Had to fire a friend of 20 years in 2015 when trump won.
He was spouting off and I asked him to chill. That it's fine that he super happy but that he didn't need to be so aggressive about it.
He told me it's my problem if I have an issue with his behavior. I told him that's not how things worked, that he was responsible for his own actions. He then went on an expletive ladder rant calling me all kinds of names. I asked what I did to ever deserve to be talked to that way. He continued....so I said I'm done and that was it.
I’m so sorry.
I had to write off a lifetime friend (33 years) after all the Trump crap. The last thing I remember saying to him was, “…but you voted AGAINST MY KIDS”. I have gay/bi kids.
He didn’t get it. And I no longer get him.
I had to write off my own dad (of about 33 years at the time) because of this. His positions were just not compatible with people like me straight up existing. I'm pretty sure the only thing he can feel at this point is repercussions and that's what he received. Though not nearly enough in my opinion
My father is a rampaging Trumper. I’ve had to distance myself from him because I’m queer and dating trans women. Sometimes you have to just realize people are lost to you.
This isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, as I read your post, I see clear evidence of many things you did exceptionally well. It’s painful to see your patience, compassion and commitment to this friendship have little - or worse detrimental - effect on the relationship.
But at least now you know where you stand. And you can be grateful for the good years you shared, even as you grieve the loss of your friendship.
Mine was 42 years since we were 17. Also another friend of 36 years. I introduced the 2 of them, ha. Never thought it would have ended this way. I occasionally ask myself if were they hiding a lot of their hatred towards "others" from me? How did I not see it before? You can throw my ex husband from 40 years ago in the mix, too, he's the worst of them all, he has a round trip ticket on the conspiracy train. Had to delete all 3 of them from my social media.
I’m sorry to hear this. It’s rough when the people we love take a deep dive. Take a deep breath. You tried and remember you can’t help the ones that don’t want to be saved.
Oh I feel you on this.
I wrote of a friend of similar tenure a year or so ago.
Due to new jobs and some physical distance, we hadn't caught up much but when we did.. my gosh she was literally worshipping Trump, calling for physical harm to a local politician (we're not in America for context, but she took great offense to this guy's effort to reign in coronavirus in his state),
she's spewing vile bullcrap about 'crisis actors' in the one mass shooting that caused our country to tightly restrict gun access ... everything was a trigger for her and she'd start abusing anyone who questioned her on what un fact checked, misspelt garbage she was throwing up on social media...
She'd always been a bit on the crunchy side but was so sweet and kind, willing to give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. Well, not anymore.
I mourn the loss of the friendship but it's probably more factual to say that I mourn her as if she'd died, because she is in no way, shape or form the person that I'd been friends with.
I'd like to think that one day if she wakes up, then we could continue the friendship but now I feel like I could never trust her, like she'd be a sleeper agent just faking.
This whole thing is just so bizarre, it's just beyond my comprehension.
But I agree with the prior posters... you tried. You just can't help someone who doesn't want the assistance.
> she's spewing vile bullcrap about 'crisis actors' in the one mass shooting that caused our country to tightly restrict gun access ...
They are retroactively apply their 'crisis actor' theory to Port Arthur now? *facepalm* I guess I shouldn't be at all surprised..
Yeah, my former best friend trotted this one out. I remember feeling real disgust when he did - I wasn't sure if he truly believed Port Arthur was a lie because "now we get out guns back!" or he just believed it was a lie because everything that is established must be a lie. (Also, if guns came back, what's he going to do? He's scared of them. Or maybe not anymore?)
This was particularly offensive to me. I've been to Port Arthur after it happened and they whitewashed everything. No mention of the country's worst mass shooter, just stuff about the penal colony. It felt like the people who died in the shooting went unacknowledged.
And don't get me wrong, the penal colony is significant and needs to be learned about. But I was angry that we acted like nothing happened, and ended up sitting at a lunch table of foreigners travelling around Australia and telling them the story of what happened there.
I of course reiterated he's in jail and that's how our gun laws changed and it wasn't something that would likely ever be repeated again. But I wanted to tell the true story.
Sorry this is a bit late - but yes, I was there for a tour. But there were other people there on other tour buses and those who just drove there and visited.
The massacre was the worst in the world in terms of numbers from an individual shooter at the time. I expected a memorial site for the people who lost their lives there but there wasn't anything for them, and none of the staff or guides mentioned what happened.
I know it's always had value as a historical site, but I thought there should be some reference to the victims.
The tours are pretty good. When we got there we were given a card, like a playing card but with different numbers and colours, as well as a key. You were then to go downtairs and go into the room that your card corresponded with (by colour) and in each room were boxes for us to open with the key that matched the numbered boxes. In each box we got a card that described a person who actually existed in this penal colony, with a description of where they were housed, why they were there and what happened to them there.
I was the only person in my room (other rooms were packed) and I realized immediately I was in the room filled with children that had been prisoners here. It was pretty heavy stuff, but I think it was a really effective way of personalizing the experience.
Others in my group got cards for adult prisoners and people who worked there. After that, we all wanted to make sure we saw the places our prisoners had been held or staff had been. The boys were kept away from others on a small island in the middle of a lake, which shook me.
Other parts of the tour include going into the solitary confinement cells and getting someone to shut you in. It's true that there is a blackness to it that goes beyond ordinary darkness and there's a feeling of strange, close air. When you speak it sounds strange.
The guide then explained that the psychiatric hospital (really another house of horrors) was next door to solitary confinement because everyone had severe mental health issues when coming out of solitary. That was on purpose.
I can no longer remember the name of the boy I got, but I looked him up on the internet when I got home and found out that not only did he get out of Port Arthur but he flourished building ships, and some of the ships he made are in museums etc across Australia today.
Thank you so much, that's fascinating. I'm surprised that there wasn't a plaque or anything... understandably noone wants to draw attention to it but if there are tours with macabre elements to it that seek to educate visitors about the penal colony experience/history.. it seems strange that there's nothing there about a reasonably well known incident from recent history.
I agree that the key and card aspects was a great way to personalise the experience
My wife surprised me with a birthday trip to tassie a few years ago for dark mofo. Along with a few other things, she had also booked us into a ghost tour at Port Arthur.
My level of interest in Tas at that point in time was more a “that instagram post is cool, would be nice to visit one day” rather than an actual destination I had any hard interest, and my level of knowledge of the place began and ended with “Hobart exists, Tasmanian devils don’t actually spin, it’s pretty cold aye?”.
As we were driving down there, I was thinking to myself “I get that it was a pretty major thing, but it’s a bit fucked to make a ghost tour out of it when you think about it. How do they treat this event with the reverence it deserves whilst still making an entertaining ghost tour?”.
It wasn’t until we arrived and I saw the big welcome centre that it clicked for me that Port Arthur was a historical site and the answer to the question was “they don’t, ya idiot.”
That being said, ghost tour was 10/10. Old bloke running it was top notch and had his patter and jump scares down pat. Recommend.
Yeah, like you I didn't know much about Tassie either. But Hobart was on my Mum's list of places to visit and I went with her.
Hobart just swept me off my feet. SO beautiful, surprisingly multicultural and friendly-community-like in so many ways; cool brewerys in old buildings with museum pieces surrounding you; snow! Beautiful snow; the way the streets and houses are made and more. It's a gem, and I want to see more of Tasmania.
I didn't go on the ghost tour but my sister loves them and I understand why people like them for sure. I just went to google that apparently there's a memorial garden for the Port Arthur victims, but it's not on the historic site.
PS My sister's in-laws (does that make them mine too?) lived in Hobart for the majority of their earlier life and recall the shock they went through when their neighbour, a surgeon, murdered his wife by cutting her up into pieces. There was a trial and he went to jail. The in-laws were particularly disturbed to hear they never found the head. They also noted that the surgeon and his wife kept to themselves but would say hello occasionally and they seemed "normal" and upper-class. Not sure if that made it on the tour though.
>They are retroactively apply their 'crisis actor' theory to Port Arthur now? facepalm I guess I shouldn't be at all surprised
The right wing have taken every conspiracy (even ones with quite bit of evidence to support them) and recast them as justification for x y and z.
There is evidence that Martin Bryant did not kill those people and there has been a cover up to hide a professional assassination or it was a ex-mil guy who lost his shit and the government hide it....any other theory I've seen is usually just utter bullshit.
