they preferred and if the pros outweighed the cons. Because every politician has cons and pros.
These days, it’s my guy vs your guy and my team will defeat your team. Blind faith in the R or the D. Less evidence, more gut feelings. More truthiness than truth.
And, much like religions, I don’t have time in my life for a lot of my family’s blind faith in things.
Yeah, my parents voting for Brexit has been…difficult.
Last time I spoke to mum we somehow got onto the subject and I got the usual Torygraph nonsense about how the British always stick to the EU rules and pay up when the French and Germans just ignore stuff they don’t like.
I’m still furious about how they’ve limited their grandson’s horizons and I really have to hold my tongue.
This year’s a very different sort of animal than the usual “politics at the dinner table” arguments, though. Ten or fifteen years ago, if one of my uncles mentioned that he thought the Republicans had some good ideas, and we disagreed, it wouldn’t massively change my opinion of the guy because he preferred a different tax rate on the middle class, say. But it would severely impact my opinion of my relatives if I found out that one was an enthusiastic supporter of an actual, literal white supremacist.
I don’t know what’s worse, enthusiastic supporters or the ones I have, reluctant ones who kind of ignore the racist, sexist bits because it’s not part of the narrative that protects their guns or whatever. Willful ignorance.
Exactly, single issue voters who have one concern (guns, taxes, religion) and are somehow willing to take Trump’s word as gospel on that one thing but can handwave off everything else as “oh haha that’s all just silly politics” to justify their choice.
“They’re just saying everything to get votes! They’re not going to do all of that silliness! But, my thing: the thing I care most about, that’s where they’re being fully honest.”
Again, I kind of think the brutal “I’m excited about taking America back from the illegals, I hate Mexicans!” is someone I’d prefer to deal with, there’s a lot more honesty there.
This is the crux of it. By “accepting” and not challenging hateful beliefs, do you end up teaching your children that supporting them isn’t a top priority for you?
Another very common example: when you know a relative has committed sexual abuse and/or assault on other family members in the past, how do you justify bringing your own children to family events where they will be present?
Yeah this. The current crop just scares me. I don’t know how big an influence this rabid right (john birch, etc) had before, that is if it got this scary close to electing someone like Trump but man making Nixon look like a sane and rational choice is not a good thing.
And to go before my time there were Republicans like Eisenhower that would be branded socialist liberal demons by the current standards of the party.
In some ways the past few years I have been glad I live to far away to make the family reunions from what I heard from my father as more than a few have gone deep into Teapartycrazyland. It was bad enough biting my toungue in my high school days getting asked ‘So whats it like going to school with all the niggers?’ but now a days. Fuck that. I will not willfully on purpose put myself in that environment.
This isn’t to say that Democrats are perfect by any means, but I would venture to say there’s unquestionably a lot more of the “less evidence, more gut feelings” stuff going on in the Republican camp. Democrats aren’t the ones denying the existence of climate change, insisting that the government is lying about the unemployment rate (and even hurricane wind speeds), lying about the trajectory of the budget deficit, doing everything in their power to destroy a milquetoast health care law that originated in large part from Republican think tanks, destroying or dismantling protections for LGBTQ people, restricting access to voting based on provably bogus concerns about fraud, etc.
Polarization is genuinely not a “both sides” problem, it just manifests on both sides because Republicans have become unmoored from reality, which makes it hard to have substantive conversations with them. You may as well decry not being able to compromise with 9/11 truthers or moon landing hoaxers.
I didn’t want to appear like I was attacking anyone, because there is certainly a cognitive dissonance with some D voters as well. I’m not saying Romney was someone I’d vote for, but there’s been an awful lot of handwaving about drone strikes, secret kill lists for American citizens without trial, and Guantanimo still being open.
I like Obama, like, a lot. Even go as far as to say that I like-like him, but I mention some of his faults to people and they talk about how it’s not important in the big picture and we should be thankful for what we have instead of inspiring future leaders to be better. If you are unwilling to see that your own team has work to do in their candidates then it’s irrelevant if your’re R or D (or G or T or whatever) it’s a polarization issue.
All sides have their fringes. I’ve no doubt there’s many a Hillaryite who refuses to acknowledge that she fucked up on the email server thing the same way Trumpers refuse to acknowledge that there’s any racism. Again, it’s a faith, not a belief. But, I definitely do agree that right now it’s incredibly more weighted in the R camp. That has a lot to do with striving to create and win over low education voters however, where you don’t encourage them to do any free thinking or empathizing.
I think a lot of people on here have made some great points about what a persons political beliefs mean in terms of how they respect their fellow people.
On another note…how in the world could you be romantically involved with someone who doesn’t agree with your stance on reproductive rights… I mean stuff happens and that’s important
@SteampunkBanana and Obama sitting in a tree, G-O-V-E-R-N-I-N-G…
Goddamned straight, I’d get Guantanimo closed down and then Uncle Joe would take me for a ride in the Trans Am.
Because people always assume they can change the other person when the time came. That they’d see that the little bundle of cells/human and therefore would be clinical/emotional enough to Do The Right Thing.
People get married not having worked these things out. People still have abortions they don’t tell their partners about.
Rabid? No. But they do mock my religious choices and behavior to my face. That and repeat the libtard “explanations” for Jewish customs and Soviet inspired Arab propaganda to me.
I don’t like that but the fact is this person actually did do a good job raising me and I was a pretty difficult kid.
This hardly covers all cases; but there is the unfortunate reality of the various flavors of brain-rot that sometimes accompany aging.
That situation has all the ‘maintaining realistic expectation’ problems that dealing with children does; along with the grim truth that, unlike children, they are not going to grow out of it.
Is it possible you were a “difficult kid” BECAUSE you were raised by someone so unsupportive of you?
I was difficult long before this person came into the family. The person in question actually handled me quite well.
