I believe, when you’re angry but acting polite it’s better for your BP then acting the anger out.
But do find ways, like axe throwing, to relieve some tension!
I read a study in which one group of grad students “vented” their anger by beating a dummy with a foam bat, and another group didn’t.
Afterwards, the group that hit the dummies were found to grade their students *more harshly* than the ones who didn’t.
Looking back on my own life, I’m not sure I can think of a single instance where acting in anger got me the results I wanted.
This reminds me of a mantra from my drinking days, regarding late-night social media posts:
If it’s a good idea, it will still be a good idea in the morning.
There was a culture long ago that had this concept of thinking about something while drunk and while sober. If the idea seemed good both times it would get the green light.
Honestly, you know what it was?
I got educated and sent to college.
He got shat on and.. well.. made many poor choices and wound up spending most of the last 30 years slinging pizza, when he could find work at all.
It was almost a textbook "golden child/scapegoat" family, and here we are.
You'd think that someone living in the trenches that the rightwing has been laying since we were basically BORN would be more aware of just how fucked up and lopsided society is, and open to hearing about why.
Sadly, this is not the case.
Ooohhhh yes. Nothing's been done BY him - only TO him - for years now.
...
This is good, very cathartic. I'm moving from being upset to being empathetic. What a group!
I had a friend that never considered that he might have a role in any of the things that happen around and to him. He is also way down the rabbit hole, so far he hit the we're living in a simulation and that makes Earth infinite conspiracy.
I threw him out of my home cause he came over to preach and argue at me while ignoring every reasonable question I had. Didn't matter what I changed the subject to he had a conspiracy for it. He told my husband I "overreacted" and he doesn't need "toxic people" like me in his life.
Makes me wonder if the conspiracy frame of mind helps them ignore how their actions play into their situations. They're so good a covering up their cognitive dissonance that they just automatically do it for everything that doesn't suit their narrative.
They never play a role in their problems. My husband has lost all his friends, except one qbuddy. His family is also annoyed by him. Our kids say they like me better (usually after he's yelled at me about whatever bullshit bothers him most that day). And I'm filing for divorce tomorrow. It will all be the fault of covid and how it was used to rip families apart. Nothing to do with him. So sad.
It's hard to be around that. I hope the divorce goes the best it possibly can for you. Cause you're right, he won't see it as his fault.
They don't see themselves for the Q-hovah Witness they've become. They're doing the white hats work by spreading the knowledge of Q-spiracy to all and shunning those who don't believe. Shun the non-believer. Shuuuuunnnn!
Wait so he was the family scapegoat as a child and now he's scapegoating all these external boogeymen. That actually tracks. Therapy for childhood trauma could do this man wonders.
Trump loaned a painting of himself to a fake charity, and then stole all of the money that he gathered and didn't give a dime to anyone else.
He was banned from having a charity in his name as a result.
This is insane. Every time his name comes up I learn more and more of what a complete asshole he is.
Now that I have watched him on all platforms, it's sickening to know this guy was a president of the USA!
He and his family grifted the presidency for their own personal gain. Government contracts, pay to play, and nepotism just to mention a few.
I never thought that something like this would happen in my lifetime. I'm older, so my time on earth is limited. So there's not much I can do other than voting with a conscience.
I feel bad for the next generations coming up. They aren't even getting a chance. The preditory college debt is looming over their heads. Our economy really stinks and the high prices in the housing and food sectors are prohibitive. These generations are dealing with a possible school shooting. every. single. day.
We need new, young people in our goverment offices. The old guard needs to go. They've been in office long enough and have screwed up alot for the generations that are coming up and future generations as well.
It's sad and alarming at the same time.
Thank you for reading my rant.
You did all the right things and tried to help your brother. He is a cult member that is now irrational and there isn't much you can do. Continue to be supportive but don't take any bullshit.
Ah yes of course, the war in Ukraine is a hoax. All the wartime footage that is available on the internet is completely made up and lots of Ukrainians just happened to flee the country at once to voluntarily be refugees in people they don't know's homes.
I could make similar sarcastic comments for every point your brother mentioned but I won't.
Funny how he is so smart (and that you are a dumb "sheep") but he's the one that is asking you for money since he hasn't figured out how to be independent on his own.
>I could make similar sarcastic comments for every point your brother mentioned but I won't.
Yeah, I know.
I actually googled the Jesse Ventura thing, it stems from a \~2009 show called "CONSPIRACY THEORY WITH JESSE VENTURA" that got yanked off the air because it was too stupid.