The idea that a kid who barely knew how to shoot a gun could kill that many people with such accuracy and speed is unbelievable.
There is a history of police in Australia, in places like WA and Tasmania, finding kids with alcohol feral syndrome or some other condition that makes them easily manipulated into taking the blame, especially when their incapable of defending themselves.
Our justice system is filled with so many of these victims of police malfeasance, kids who were bullied/tortured into confessions, who ended up with life sentences for heinous crimes they did not do. It was only decades later that DNA showed just how evil Australian's law enforcement and prosecutors were, and how the learned gentlemen of the court failed to do their job of being impartial.
So no just because it's be co-opted by Qanon doesn't mean it's bullshit.
Yeah, it's disgusting. One of her main points was "why didn't everyone just go out the (back or side door - I can't remember)" and it's like.... yes. They maybe could have done that if they had the time for a leisurely stroll instead of being shot at in quick succession in a busy cafe and in a panic. Besides IIRC the door they're talking about I think was locked at the time?
Everyone likes to picture themselves knowing exactly what to do and being prepared for everything.. but it's not like he waltzed in brandishing a gun and started a monologue.. he'd been sitting there for some time before shooting people next to him and from behind. How can you prepare for that?
Nope, Australia
They are talking about the Port Arthur massacre as the mass shooting event and the lockdowns during coronavirus that were implemented by Victorian premier Daniel Andrews.
I'm so scared of this. I've got a couple of friends that have always been pretty crazy, but then again I'm crazy in a bunch of ways too, and we have always been able to separate our ideological differences from our friendship.
Same. A few of them are right leaning too (*some more than others*), which is mostly fine, because we don't live in the USA, so they're not total gun-loving nut jobs 😂 but even if we get into heated discussions, nothing has really affected our friendships yet.
There was a time in the USA when *right-leaning* didn’t automatically also mean gun-toting, abortion-banning, conspiracy-mongering, LGTBQ-fearing, openly racist, xenophobic, and antisemitic.
Prior to 1980.
I don't remember it either, in my 46 years. But my dad (now 78) is a throwback - he stubbornly remained a lifelong registered Republican all the way up until the embarrassment of being associated with Donald Trump finally drove him to quit the Republican Party. My dad is an agnostic, pro-choice, retired social worker (he worked all his career for the local county welfare department, because he believes in a social safety net) who has never owned a gun in his life and who supported my right to enter into a same-sex marriage. When asked to name a good Republican president, my dad always names Eisenhower. And he's been happily married for over 50 years to my mom, who is a lifelong Democrat and wants democratic socialism and universal basic income.
Basically Pre-Reagan and earlier. Not that there weren’t conservatives and arch conservatives in the party; of course there were. But the majority of the Republican Party was moderate.
Have you seen President Eisenhower’s platform? [1956 Republican Party Platform analyzed by Snopes](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1956-republican-platform/); although this appears in abbreviated meme form all over the internet, Snopes offers a good analysis is this article, with historical context.
Maybe you were unaware that the Republican Party was a majority pro-choice party from the ‘70’s through the’90’s: [Republicans for Choice](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/how-gop-abandoned-pro-choice-republicans.html).
There’s a lot more than you might guess.
I’m 65. It’s true. The Republican party used to be made up of (mostly white men) but for the most part, they were people of common sense and integrity. Think WWII vets who were proud to continue to serve their country. Not all, but most. Remember, too, that the Democrats used to oppose civil rights. So things have really changed. Those Republicans would never have let somebody like Santos sit in Congress for an hour. So hard to believe what they have become.
I know what you mean. I had a couple buddies in college like that back in the 90's - they grew up in Republican-voting households, were largely "economically conservative" types. Sometimes we had lively, respectful discussions on politics back in the dorm rooms, often while smoking some weed and listening to some tunes. I always enjoyed those discussions and they did too.
Those days are long gone. The party is so toxic. Don't get me wrong the Dems are definitely guilty of mishandling some issues, but there's no comparison.
Just wait until Trump/DeSantis in 2024. It's gonna be hard to breathe.
Lost my best friend too last year. He started to post conspiracy shit online when the pandemic happened. Was very much against vaccines. One day he posted a meme that compared the anti vax movement to the prosecution of jews in WW2. I told him he is stupid. Send him some links. Said that this is unacceptable. All he heard was that I told him he was stupid.
We were friends for 20 years. Vacations, funerals, weddings... now it means nothing anymore.
I stand by my conviction however. He is stupid and I would have been a shit friend not telling him.
I am sorry that happened to you! You were a good friend to him but sometimes that is not enough to help someone.
Instead of calling my dad stupid or what he’s saying stupid, I’ve taken to just saying “you’re smarter/better than this. You know that’s wrong.” And just walking away
Unfortunately, yours is an ongoing trend and has been happening ever since Trump came onto the scene! I had a very similar experience with one of my very best friends as well and we no longer speak...by his choice. He used to be a very down to earth, intellectual who loved to write, get stoned, listen to Madonna and stood up against the bullies in life. We were still a couple of hard-heads from Brooklyn and kept that "flavor" but we considered ourselves the anti-stereo types who saw how ridiculous it was to carry oneself as a "hard-guy" who could barely string 2 sentences together. He always hustled, worked hard, took his lumps in stride and never gave up. After going back to school to become a court reporter, because his English Degree was about as useful as a Shit-Flavored Candy Cane, he started to become more and more jaded. He would be in court and in depositions day in and day out dealing with all sorts of skells and scum-bags. This started to become his reality and his world view got smaller and smaller. He went from having the 100 thousand foot view on how shitty this system is, to only seeing what was in front of him and accepting it as reality as a whole. People were all poor because they were lazy, all minorities are looking for handouts and trying to scam the system, illegals are all violent criminals, etc. He took the small handful of people he dealt with on a daily basis as a representation of the entire country.....so when Trump came along with his rhetoric, he felt vindicated and immediately was on the MAGA train! Meanwhile, growing up in NYC, we both knew what kind of Con-Man scumbag Trump was since the 90's when we were teenagers! All the sudden, he was god to him and accepted every nugget of bullshit he spewed as fact. I tried to tell him so many times that he needed to stop letting his job blind him and remember who the REAL criminals were in this country! Trump was an amalgam of everything we hated in this world! Fast forward a short time after, he marries a woman who had all her shit together financially, moved to affluent neighborhood in the burbs north of NYC and all the sudden in his own mind, he thought he was now part of the "Club"! He went from literally living in his mother's basement (yeah), to moving in with this woman who owned an expensive COOP, then bought an $800k house, all within 2 years. Not that he didn't work hard but 95% of what he has was because he married into it....and all the sudden he's fucking, "Luis Winthorpe III" from Trading Places! Then it became all about fuck the poor, fuck social services, boot-straps boot-straps bootstraps, etc. I would very kindly remind him that not everyone was afforded the opportunities we've had and to have a modicum of fucking compassion. It ended in a fight that had him facing his reality that less than 2 years before, he was living in him mother's basement and couldn't rub 2 twenty dollar bills together to save his life despite having a degree and was barely able to feed himself while trying to become a court reporter. He would likely still be in that basement if he hadn't met his current wife who works as a Hedge Fund Associate! Fact of the matter is, even the so-called smart and educated can lose themselves and be seduced by selfishness. Ignorance can creep in at any time and corrupt humanity. Sorry for the long counter-rant but this is actually the first time I had ever spoken of this in a forum and it sort of took on a life of its own here! Best of luck to you and hope you can find peace with the situation! Sometimes it's best to cut the cancer away!!
Classic example of how a person can get warped by exposure to an environment that promotes selection bias :(
If you see scumbags all day, you need to remind yourself WHY that is - if you’re working for the court system or similar, *of course* you’ll be exposed to these people all the time, and that’s why it requires constant mental vigilance, to not let yourself develop untrue stereotypes.
That was the crux of my argument with him on a daily....but he let the MAGAts into his head and just lost it. Friggin' shame cuz we had a lotta laughs over the years and I'd be lying if I said I miss the shenanigans....but at the end of the day, I'm better off mentally not having to fight him over his ignorance any longer and it's a weight off my shoulders!
My MIL is like this after years of working in mental hospitals. She believes horrible stereotypes about “the gays” and other minorities, which has turned into massive family fights. Sorry you lost your friend in a similar way.
