I’m meeting my grandfather for lunch on Friday. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen him in several years. He went all the way down the hate hole. Never heard him cuss but last time we talked he was using the N word.
He’ll be 87 soon. Most likely, I’ll never see him again. He’s going to find out we’re moving out of the south to yankee land.
Fuck it. He’s not the man I knew. He doesn’t have the wisdom I thought he did.
I hate it and it fucks me up. I’ve lost my people to hate and stupid. So fucking stupid. They all want to suck some orange cock. Fucking really? That’s your fucking Messiah? They didn’t actually fucking read the fucking book they claimed they believed in while shoving bullshit down my throat and the throats of any child they could get ahold of.
Fuck em. They could wake the fuck up if they choose to. They could read. They could think. I tried to tell them.
I’m real sad about it. Not a fucking thing I can do about it. They can live inside their lie holes.
Blackberry Winter has skipped two years. There are armadillos, geckos, and fire ants now. Those critters didn’t live here until things changed. The fucking woods smell and sound different now. They could wake the fuck up and quit listening to fox or their preacher but they choose not to.
I tried to tell them and they didn’t listen because they choose to be ignorant.
fuck em
I know where your coming from. My parents feel right down the racist conspiracy theory rabbit hole during Brexit and COVID. I was working in the hospital watching people and colleagues die regularly and my dad was telling me it’s just flu and all a hoax to scare people, they convinced my 90 year old grandma to not get the vaccine. We had a lot of fights. Eventually after a lot of reflecting I decided that having a relationship with my family was more important than winning an argument so now we just have a selection of topics I refuse to engage with, just say let’s move on and change the topic. I found it really hard to see the people who raised me fall into racist rhetoric and conspiracy theory thinking, these people taught me to be a good person and now have some glaring holes in their compassion for others. I struggled with that for a long time.
If it was drug use wed call this enabling. Family shouldn’t get a pass to be dick bags.
It is also caring for oneself/ their own wellbeing and sanity.
but just like being addicted to a drug, we can’t force them to stop. They have to want to change themselves. And if they don’t stop, what, we’re supposed to cut off our whole family? That won’t stop them from continuing to be hateful, but it will stop us from having a meaningful relationship with our loved ones. All we can do is make our values clear when they attempt to bring up any of their hateful BS, and then move onto something else.
Yup this is where I got to with them. Either I compromise my values to continue having a relationship or we eventually stop talking entirely as I continue to argue with their bullshit. The arguing doesn’t work, even appeals to emotion didn’t make a difference. I struggled for a long time with how these people who I held in such high regard could fall so far. They are just people at the end of the day and fell for the hateful propaganda on social media.
I had a similar experience. I was working in D.C. and had focused on Ukraine, of all things, well before it became an international talking point. As Russia got increasingly involved in U.S. politics via Trump, I found I couldn’t really share what I was seeing/experiencing first-hand, because back home, my family was actively falling for the same bullshit I was trying to scream about in D.C. It’s all been so surreal.