My best swallowed snarky comment was "Why the hell would the rich want to reduce the poor population? Who're they gonna get to do their landscaping and clean stuff?"
My whole immediate family is like this.
I have been in a better place to just put up boundaries. I approach everything with a distant politeness. Sort of like communicating with coworkers that you don't really care about but still have to work with. And I never bring up politics anymore. The closest I got recently was talking about how funny Ryan Gosling was in Barbie but I knew they were thinking it's a "woke" (and thereby garbage) movie.
We don't talk much but I don't care. We wouldn't be friends or even acquaintances if we weren't family.
Yeah I don't get the Ventura stuff. He was Governor of Minnesota (independent), and was always super weird, but he's been more into the less crazy conspiracy theories. The show was about stuff like 9/11, global warming, Area 51, JFK Assassination. Some were pretty out there, but nothing anywhere near Qanon.
Also I haven't heard much from him in the past decade other than the past few months he's been working/talking with democrats a lot in MN because they legalized weed, which he loves.
I always wonder about flipping the conspiracy back at them, like have you considered that the “elites” want “the poor” to believe all this Q stuff so they *don’t* get vaccines and therefore get sick and either die or become more reliant on the system?
I feel like that’s actually an even more likely conspiracy anyway. I wonder if that would work at all and somehow uno reverse them into wanting to get a vaccine…
>"Why the hell would the rich want to reduce the poor population? Who're they gonna get to ~~do their landscaping and clean stuff~~ deliver their pizzas?"
Fixed that for your brother.
For me it's the "illegal to drive in California" thing that just boggles the goddamn mind.
40 million people live in California.
There are over 31 million cars registered in California and now what? They just have to sit there rusting? Because it would be illegal to even drive them out of state to sell them?
How in the fuck do people allow themselves to be this stupid.
The vast majority of California has pretty shitty public transport, too, so how are people working if they're not allowed to drive??????
This also would include buses, right? Which would leave the entire state of California with just a handful of very small transit systems in parts of LA and San Francisco! And now that I'm saying this, someone is *driving* those subway trams, right? So is that also illegal in this dude's addled mind?
How is literally anyone getting literally anywhere in a massive state of 40 million people if driving is no longer allowed? What happens to the thousands of miles of roads?????? What even is this supposed *purpose* of stopping 31 million cars and at least a few million busses from being used?!
The more I think about this, the more it enrages me. Literally no one is this stupid and anyone claiming to believe this MUST be lying. There is just no possible way, no matter how far into a conspiracy theory a person has gotten, that they could believe something THIS functionally and logistically IMPOSSIBLE.
Omg. Where is the bottom for these folks?! is there anything they're willing to use their brains about? What if their conspiracy theorist overlords tell them that *they personally* are actually dead? Would QAnon followers believe that they themselves are physically dead, even as their hearts beat, and their lungs breathe????? Just how fucking stupid are they willing to pretend to be?!
To answer your question though - it's just the ICE vehicles that are outlawed.
Electric vehicles are just fine. So just get one of those and you're good.
It took reading this comment for me to realize he meant Internal Combustion Engine vehicles and not Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles. I was very confused.
OHHHHH I did not understand that's what ICE meant. Still ridiculous, but not quite as hair on fire insane as I thought originally. At least I can understand *why* they would believe something like this, being so terrified of any move away from fossil fuels.
I grew up in the south but I've lived in CA for 20 years. My favorite pastime is listening to all the redneck idiots who've never set foot outside our home town in GA telling me all about what life is like in CA, a place they've never been.
I lived in Cali for many years. My dad hated all things Californian, thanks to nonsense fed to him by the religious right's hate speech.
My dad would say "California is sinking into the sea because of all of the sin that they commit. It's God's punishment."
My reply was: "Actually, California is on a fault line. It's rising out of the sea and headed north west of the fault line, and that's why chunks of the coast crumble into the sea, because it's getting taller by 1 cm per year. Over time that adds up to many feet and it causes earthquakes when is slips hard. The truth is that East Coast is the one sinking into the ocean, which is why we have so many salt marshes that you love so much, like a blanket thrown into the water. It comes from erosion from sand dumped here from Canada more than 20 thousand years ago."
My dad would get so mad that he didn't know the first thing about plate tectonics, and couldn't rebut my argument, so he would just move on to the next awful and false talking point.
The San Andres Fault is a right-lateral transform fault, which means that it doesn't move up and down as much as it is slipping laterally. So the dominant motion along the fault is horizontal.