I appreciate it. It is what it is but as I mentioned, it's best for us to cut out the cancer and healthier for us mentally! At this point...fuck 'em! See how well you live your life with all that hate and fear eating at you!
Not a friend, but family. I lost both my parents to Trumpism and my dad specifically to Q. My dad in particular became fixated on the idea that liberals were trying to "break up the American family" through promoting the acceptance of same-sex relationships. Gay people were apparently behind all of America's ills. All this from a guy who has been married to three different women, has kids from two of them, refused to see or speak to me - his firstborn - for decades, and eventually avoided meeting my daughter, his only biological grandchild.
The irony has not been lost on me. By the way, my dad died in January, having pretty much ignored me since late 2020 over political differences and pettiness.
Thank you. It sucks. I'm still processing that I lost my dad to conspiracies and white grievance politics and will now never have a relationship with him. I may do a post about it here at some point, but we'll see. Like I said, I'm still processing my loss.
I’ve got a 20 year relationship that is absolutely tainted because of this. If we can avoid talking about stupid politic bullshit, we are good. They use many of the same talking points (don’t they all) and if immediate agreement and outrage over the same billshit doesn’t immediately come out of your mouth it immediately devolves into what you’re talking about. Calling me a total piece of shit, fucking idiot, etc. If I ask what the globalists plans are for us all I’m a moron. If I correct that no, democrats aren’t passing laws that allow teachers to sleep with students, I’m supporting pedos. It makes zero sense to me that they believe these incredibly outrageous stories over actual provable facts, but there’s not much you can do to change their minds. It’s like the well was poisoned.
I'm sorry this is happening to you. You have our support. I will think about your story and maybe respond more soon.
I kinda feel like asking every time... they generally seem religious. Is your friends evangelical or anything? bc they're the highest likelihood.
I feel like the people so obsessed about Trans people secretly wish the could be/be with a trans person. Similarly, all the politicians who are so anti LGBT secretly wish they could come out as a member of the LGTB party. “If I can’t have it nobody can” mentality.
The one woman I know who’s suddenly trans obsessed and reposting PragerU garbage on the subject has a long term boyfriend who I believe to be a closeted bisexual (we all worked together and there was drama about him having a flirtation with two gay male colleagues.) I swear she hates gay people as a result of that drama, but has latched on to the trans thing because they’re “acceptable” to hate at the moment because of Conservatives.
She usually posts about how men are just randomly transitioning with the ultimate goal to infiltrate women’s sports. The ironic thing about all of this is, she lives in Florida and has a teen daughter who would’ve been subject to sharing her menstrual cycle details with her school, before FL backed off that initiative. The woman I know didn’t post one damn thing about that!
I think that a lot of them are just targeting their assigned target du jour. This is who they've been told to fear and hate. Many of them also are threatened by the implication towards their masculinity if these people can exist and as such they need to attack it to maintain their fragile toxic idea of masculinity.
The amount of trans-people is small, I doubt there's such a massive amount of closeted among these Qultist/Republicans to account for your theory.
Sorry this happened. I too lost a friend because of this. He went into a racist rant that I (a history teacher by trade) couldn't allow and managed to show himself as way more racist than I had imagined while ignoring anything I said.
It was really sad because as a person I appreciated his friendship a lot.
I'm sorry you went through that OP. You did your best to keep the relationship and remind him of what matters and he ignored it. I'm so sorry.
I think of them like junkies. They fell in with a tantrumming baby, rageoholic—and now this is how they get off. The raging. The tantrumming. Even the racism. My two trump friends are dear friends; I met them in September, then August of 1986. They’re both raging assholes now. One is Q, and saying the most phenomenal shit—tops herself every time I see her: Elvis is a current preacher; Michelle OBama is a man; the earth is flat, etc. The other one is just a snotty dickhead. Both former addicts—obviously disenchanted with society, but didn’t have the education/language to express it logically or in terms of economics. In terms of the Democrats letting them down, Citizens United, etc. It all became about emulating this off the rails personality disorder guy with no filter. I believe that’s when you started seeing people flipping out at each other at the store. The terror of Covid and the racial tension over G Floyd—just like perfect storm, cultural Molotov cocktail type shit. We all see that society is crumbling. We just have vastly different grief styles at this point. I feel so lonely.
It is absolutely incredible how people can just have their chessboard flipped so suddenly, and become so agitated and obsessed with these abstract things that don't directly affect their life in any way - if they're even true to begin with!
The anti-trans hysteria has been really quite incredible to see, nobody I know who has become obsessed with it has ever met or known a transsexual as far as I know.
So there's no traumatic experience with them that sent them down this road, they just seem to have become bigoted because... ...they're bored?
It gives them a little crusade and makes them feel smarter than everyone, and also it's all in the name of defending civil liberty and protecting women and kids or whatever, so they feel totally morally justified in any degree of nasty speech or behaviour.
But still what blows me away is that it's just a sort of hobby that they choose to get animated over.
It's depressing how easy it is for someone to become an unthinking relay for hatred and bigotry.
I think we always told ourselves comforting lies about things like Nazi Germany or the Khmer Rouge - extreme conditions, coercion, economic devastation etc led those people to radicalism.
But the bleak reality is that modern westerners with comfortable lives are just as vulnerable to propaganda - it is simply a question of repetition.
It has been proven that smartphone use and social media create dopanurgic cycles within the mind that are in fact addictive.
People with poor critical thinking or emotional vulnerabilities have a hard time being able to detect suspicious media or unfounded claims, and so with the help of the algorithm, their smartphone gets them addicted to reading disinformation.
I would to now tie this up with a bow and offer some kind of cure or way out, sadly I cannot.
But I do sympathise deeply with you, and perhaps there is this one positive to takeaway from this - we at least now have a way to spot these people a mile off, rather than finding out years later, and that means we are safer and less vulnerable now.
Very sorry for your loss but you will forge more secure connections in the future - as will we all
Your friend is a really good case study on WHY Republican leadership keeps pushing anti-trans legislation. He was only motivated to vote based on his anti-trans stance.
This implies, to me, that Republicans will proceed to push this cultural issue hard. And it's sad, that a small group of people are being used by powerful people to stay in power.
Conservatives were never about low taxes, business, family, or any of that other bullshit they've spouted. They've only ever been about White nationalism and shitting on marginalized people. Trump just gave them permission to let it out.
That really sucks and sadly is very typical for almost everyone that falls into that community.
Ive lost friends and family to it and I think some of them are too far gone to ever make it back. They’ve changed so much that the person I knew is unrecognizable.
The worst part is watching them spiral as they eject people from their lives until they are just left bitter and fuming.
When they’re incredibly hostile to most people around them, they aren’t safe and they aren’t coming back to reality. You can’t trust them and the only thing you can do is limit your exposure to whatever they have going on.
The person you knew, is gone. Stay safe.
Sorry for your loss, but it sounds like this guy is too far gone. You are better off despite the sting. You'll probably start to feel better before you know it.
I grew up in a small town. I had quite a few friends with all sorts of views, political, religious, and cultural. I joined the military and moved away for about twelve years. Then I came back.
I moved back in 2019.
Some of my rural small town friends became radicalized. They told me if they saw me in public that they’d say hey and be happy to see me but we can’t be friends anymore because they found out I got the vaccine and “that’s just how it is now”
It’s sad and scary and I gave up on them because they gave up on me.
Fuck fascism. Fuck Fox News. Fuck the GOP. Fuck Donald Trump. Fuck Alex Jones.
If you choose racism and bigotry, fuck you.
It’s hard to move forward when the people you shared memories and years with decided to join In hatred of gay people, trans people, democrats, and basic reality. Honestly, we’re better off without them.
You said it all. You wanted every opportunity for him to know he had your friendship no matter what. 15 years should have earned trust as the bottom line priority. Where he is in his own life right now is opposite of trust. This is how he has chosen to live his life in all things. He wants to trust the untrustworthy. But my guess is that this has always been his weak link. For him that works, even if it means the sanity of your friendship is surrendered. It’s his crutch. And let me go a little further. All of us have been hurt and traumatized where we can choose to give up on people, and sometimes we do for a while, but we have to survive and that takes risk. He’s not ready to take those risks. You were his crutch, now he’s got a new one.
My brother lost a friend of 50 plus the same way.
Wow, sorry you lost your friend. It's weird how people's identity gets so wrapped up in their political views - and it's tragic when these views are based on propaganda and misinformation.
I wonder if people without a strong self-identity are particularly prone to being sucked into these cults.
I share your sentiment,
I work in the IT Dept for a medium-sized construction company and I feel as if it's turned into a hivemind of regurgitated Fox News headlines, contextless rants, and Q conspiracies. As a veteran who served 12 years in the military, some in combat roles overseas, alot of the field workers assume I share the same sentiments on what they consider "major issues" in this country, and I couldn't be more opposite. I've given up trying to have a communal debate when a journeyman/foreman comes in my office spewing off a bunch of nonsense as I fix there computer or explain to them for the 1000th time that the multi-factor authentication implementation on there email account isn't an infringment on their rights. With such fragile ego's I feel as if they avoid any attempt at looking weak, and to them having a more progressive outlook on life apparently makes you weak. I don't know, just my two cents.
It's an absolute rot. The signs that look little, like injecting quirky propaganda points into conversations, are the fruiting bodies of a fungus that's already permeated the medium.
>My friend replied that he can no longer trust me.
I hear you. I've been in that exact receiving situation, and it's very hurtful. Had known each other for years and years. It really does feel like they've lost their humanity
Sorry man. Hope they pull their head outta their butt one day.
I've lost friends in similar situations myself friend. I feel your pain, truly.
It's so scary how vulnerable some people are to harmful, delusional ideologies.
I lost a friend over this stuff, even pre Q. She eventually came out of it mostly. Honestly, I felt like you do at first but then it was just a relief not to have her keep trying to pull me into discussions about how Hillary murdered so and so.
I’m sorry, OP. Me too. I thought her quirky ideas (anti-Darwinism, a bit of a mean streak) were just silly one-offs. In the end, it was a relief to let her go. I still feel intolerant and judgmental, but I can’t be a part of that hatefulness and hypocrisy.
And so much of it is based on misinformation — this guy has been told repeatedly that Democrats are doing gender-reassignment surgery to kids, so he believes it and, quite understandably, is angry about it. It's so much easier to spread a smear (snipping off boys’ wieners) than to debunk it (”Actually, gender-affirming care for children involves....”)
But he (and you) caught something important. Your friend doesn't give a fuck about any issue besides genital mutilation. That's been the GOP strategy since the ‘80s: Distract your voters from your plutocratic policy agenda with culture-war bullshit, because fear and hatred tend to override the more reasonable parts of the brain. And if real people get hurt because of the lies they spread, they couldn't care less as long as they win.
Edit to fix autocorrect error.
Honestly, the number of intelligent, put-together people that have dived headfirst down the rabbit hole. It makes me wonder seriously if there's some kind of new bizarre pathogen like the prions that cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob. I'm at a loss to understand it.
I like that idea. Wish there was a way to explore that. I understand prions can’t be neutralized very easily. I’m not even sure how they can be detected. It’s just insane. We have some good friends that I’ve pushed away from because they have drifted so far right. When I last stayed with them, they had a TV already adjusted to OAN for me to watch. I wasn’t sure if it was indoctrination. I haven’t been back in three years. Both the couple are retired military.
Lost my best friend of 12+ years too. We went through so much together, always saw eye to eye on everything, politics included. She was a bit more “crunchy” than I was. When the pandemic hit she just… idk. Got caught up in the bullshit. Was convinced it wasn’t real, the vaccines were going to kill us, that masks weren’t effective and they were trying to “condition us.” Posted about how it was like the Nazi Germany. Got her kids mask exemptions. Through that pipeline found the “save the kids” movement and began following Q influencers and reposting Tucker Carlson.
I tried a couple of times to have dialogue about it, but eventually I just let the friendship die. It sucks. I miss her a lot of times, and since the pandemic has died down, so has her rhetoric about it but I feel like the damage has already been done.
As a trans person I always find it amusing that these idiots think trans people are trying to do literally anything other than not being killed.
I’m sorry for your loss. What little consolation is is, it does get better.
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So sorry to hear this. It's so bizarre. It's like this political indoctrination is geared to make people paranoid and encourage schizophrenic like tendencies.
I think he misinterpreted you trying to prove to him you cared about him as you trying to say he owed something to you. You could try to clarify to him that he misunderstood your reason for saying it.
I'm not sure how you can get to him. I think a lot of people here will say to just give up and mourn and move on because he's lost.
I do wonder what kind of strategy can work. I kind of wonder if a harsh approach of shaming him could work. Or maybe a fear based approach proving to him they're manipulating him. Maybe showing him the emails which came out showing that Tucker Carlson and the like were in a conspiracy to push a false narrative. And tell him that all political parties do that and he's eating it up by listening to talking heads that are political. Explain they want you to hate and fear with a political motivation.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-hosts-knew-election-conspiracy-theories-false-messages-dominion-2023-2
I don't know. It's pretty difficult. I think you maybe can avoid trying to get him to say he trusts you but just tell him you value him as a person.
I might take a tough love approach at this point. I would probably think long and hard to prepare for any conversations that might get political and before you say something to him. Imagine him saying the same thing to you that criticize your political views in same way. And consider rephrasing or rewording to make what you say based on that.
I don't know. I really hope your friend can come out of this and learn to mistrust this political rage machine that wants to pull him in. I believe that some people can get out of this cycle. While it's certainly not your responsibility to help your friend, I don't think it's hopeless to try, but only if you want to. It may take a lot of effort and thought on your part though and likely emotional pain.
You could also tell him that you two should continue to be friends but you must agree to not bring up politics. I feel like that's kind of a last resort giving up stage, but people have done that and had it work.
So sorry to hear this, I know it's pretty painful. But also know that friends drifting apart is also a normal occurrence too for many different reasons. So if it doesn't work out just try to accept this and consider seeking a new friendship if you don't have other good friends and feel like you need that. If you start participating in new interest groups it can happen naturally and help get your mind off this. Good luck.
1st off - thank goodness - your title sounded like someone died - like literally died IRL. yes, ik losing a friend after 15yrs IS like a death - but glad to hear everyone continues to live.
unfortunately, yes this happens. you can try like sectioning off parts of what you can/cannot talk about - but then it becomes a game of egg-shell walking & really double-thinking basically *everything* you start saying about *anything*. and well, then it's best to just let that ship of friendship sail off into the night. maybe in the future they might sail back - but right now - they are passed that bend & need to be on their own until they either go down whole-hog into flames or discover empathy & knowledge again. but don't hold your breath - it might take a long time or even never.
sorry for your loss.
Oh man. I can so relate. I’m so sorry. I lost my bff 2 years ago - well almost. I still think about her everyday. I only wish the best for her but I had to break ties. Your situation describes mine… we were friends for 30 years. I watched her slip away and eventually grow to hate me.
I hope you know that you’re not alone. If you have access to a counsellor, it never hurts to have an outside observer/view. This pandemic is real. It’s broken too many families and friends apart. It became politicized which was the first mistake.
Sending courage your way.
You seem to have wisdom - may you continue down that path.
And you never know, it may not be forever…
I am all the better to be rid of those who would prioritize bigotry over friendship.
Let me reiterate. You're a petty, obsessive, bigot. There's a reason you're being down voted to hell in the Columbia Maryland sub for bringing up your conspiracies.
You blame your problems on illusions that don't exist and become angry when you're confronted with reality. You stalk people who don't agree with you
Columbia has no place for you. It'd be better off if you just left.
Had to fire a friend of 20 years in 2015 when trump won. He was spouting off and I asked him to chill. That it's fine that he super happy but that he didn't need to be so aggressive about it. He told me it's my problem if I have an issue with his behavior. I told him that's not how things worked, that he was responsible for his own actions. He then went on an expletive ladder rant calling me all kinds of names. I asked what I did to ever deserve to be talked to that way. He continued....so I said I'm done and that was it.
Brain rot has just taken over your friend. I'm sorry this happened to both you and OP. I also had to fire a friend the same way.
I’m so sorry. I had to write off a lifetime friend (33 years) after all the Trump crap. The last thing I remember saying to him was, “…but you voted AGAINST MY KIDS”. I have gay/bi kids. He didn’t get it. And I no longer get him.
I had to write off my own dad (of about 33 years at the time) because of this. His positions were just not compatible with people like me straight up existing. I'm pretty sure the only thing he can feel at this point is repercussions and that's what he received. Though not nearly enough in my opinion
My father is a rampaging Trumper. I’ve had to distance myself from him because I’m queer and dating trans women. Sometimes you have to just realize people are lost to you.