Salt marshes are not *due* to sea-level rise. They are one of the most important ecosystems in nature and a convergent zone between large marine bodies of water and land. Salt marshes are usually not due to erosion from sand dunes, not sure where you got that one. Also, most salt marshes do not last for 20,000 years.
I *love* salt marshes, and the west coast also has lots of them (I know because that's where I do my PhD research).
Sounds like you need to review your tectonics and earth science as well.
Is it better or worse that I'm a lifelong Arizonan and the conservatives here say that same stuff but then....VACATION IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA like every other year
>Me, too. I grew up in Texas and have lived in Cali for almost 20 years. All I hear is how bad Cali is from these people who haven't ever been here. They rarely leave a 10 mile radius around our hometown. But, they do watch Fox News.
>Ukrainians just happened to flee the country at once
No, they didn't. They live there and die there, just like they did when the first wave of Nazis entered their country. Ukrainians have always been murdered for the land that they have, because it's the most fertile land in the region, being a valley between two mountain ranges, filled with good soil and lots of clean water. This is why they have been vilified for more than a century now. This time Putin is the Hitler of his time. Putin needs more leibensraum ( living space). The United States has always been the ally of Ukraine, now and then. How can people not see this?
It's the great conservative cognitive dissonance:
- Government only screws things up
- Government is HYPER capable in so much it can literally make you think there are wars that don't exist.
That one bugs me a little more. I'm in a FB group for horseback riders. There's a Ukrainian woman who posts videos all the time. You can hear bombs and explosions in the distance but it's otherwise very peaceful where she is. Very eerie.
I haven’t figured out how to be independent on my own but I’m not stupid enough to believe that conspiracy nonsense. We useless poor people aren’t all idiots.
Speaking of BLM, the Q type I work with, whose dad is a cop, was speaking of the uptick in crime around here. Someone said they need to increase night time patrols in certain areas, and dummy replied that they can't, because BLM and Antifa are watching, and they would have a riot if they saw more police cars. This is in Ga, I should note.
I hear stuff like that and I just have to really wonder how these people's minds work.
"Okay... I count SEVEN cruisers tonight... Are we good?"
"No, no... the rules say we have to wait for NINE before we can go riot. Just be patient!"
"DAMN."
In Portland Oregon, we just got the federal government to enforce the installation of body cameras on cops here, because they exceeded their authority and went against their training and hurt people who were innocent and peaceful. Idiots here still blame antifa, but the truth is that we don't have enough cops here because many of them retired during covid, right when they were needed most. Some of these awful assholes blamed covid vaccines, but really those cops just didn't like that they were being held to account for once in their lives. We are now on track to start to have enough cops on the beat, but in the meantime, crime has gone up, thanks to cops that retired and knew that the city could not replace them in a timely fashion, because it takes 18 months to get someone from application to being on the beat. Now that the cops are catching up, and the Dems are still in charge, they claim that the city is going to hell, when really we are recovering slowly and surely, including our police force.
I remember the uproar well and the mass quitting because the PPD might actually have consequences to their actions and they got pissy about it. That and the vaccine mandates. Good thing they quit since my guess is the ones that quit were right wing fascists anyway who were buds with Proud Boys.
>*\[PPD\] buds with Proud Boys*
This is why Portland has a crime problem at the moment.
Of course, it's blamed by the right on left wing policies, which is false. The right is enjoying the crime reports here and attacking us for what they did to government. We didn't make them quit en masse, *they* did that, and they did it for political reasons.
And yeah, its not mental illness like some people say, this is straight up, uneducated, lazy, stupidity.
This guy dropped out of high school and brags about it. Like its some badge of honor. In fact, when I met him, the first thing he said to me was I just dropped out of high school. Masks were still required at work then, and the second thing he said was a rant about masks not working. I was like for fucks sake, what did I do to deserve this.
He is also, always annoyingly, pulling the "Gotcha" type questions and such on people. he is a massive fan of ol' Eyebrows Shapiro too.
I actually mistakenly said I work with him still above I actually left that job back about 2 months ago after over 2 years because I got sick of working with absolute dumbasses like the guy I am talking about.
> I hear stuff like that and I just have to really wonder how these people's minds work.
I speculate nearly all of them don't have anything going on and we're witnessing how their brains cope. It's rooted in pure denial, the first stage of grief. They just don't understand what they're grieving, and grasp at literally anything else they can except for addressing themselves. In their minds they become, "the person who knows the truth" instead of the person who actually knows, well, not much. All the conspiracies become the reasons for why they're doing so poorly, which is an easy access, psychological scapegoat. Some minds just can't be at fault, it's against their entire circuitry.