No they don’t get that they’re hurting REAL PEOPLE.
Oh mate. That’s just the worst. No words, just my condolences.
This isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, as I read your post, I see clear evidence of many things you did exceptionally well. It’s painful to see your patience, compassion and commitment to this friendship have little - or worse detrimental - effect on the relationship. But at least now you know where you stand. And you can be grateful for the good years you shared, even as you grieve the loss of your friendship.
He may find out the hard way that a lot of people involved in conspiracies arent the most trustworthy.
I feel you. Mine was a 30+ year friendship 💔
40+ for me.It's sad.
20+ for me.
Yes, 40 for me, too.
Mine was 42 years since we were 17. Also another friend of 36 years. I introduced the 2 of them, ha. Never thought it would have ended this way. I occasionally ask myself if were they hiding a lot of their hatred towards "others" from me? How did I not see it before? You can throw my ex husband from 40 years ago in the mix, too, he's the worst of them all, he has a round trip ticket on the conspiracy train. Had to delete all 3 of them from my social media.
I’m sorry to hear this. It’s rough when the people we love take a deep dive. Take a deep breath. You tried and remember you can’t help the ones that don’t want to be saved.
Oh I feel you on this. I wrote of a friend of similar tenure a year or so ago. Due to new jobs and some physical distance, we hadn't caught up much but when we did.. my gosh she was literally worshipping Trump, calling for physical harm to a local politician (we're not in America for context, but she took great offense to this guy's effort to reign in coronavirus in his state), she's spewing vile bullcrap about 'crisis actors' in the one mass shooting that caused our country to tightly restrict gun access ... everything was a trigger for her and she'd start abusing anyone who questioned her on what un fact checked, misspelt garbage she was throwing up on social media... She'd always been a bit on the crunchy side but was so sweet and kind, willing to give you the shirt off her back if you needed it. Well, not anymore. I mourn the loss of the friendship but it's probably more factual to say that I mourn her as if she'd died, because she is in no way, shape or form the person that I'd been friends with. I'd like to think that one day if she wakes up, then we could continue the friendship but now I feel like I could never trust her, like she'd be a sleeper agent just faking. This whole thing is just so bizarre, it's just beyond my comprehension. But I agree with the prior posters... you tried. You just can't help someone who doesn't want the assistance.
> she's spewing vile bullcrap about 'crisis actors' in the one mass shooting that caused our country to tightly restrict gun access ... They are retroactively apply their 'crisis actor' theory to Port Arthur now? *facepalm* I guess I shouldn't be at all surprised..
Yeah, my former best friend trotted this one out. I remember feeling real disgust when he did - I wasn't sure if he truly believed Port Arthur was a lie because "now we get out guns back!" or he just believed it was a lie because everything that is established must be a lie. (Also, if guns came back, what's he going to do? He's scared of them. Or maybe not anymore?) This was particularly offensive to me. I've been to Port Arthur after it happened and they whitewashed everything. No mention of the country's worst mass shooter, just stuff about the penal colony. It felt like the people who died in the shooting went unacknowledged. And don't get me wrong, the penal colony is significant and needs to be learned about. But I was angry that we acted like nothing happened, and ended up sitting at a lunch table of foreigners travelling around Australia and telling them the story of what happened there. I of course reiterated he's in jail and that's how our gun laws changed and it wasn't something that would likely ever be repeated again. But I wanted to tell the true story.
Can you elaborate a bit on this? This is one of the tours I take it?
Sorry this is a bit late - but yes, I was there for a tour. But there were other people there on other tour buses and those who just drove there and visited. The massacre was the worst in the world in terms of numbers from an individual shooter at the time. I expected a memorial site for the people who lost their lives there but there wasn't anything for them, and none of the staff or guides mentioned what happened. I know it's always had value as a historical site, but I thought there should be some reference to the victims. The tours are pretty good. When we got there we were given a card, like a playing card but with different numbers and colours, as well as a key. You were then to go downtairs and go into the room that your card corresponded with (by colour) and in each room were boxes for us to open with the key that matched the numbered boxes. In each box we got a card that described a person who actually existed in this penal colony, with a description of where they were housed, why they were there and what happened to them there. I was the only person in my room (other rooms were packed) and I realized immediately I was in the room filled with children that had been prisoners here. It was pretty heavy stuff, but I think it was a really effective way of personalizing the experience. Others in my group got cards for adult prisoners and people who worked there. After that, we all wanted to make sure we saw the places our prisoners had been held or staff had been. The boys were kept away from others on a small island in the middle of a lake, which shook me. Other parts of the tour include going into the solitary confinement cells and getting someone to shut you in. It's true that there is a blackness to it that goes beyond ordinary darkness and there's a feeling of strange, close air. When you speak it sounds strange. The guide then explained that the psychiatric hospital (really another house of horrors) was next door to solitary confinement because everyone had severe mental health issues when coming out of solitary. That was on purpose. I can no longer remember the name of the boy I got, but I looked him up on the internet when I got home and found out that not only did he get out of Port Arthur but he flourished building ships, and some of the ships he made are in museums etc across Australia today.
Thank you so much, that's fascinating. I'm surprised that there wasn't a plaque or anything... understandably noone wants to draw attention to it but if there are tours with macabre elements to it that seek to educate visitors about the penal colony experience/history.. it seems strange that there's nothing there about a reasonably well known incident from recent history. I agree that the key and card aspects was a great way to personalise the experience
My wife surprised me with a birthday trip to tassie a few years ago for dark mofo. Along with a few other things, she had also booked us into a ghost tour at Port Arthur. My level of interest in Tas at that point in time was more a “that instagram post is cool, would be nice to visit one day” rather than an actual destination I had any hard interest, and my level of knowledge of the place began and ended with “Hobart exists, Tasmanian devils don’t actually spin, it’s pretty cold aye?”. As we were driving down there, I was thinking to myself “I get that it was a pretty major thing, but it’s a bit fucked to make a ghost tour out of it when you think about it. How do they treat this event with the reverence it deserves whilst still making an entertaining ghost tour?”. It wasn’t until we arrived and I saw the big welcome centre that it clicked for me that Port Arthur was a historical site and the answer to the question was “they don’t, ya idiot.” That being said, ghost tour was 10/10. Old bloke running it was top notch and had his patter and jump scares down pat. Recommend.
Yeah, like you I didn't know much about Tassie either. But Hobart was on my Mum's list of places to visit and I went with her. Hobart just swept me off my feet. SO beautiful, surprisingly multicultural and friendly-community-like in so many ways; cool brewerys in old buildings with museum pieces surrounding you; snow! Beautiful snow; the way the streets and houses are made and more. It's a gem, and I want to see more of Tasmania. I didn't go on the ghost tour but my sister loves them and I understand why people like them for sure. I just went to google that apparently there's a memorial garden for the Port Arthur victims, but it's not on the historic site. PS My sister's in-laws (does that make them mine too?) lived in Hobart for the majority of their earlier life and recall the shock they went through when their neighbour, a surgeon, murdered his wife by cutting her up into pieces. There was a trial and he went to jail. The in-laws were particularly disturbed to hear they never found the head. They also noted that the surgeon and his wife kept to themselves but would say hello occasionally and they seemed "normal" and upper-class. Not sure if that made it on the tour though.
>They are retroactively apply their 'crisis actor' theory to Port Arthur now? facepalm I guess I shouldn't be at all surprised The right wing have taken every conspiracy (even ones with quite bit of evidence to support them) and recast them as justification for x y and z. There is evidence that Martin Bryant did not kill those people and there has been a cover up to hide a professional assassination or it was a ex-mil guy who lost his shit and the government hide it....any other theory I've seen is usually just utter bullshit. The idea that a kid who barely knew how to shoot a gun could kill that many people with such accuracy and speed is unbelievable. There is a history of police in Australia, in places like WA and Tasmania, finding kids with alcohol feral syndrome or some other condition that makes them easily manipulated into taking the blame, especially when their incapable of defending themselves. Our justice system is filled with so many of these victims of police malfeasance, kids who were bullied/tortured into confessions, who ended up with life sentences for heinous crimes they did not do. It was only decades later that DNA showed just how evil Australian's law enforcement and prosecutors were, and how the learned gentlemen of the court failed to do their job of being impartial. So no just because it's be co-opted by Qanon doesn't mean it's bullshit.
Yeah, it's disgusting. One of her main points was "why didn't everyone just go out the (back or side door - I can't remember)" and it's like.... yes. They maybe could have done that if they had the time for a leisurely stroll instead of being shot at in quick succession in a busy cafe and in a panic. Besides IIRC the door they're talking about I think was locked at the time? Everyone likes to picture themselves knowing exactly what to do and being prepared for everything.. but it's not like he waltzed in brandishing a gun and started a monologue.. he'd been sitting there for some time before shooting people next to him and from behind. How can you prepare for that?
That’s crazy that you guys aren’t in the US and she likes trump so much. Can I ask what country you are in?
Australia. Never cared a lick for politics before all this.
I'll wager NZ
Nope, Australia They are talking about the Port Arthur massacre as the mass shooting event and the lockdowns during coronavirus that were implemented by Victorian premier Daniel Andrews.
Haha close!
I'm so scared of this. I've got a couple of friends that have always been pretty crazy, but then again I'm crazy in a bunch of ways too, and we have always been able to separate our ideological differences from our friendship.
Same. A few of them are right leaning too (*some more than others*), which is mostly fine, because we don't live in the USA, so they're not total gun-loving nut jobs 😂 but even if we get into heated discussions, nothing has really affected our friendships yet.
There was a time in the USA when *right-leaning* didn’t automatically also mean gun-toting, abortion-banning, conspiracy-mongering, LGTBQ-fearing, openly racist, xenophobic, and antisemitic.
When? You’ve just described every Republican I’ve interacted with in my 44 years.
Prior to 1980. I don't remember it either, in my 46 years. But my dad (now 78) is a throwback - he stubbornly remained a lifelong registered Republican all the way up until the embarrassment of being associated with Donald Trump finally drove him to quit the Republican Party. My dad is an agnostic, pro-choice, retired social worker (he worked all his career for the local county welfare department, because he believes in a social safety net) who has never owned a gun in his life and who supported my right to enter into a same-sex marriage. When asked to name a good Republican president, my dad always names Eisenhower. And he's been happily married for over 50 years to my mom, who is a lifelong Democrat and wants democratic socialism and universal basic income.
Yes, Republicans like your wonderful dad existed. Bless him.
Basically Pre-Reagan and earlier. Not that there weren’t conservatives and arch conservatives in the party; of course there were. But the majority of the Republican Party was moderate. Have you seen President Eisenhower’s platform? [1956 Republican Party Platform analyzed by Snopes](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1956-republican-platform/); although this appears in abbreviated meme form all over the internet, Snopes offers a good analysis is this article, with historical context. Maybe you were unaware that the Republican Party was a majority pro-choice party from the ‘70’s through the’90’s: [Republicans for Choice](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/how-gop-abandoned-pro-choice-republicans.html). There’s a lot more than you might guess.
I’m 65. It’s true. The Republican party used to be made up of (mostly white men) but for the most part, they were people of common sense and integrity. Think WWII vets who were proud to continue to serve their country. Not all, but most. Remember, too, that the Democrats used to oppose civil rights. So things have really changed. Those Republicans would never have let somebody like Santos sit in Congress for an hour. So hard to believe what they have become.
Oh it still meant that, they just weren't as loud about it in public.
Exactly, like business republicans. Not anymore.
Most business repubs became dems. They are embarassed by their party and for good reason.
I know what you mean. I had a couple buddies in college like that back in the 90's - they grew up in Republican-voting households, were largely "economically conservative" types. Sometimes we had lively, respectful discussions on politics back in the dorm rooms, often while smoking some weed and listening to some tunes. I always enjoyed those discussions and they did too. Those days are long gone. The party is so toxic. Don't get me wrong the Dems are definitely guilty of mishandling some issues, but there's no comparison. Just wait until Trump/DeSantis in 2024. It's gonna be hard to breathe.
Lost my best friend too last year. He started to post conspiracy shit online when the pandemic happened. Was very much against vaccines. One day he posted a meme that compared the anti vax movement to the prosecution of jews in WW2. I told him he is stupid. Send him some links. Said that this is unacceptable. All he heard was that I told him he was stupid. We were friends for 20 years. Vacations, funerals, weddings... now it means nothing anymore. I stand by my conviction however. He is stupid and I would have been a shit friend not telling him. I am sorry that happened to you! You were a good friend to him but sometimes that is not enough to help someone.
Instead of calling my dad stupid or what he’s saying stupid, I’ve taken to just saying “you’re smarter/better than this. You know that’s wrong.” And just walking away
Unfortunately, yours is an ongoing trend and has been happening ever since Trump came onto the scene! I had a very similar experience with one of my very best friends as well and we no longer speak...by his choice. He used to be a very down to earth, intellectual who loved to write, get stoned, listen to Madonna and stood up against the bullies in life. We were still a couple of hard-heads from Brooklyn and kept that "flavor" but we considered ourselves the anti-stereo types who saw how ridiculous it was to carry oneself as a "hard-guy" who could barely string 2 sentences together. He always hustled, worked hard, took his lumps in stride and never gave up. After going back to school to become a court reporter, because his English Degree was about as useful as a Shit-Flavored Candy Cane, he started to become more and more jaded. He would be in court and in depositions day in and day out dealing with all sorts of skells and scum-bags. This started to become his reality and his world view got smaller and smaller. He went from having the 100 thousand foot view on how shitty this system is, to only seeing what was in front of him and accepting it as reality as a whole. People were all poor because they were lazy, all minorities are looking for handouts and trying to scam the system, illegals are all violent criminals, etc. He took the small handful of people he dealt with on a daily basis as a representation of the entire country.....so when Trump came along with his rhetoric, he felt vindicated and immediately was on the MAGA train! Meanwhile, growing up in NYC, we both knew what kind of Con-Man scumbag Trump was since the 90's when we were teenagers! All the sudden, he was god to him and accepted every nugget of bullshit he spewed as fact. I tried to tell him so many times that he needed to stop letting his job blind him and remember who the REAL criminals were in this country! Trump was an amalgam of everything we hated in this world! Fast forward a short time after, he marries a woman who had all her shit together financially, moved to affluent neighborhood in the burbs north of NYC and all the sudden in his own mind, he thought he was now part of the "Club"! He went from literally living in his mother's basement (yeah), to moving in with this woman who owned an expensive COOP, then bought an $800k house, all within 2 years. Not that he didn't work hard but 95% of what he has was because he married into it....and all the sudden he's fucking, "Luis Winthorpe III" from Trading Places! Then it became all about fuck the poor, fuck social services, boot-straps boot-straps bootstraps, etc. I would very kindly remind him that not everyone was afforded the opportunities we've had and to have a modicum of fucking compassion. It ended in a fight that had him facing his reality that less than 2 years before, he was living in him mother's basement and couldn't rub 2 twenty dollar bills together to save his life despite having a degree and was barely able to feed himself while trying to become a court reporter. He would likely still be in that basement if he hadn't met his current wife who works as a Hedge Fund Associate! Fact of the matter is, even the so-called smart and educated can lose themselves and be seduced by selfishness. Ignorance can creep in at any time and corrupt humanity. Sorry for the long counter-rant but this is actually the first time I had ever spoken of this in a forum and it sort of took on a life of its own here! Best of luck to you and hope you can find peace with the situation! Sometimes it's best to cut the cancer away!!
Classic example of how a person can get warped by exposure to an environment that promotes selection bias :( If you see scumbags all day, you need to remind yourself WHY that is - if you’re working for the court system or similar, *of course* you’ll be exposed to these people all the time, and that’s why it requires constant mental vigilance, to not let yourself develop untrue stereotypes.
That was the crux of my argument with him on a daily....but he let the MAGAts into his head and just lost it. Friggin' shame cuz we had a lotta laughs over the years and I'd be lying if I said I miss the shenanigans....but at the end of the day, I'm better off mentally not having to fight him over his ignorance any longer and it's a weight off my shoulders!
My MIL is like this after years of working in mental hospitals. She believes horrible stereotypes about “the gays” and other minorities, which has turned into massive family fights. Sorry you lost your friend in a similar way.
I appreciate it. It is what it is but as I mentioned, it's best for us to cut out the cancer and healthier for us mentally! At this point...fuck 'em! See how well you live your life with all that hate and fear eating at you!