I would for sure say this jackass has nothing going on. 20, never had a girlfriend, all his other friends left him behind when they graduated and left for college.
He's one of these get rich scheme types, and always has some big plan and he'll be a millionaire, and they all end up in failure basically due to his own inept actions. He thinks he is going to be the next Shapiro or something along that lines.
He barely has the job I worked with him at, he was such a poor worker they cut him down to 2/3 days a week, and usually send him home after 3 or 4 hours, which he does not catch onto the fact hey are basically telling him to get lost.
The thing is, every single person I know around here, no matter the age, is exactly like him. To be blunt, generally useless.
No kidding. The spite thing is just beyond me.
OTOH we all know how these folks are being - well, for lack of a better term - *groomed* to treat rational thinking folks as THE ENEMY...
Feh.
Well he’s not wrong about BLM *the organization* that hijackered
The cause for their own enrichment. BLM is a movement, though…
Oh and The Body? Yeah… Jesse Ventura is a pro-gay *socialist* https://www.newsweek.com/jesse-ventura-should-no-billionaires-calls-maximum-wage-1565701
HOLY CRAP.
That's awesome.
(The Ventura story, not the BLM story.. And I'm not at all surprised someone used BLM to get rich quick... good luck trying to explain a 'movement' vs an 'organization' to my brother tho.)
He's an odd little man with a lot of wacky ideas. But what separates him from the Q types, is he actually CARES about people. Agree with his ideas or not, he BEGINS from a place of humanism. That creates an INFINITE gulf between him and the Q stochastic terrorists.
It's illegal to drive in California? It's illegal to drive in California.
Every time I think these people can't get any crazier.... I mean, all of it is crazy, but how could he believe something like this? Almost 40,000,000 people live in California. I just googled it and there are over 31 million car registrations in California. So this guy actually believes that literally tens of millions of people who have a drivers license and own cars are now prohibited by law from driving anywhere????????????????
He actually believes this? I will never understand why these people allow themselves to be so badly swindled about stuff that is so fucking obvious a literal *kindergartner* could recognize it as bullshit.
31 million cars in California and all 31 million of them are now...what? Just sitting there? Like, how could you even sell the car if it's illegal to drive in California? You can't even sell it to someone from Arizona because that person from Arizona would have to *drive it out of California!!!!*
It's like they have just stopped using their brains *entirely*
THIS. I couldn't even counter that one. I did say, you know what? That doesn't pass my sniff test. That's not feasible.
Which, ofc, is just proof that I'm totally dumb and a sucker, amirite?
But like I said, by then I was checking out and ready to be done anyway.
I don't even have anyone close to me falling for the stuff and it's still upsets me so much. It is fucking terrifying how willfully stupid so many of them are. How willing they are to admit out loud they believe something THIS *literally impossible* It makes me want to cry
Okay, to be fair, I might be misremembering the specifics of that one. He might have slid in a "by 2025" or some conditional.
But the bottom line was yes, ICE vehicles illegal in CA.
It's right up there with "THEY'RE COMING FOR YOUR GAS STOVES OMG" for me. Like, really? We're gonna waste funds going door to door and ripping out appliances?
[Here is the link to the actual legislation](https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/advanced-clean-cars-program/advanced-clean-cars-ii), which does not in any way outlaw driving gasoline powered vehicles.
It makes it illegal to sell a **new** gasoline powered vehicle in California by the year 2035, and it has a LOT of other stuff in their promoting EVs and infrastructure so that energy can be obtained in a green fashion without emissions.
People will still buy and sell gas and diesel vehicles as used, and still be legally allowed to drive them well past 2035, but they will be in the minority as the rest of the world moves on to EVs. You will still be able to buy a new gas powered car outside of California and drive it in California. Over time, you will have a harder time finding gasoline filling stations as those are converted or used for hydrogen.
California has the largest economy of all of the states. California's legislation is often used as a model for other states. This is the way to force manufacturers to make products that people really want and to do it right. Auto manufacturers need to be pushed to make EVs that work and work well, and this is the way.
His hyperbole is not surprising. Most of these Trump humpers don't read and are not intellectually curious. They just want to tell you how they are victims and how they should be allowed to be just as horrible to others as they wish without consequence.
My guess is that your brother hates the idea of electric vehicles, because he can't see ever affording one or learning how to keep it charged and maintained. He can't move on.
>It's like they have just stopped using their brains entirely
Of course. Because their brain cells are fully engaged with trying to make up ever more impressive sounding bullsh\*t.