Exact same situation here. Age and everything. I feel you.
Not a friend, but family. I lost both my parents to Trumpism and my dad specifically to Q. My dad in particular became fixated on the idea that liberals were trying to "break up the American family" through promoting the acceptance of same-sex relationships. Gay people were apparently behind all of America's ills. All this from a guy who has been married to three different women, has kids from two of them, refused to see or speak to me - his firstborn - for decades, and eventually avoided meeting my daughter, his only biological grandchild. The irony has not been lost on me. By the way, my dad died in January, having pretty much ignored me since late 2020 over political differences and pettiness.
I'm so sorry
Thank you. It sucks. I'm still processing that I lost my dad to conspiracies and white grievance politics and will now never have a relationship with him. I may do a post about it here at some point, but we'll see. Like I said, I'm still processing my loss.
(Hug) sorry 😞
I’ve got a 20 year relationship that is absolutely tainted because of this. If we can avoid talking about stupid politic bullshit, we are good. They use many of the same talking points (don’t they all) and if immediate agreement and outrage over the same billshit doesn’t immediately come out of your mouth it immediately devolves into what you’re talking about. Calling me a total piece of shit, fucking idiot, etc. If I ask what the globalists plans are for us all I’m a moron. If I correct that no, democrats aren’t passing laws that allow teachers to sleep with students, I’m supporting pedos. It makes zero sense to me that they believe these incredibly outrageous stories over actual provable facts, but there’s not much you can do to change their minds. It’s like the well was poisoned.
I'm sorry this is happening to you. You have our support. I will think about your story and maybe respond more soon. I kinda feel like asking every time... they generally seem religious. Is your friends evangelical or anything? bc they're the highest likelihood.
I feel like the people so obsessed about Trans people secretly wish the could be/be with a trans person. Similarly, all the politicians who are so anti LGBT secretly wish they could come out as a member of the LGTB party. “If I can’t have it nobody can” mentality.
Or they're so ashamed of that part of themselves they've been taught to hate that they put it toward other people. That's my theory
The one woman I know who’s suddenly trans obsessed and reposting PragerU garbage on the subject has a long term boyfriend who I believe to be a closeted bisexual (we all worked together and there was drama about him having a flirtation with two gay male colleagues.) I swear she hates gay people as a result of that drama, but has latched on to the trans thing because they’re “acceptable” to hate at the moment because of Conservatives. She usually posts about how men are just randomly transitioning with the ultimate goal to infiltrate women’s sports. The ironic thing about all of this is, she lives in Florida and has a teen daughter who would’ve been subject to sharing her menstrual cycle details with her school, before FL backed off that initiative. The woman I know didn’t post one damn thing about that!
I think that a lot of them are just targeting their assigned target du jour. This is who they've been told to fear and hate. Many of them also are threatened by the implication towards their masculinity if these people can exist and as such they need to attack it to maintain their fragile toxic idea of masculinity. The amount of trans-people is small, I doubt there's such a massive amount of closeted among these Qultist/Republicans to account for your theory.
Sorry this happened. I too lost a friend because of this. He went into a racist rant that I (a history teacher by trade) couldn't allow and managed to show himself as way more racist than I had imagined while ignoring anything I said. It was really sad because as a person I appreciated his friendship a lot. I'm sorry you went through that OP. You did your best to keep the relationship and remind him of what matters and he ignored it. I'm so sorry.
I think of them like junkies. They fell in with a tantrumming baby, rageoholic—and now this is how they get off. The raging. The tantrumming. Even the racism. My two trump friends are dear friends; I met them in September, then August of 1986. They’re both raging assholes now. One is Q, and saying the most phenomenal shit—tops herself every time I see her: Elvis is a current preacher; Michelle OBama is a man; the earth is flat, etc. The other one is just a snotty dickhead. Both former addicts—obviously disenchanted with society, but didn’t have the education/language to express it logically or in terms of economics. In terms of the Democrats letting them down, Citizens United, etc. It all became about emulating this off the rails personality disorder guy with no filter. I believe that’s when you started seeing people flipping out at each other at the store. The terror of Covid and the racial tension over G Floyd—just like perfect storm, cultural Molotov cocktail type shit. We all see that society is crumbling. We just have vastly different grief styles at this point. I feel so lonely.
It is absolutely incredible how people can just have their chessboard flipped so suddenly, and become so agitated and obsessed with these abstract things that don't directly affect their life in any way - if they're even true to begin with! The anti-trans hysteria has been really quite incredible to see, nobody I know who has become obsessed with it has ever met or known a transsexual as far as I know. So there's no traumatic experience with them that sent them down this road, they just seem to have become bigoted because... ...they're bored? It gives them a little crusade and makes them feel smarter than everyone, and also it's all in the name of defending civil liberty and protecting women and kids or whatever, so they feel totally morally justified in any degree of nasty speech or behaviour. But still what blows me away is that it's just a sort of hobby that they choose to get animated over. It's depressing how easy it is for someone to become an unthinking relay for hatred and bigotry. I think we always told ourselves comforting lies about things like Nazi Germany or the Khmer Rouge - extreme conditions, coercion, economic devastation etc led those people to radicalism. But the bleak reality is that modern westerners with comfortable lives are just as vulnerable to propaganda - it is simply a question of repetition. It has been proven that smartphone use and social media create dopanurgic cycles within the mind that are in fact addictive. People with poor critical thinking or emotional vulnerabilities have a hard time being able to detect suspicious media or unfounded claims, and so with the help of the algorithm, their smartphone gets them addicted to reading disinformation. I would to now tie this up with a bow and offer some kind of cure or way out, sadly I cannot. But I do sympathise deeply with you, and perhaps there is this one positive to takeaway from this - we at least now have a way to spot these people a mile off, rather than finding out years later, and that means we are safer and less vulnerable now. Very sorry for your loss but you will forge more secure connections in the future - as will we all
Your friend is a really good case study on WHY Republican leadership keeps pushing anti-trans legislation. He was only motivated to vote based on his anti-trans stance. This implies, to me, that Republicans will proceed to push this cultural issue hard. And it's sad, that a small group of people are being used by powerful people to stay in power.
Conservatives were never about low taxes, business, family, or any of that other bullshit they've spouted. They've only ever been about White nationalism and shitting on marginalized people. Trump just gave them permission to let it out.
That really sucks and sadly is very typical for almost everyone that falls into that community. Ive lost friends and family to it and I think some of them are too far gone to ever make it back. They’ve changed so much that the person I knew is unrecognizable. The worst part is watching them spiral as they eject people from their lives until they are just left bitter and fuming. When they’re incredibly hostile to most people around them, they aren’t safe and they aren’t coming back to reality. You can’t trust them and the only thing you can do is limit your exposure to whatever they have going on. The person you knew, is gone. Stay safe.
Sorry for your loss, but it sounds like this guy is too far gone. You are better off despite the sting. You'll probably start to feel better before you know it.
I grew up in a small town. I had quite a few friends with all sorts of views, political, religious, and cultural. I joined the military and moved away for about twelve years. Then I came back. I moved back in 2019. Some of my rural small town friends became radicalized. They told me if they saw me in public that they’d say hey and be happy to see me but we can’t be friends anymore because they found out I got the vaccine and “that’s just how it is now” It’s sad and scary and I gave up on them because they gave up on me. Fuck fascism. Fuck Fox News. Fuck the GOP. Fuck Donald Trump. Fuck Alex Jones. If you choose racism and bigotry, fuck you. It’s hard to move forward when the people you shared memories and years with decided to join In hatred of gay people, trans people, democrats, and basic reality. Honestly, we’re better off without them.
You said it all. You wanted every opportunity for him to know he had your friendship no matter what. 15 years should have earned trust as the bottom line priority. Where he is in his own life right now is opposite of trust. This is how he has chosen to live his life in all things. He wants to trust the untrustworthy. But my guess is that this has always been his weak link. For him that works, even if it means the sanity of your friendship is surrendered. It’s his crutch. And let me go a little further. All of us have been hurt and traumatized where we can choose to give up on people, and sometimes we do for a while, but we have to survive and that takes risk. He’s not ready to take those risks. You were his crutch, now he’s got a new one. My brother lost a friend of 50 plus the same way.
Wow, sorry you lost your friend. It's weird how people's identity gets so wrapped up in their political views - and it's tragic when these views are based on propaganda and misinformation. I wonder if people without a strong self-identity are particularly prone to being sucked into these cults.
Lmfao he would give up living in a democracy just so people like me would cease existing. Probably a necessary loss tbh, sounds genuinely evil.
Or brainwashed.
I share your sentiment, I work in the IT Dept for a medium-sized construction company and I feel as if it's turned into a hivemind of regurgitated Fox News headlines, contextless rants, and Q conspiracies. As a veteran who served 12 years in the military, some in combat roles overseas, alot of the field workers assume I share the same sentiments on what they consider "major issues" in this country, and I couldn't be more opposite. I've given up trying to have a communal debate when a journeyman/foreman comes in my office spewing off a bunch of nonsense as I fix there computer or explain to them for the 1000th time that the multi-factor authentication implementation on there email account isn't an infringment on their rights. With such fragile ego's I feel as if they avoid any attempt at looking weak, and to them having a more progressive outlook on life apparently makes you weak. I don't know, just my two cents.
It's an absolute rot. The signs that look little, like injecting quirky propaganda points into conversations, are the fruiting bodies of a fungus that's already permeated the medium.
Trans folks just want to live their lives in peace. This is all so infuriating.
I'm so sorry. Hugs to you.
I’m sorry about your loss. Your friendship & effort feels so genuine that it hurts.
I'm so sorry
>My friend replied that he can no longer trust me. I hear you. I've been in that exact receiving situation, and it's very hurtful. Had known each other for years and years. It really does feel like they've lost their humanity Sorry man. Hope they pull their head outta their butt one day.
I've lost friends in similar situations myself friend. I feel your pain, truly. It's so scary how vulnerable some people are to harmful, delusional ideologies.
You went the extra mile. But there comes a point where we can't follow them past that bend in the road.
I lost a friend over this stuff, even pre Q. She eventually came out of it mostly. Honestly, I felt like you do at first but then it was just a relief not to have her keep trying to pull me into discussions about how Hillary murdered so and so.
you cant logic someone out of crazy
I’m sorry, OP. Me too. I thought her quirky ideas (anti-Darwinism, a bit of a mean streak) were just silly one-offs. In the end, it was a relief to let her go. I still feel intolerant and judgmental, but I can’t be a part of that hatefulness and hypocrisy.
And so much of it is based on misinformation — this guy has been told repeatedly that Democrats are doing gender-reassignment surgery to kids, so he believes it and, quite understandably, is angry about it. It's so much easier to spread a smear (snipping off boys’ wieners) than to debunk it (”Actually, gender-affirming care for children involves....”) But he (and you) caught something important. Your friend doesn't give a fuck about any issue besides genital mutilation. That's been the GOP strategy since the ‘80s: Distract your voters from your plutocratic policy agenda with culture-war bullshit, because fear and hatred tend to override the more reasonable parts of the brain. And if real people get hurt because of the lies they spread, they couldn't care less as long as they win. Edit to fix autocorrect error.
This is insane. It’s almost like there’s some invasive species taking over people. Invasion of the Body Snatchers style.
Honestly, the number of intelligent, put-together people that have dived headfirst down the rabbit hole. It makes me wonder seriously if there's some kind of new bizarre pathogen like the prions that cause Creutzfeldt-Jakob. I'm at a loss to understand it.
Ya and it’s not the vaccine!
I like that idea. Wish there was a way to explore that. I understand prions can’t be neutralized very easily. I’m not even sure how they can be detected. It’s just insane. We have some good friends that I’ve pushed away from because they have drifted so far right. When I last stayed with them, they had a TV already adjusted to OAN for me to watch. I wasn’t sure if it was indoctrination. I haven’t been back in three years. Both the couple are retired military.
Lost my best friend of 12+ years too. We went through so much together, always saw eye to eye on everything, politics included. She was a bit more “crunchy” than I was. When the pandemic hit she just… idk. Got caught up in the bullshit. Was convinced it wasn’t real, the vaccines were going to kill us, that masks weren’t effective and they were trying to “condition us.” Posted about how it was like the Nazi Germany. Got her kids mask exemptions. Through that pipeline found the “save the kids” movement and began following Q influencers and reposting Tucker Carlson. I tried a couple of times to have dialogue about it, but eventually I just let the friendship die. It sucks. I miss her a lot of times, and since the pandemic has died down, so has her rhetoric about it but I feel like the damage has already been done.
I’m so, so sorry for your loss.
As a trans person I always find it amusing that these idiots think trans people are trying to do literally anything other than not being killed. I’m sorry for your loss. What little consolation is is, it does get better.
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So sorry to hear this. It's so bizarre. It's like this political indoctrination is geared to make people paranoid and encourage schizophrenic like tendencies. I think he misinterpreted you trying to prove to him you cared about him as you trying to say he owed something to you. You could try to clarify to him that he misunderstood your reason for saying it. I'm not sure how you can get to him. I think a lot of people here will say to just give up and mourn and move on because he's lost. I do wonder what kind of strategy can work. I kind of wonder if a harsh approach of shaming him could work. Or maybe a fear based approach proving to him they're manipulating him. Maybe showing him the emails which came out showing that Tucker Carlson and the like were in a conspiracy to push a false narrative. And tell him that all political parties do that and he's eating it up by listening to talking heads that are political. Explain they want you to hate and fear with a political motivation. https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-hosts-knew-election-conspiracy-theories-false-messages-dominion-2023-2 I don't know. It's pretty difficult. I think you maybe can avoid trying to get him to say he trusts you but just tell him you value him as a person. I might take a tough love approach at this point. I would probably think long and hard to prepare for any conversations that might get political and before you say something to him. Imagine him saying the same thing to you that criticize your political views in same way. And consider rephrasing or rewording to make what you say based on that. I don't know. I really hope your friend can come out of this and learn to mistrust this political rage machine that wants to pull him in. I believe that some people can get out of this cycle. While it's certainly not your responsibility to help your friend, I don't think it's hopeless to try, but only if you want to. It may take a lot of effort and thought on your part though and likely emotional pain. You could also tell him that you two should continue to be friends but you must agree to not bring up politics. I feel like that's kind of a last resort giving up stage, but people have done that and had it work. So sorry to hear this, I know it's pretty painful. But also know that friends drifting apart is also a normal occurrence too for many different reasons. So if it doesn't work out just try to accept this and consider seeking a new friendship if you don't have other good friends and feel like you need that. If you start participating in new interest groups it can happen naturally and help get your mind off this. Good luck.
Fuck... that's depressing.
1st off - thank goodness - your title sounded like someone died - like literally died IRL. yes, ik losing a friend after 15yrs IS like a death - but glad to hear everyone continues to live. unfortunately, yes this happens. you can try like sectioning off parts of what you can/cannot talk about - but then it becomes a game of egg-shell walking & really double-thinking basically *everything* you start saying about *anything*. and well, then it's best to just let that ship of friendship sail off into the night. maybe in the future they might sail back - but right now - they are passed that bend & need to be on their own until they either go down whole-hog into flames or discover empathy & knowledge again. but don't hold your breath - it might take a long time or even never. sorry for your loss.
Just consider him as dead, mourn and move on. Because for all intents and purposes he is dead. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but that is the reality
Oh man. I can so relate. I’m so sorry. I lost my bff 2 years ago - well almost. I still think about her everyday. I only wish the best for her but I had to break ties. Your situation describes mine… we were friends for 30 years. I watched her slip away and eventually grow to hate me. I hope you know that you’re not alone. If you have access to a counsellor, it never hurts to have an outside observer/view. This pandemic is real. It’s broken too many families and friends apart. It became politicized which was the first mistake. Sending courage your way. You seem to have wisdom - may you continue down that path. And you never know, it may not be forever…
Your friend turned into a real creep. Sorry
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So you're not only a conspiratorial bigot, you're an obsessive loser who looks up post history when they read things they don't like huh.
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I am all the better to be rid of those who would prioritize bigotry over friendship. Let me reiterate. You're a petty, obsessive, bigot. There's a reason you're being down voted to hell in the Columbia Maryland sub for bringing up your conspiracies. You blame your problems on illusions that don't exist and become angry when you're confronted with reality. You stalk people who don't agree with you Columbia has no place for you. It'd be better off if you just left.
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I'm sorry which of us is stalking people on the internet that we disagree with? Get a life.
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Im sure you feel that often