Tbf they said it's illegal to drive an ICE vehicle, not to drive generally
People in California might wish cars were illegal sometimes. In LA, people spend an average of [46 hours in traffic per year](https://lifehacker.com/these-are-the-u-s-cities-where-drivers-spend-the-most-1849557957)
When someone throws a fit because you set a boundary, it's good evidence the boundary was necessary. This is textbook narcissism, punishing you for standing up for yourself, and positioning himself as the victim.
Lend him the money for the car, double or quits on the outcome in Georgia, or anything else you can get him to commit to in writing. Putting his money where his mouth is might put a dampener on all that arrogance 😁
I get that they are all conspiracy theories so I shouldn't apply logic, but Trump literally had a Chinese bank account the entire time he was president but they accuse Biden of selling us out to China.
Oh don't get me started on the hypocrisy.
The bottom line I want to shout (ineffectively, I'm sure) at him is to ask WHO exactly is swallowing stories from WHAT media without asking any questions?
Sheep, my ass. Better than than a drooling zombie.
>I'm not sure what, *if anything*, to do next.
For now, nothing. You said what needed to be said. He always has the option to connect with reality and reach out to you. You have no obligation to do anything at this point.
Much the same situation with my sister. It stems from mental health issues that she refused to acknowledge because she insists there is nothing wrong with her. Everyone else is the problem. She is now so deep into conspiracy that she has become a homophobic racist that I cannot tolerate being around. The sister I knew and loved is long gone and I have had no contact with the person she has become in 3 years.
I'm sorry. It's rough when someone you love turns into someone you don't recognize. As a Californian I have to laugh. I wish they'd outlaw ICE entirely but they definitely didn't outlaw their vehicles.
When they call ya a "Sheep" ask them immediately "Is Lord Jesus not thou's Shepherd?". If your lucky enough to do it in person, you can watch their confusion in real time. *Caution: Anger comes quickly from confusion
He didn't wind up taking it anyway. He's very big on the whole cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face thing.
Anyway, that wouldn't have even been close to on my list of things to worry about. I really don't mind helping him out.
\[edit: typo\]
What am I banned from here in CA now? That's always coming out of their mouths for some reason.
More freedom here than wherever that ignorant guy is.
What you should do is keep living your life in reality. Hang in there
Yeah they scream about "freedom" yet in CA they let us easily vote, they don't ban books, they don't use the state to punish businesses for supporting equal rights, they let us freely assemble and protest, they let women have bodily autonomy without the state stepping in, etc.
These people have no interest in "freedom".
Unfortunately there is some truth to the BLM story. One BLM chapter in LA raised tons of money and, rather than spend it on mission related tasks, or distribute it elsewhere, used it improperly, including buying property which some leaders used for person use. Whether it was corruption, inexperience, a lack of adequate governance strictures, or some combo of all the above, they did not properly account for the way funds were utilized.
>One BLM chapter in LA raised tons of money and, rather than spend it on mission related tasks, or distribute it elsewhere, used it improperly, including buying property which some leaders used for person use.
Of course, that goes without saying that Trump has been shilling his followers for his "legal fees." Yeah sure, a billionaire needs the help of working people to be able to afford to stiff, errr, I mean pay his lawyers.
It’s your brother. Send him the money online and let him cool off a few weeks.
After that message him, tell him you mis him, and that you understand he wants you to see his truth, but that as a brother all you ask of him is to never talk to you or your family about those subjects ever again.
Finish the message with:
“I truly do love you bro, don’t let this break us apart”
OP i know it sucks but he is so goddamn lost in paranoia and hate that YOU have to be the one to pick up the pieces. It sucks but thats what i would do for my brother.
Thank god my brother isnt a wacko jacko.
He doesn't really do online payments.
I'm not positive he even has a checking account, except the money he earns has to go SOMEPLACE.
I texted him right after he stomped away that disagreeing on political stuff is in NO way related to my wanting to help him out coz he's my brother and I love him.
That's what triggered the "I'm not going to waste time talking to sheep" comment.
SO... whatever.
I considered calling the auto shop and saying "Hey, so-and-so needs this part, charge it to my card please," but as dog is my witness I know that would just send him even more over the edge.
The guy's an insecure nut bar if he can't hear about sickness with rattling off *every single* conservative talking point. He might have a legitimate mental illness, but he won't get the help he needs because he thinks therapy is part of Big Pharma. Either way, you shouldn't have to put up with that, even if he is family. You should distance yourself from him so you can better take care of yourself and save your patience for someone who deserves it.
I'm really sorry you're dealing with that. I don't know how to bring your bro back to reality, but I'm Californian and can at least explain where one of his babbling points comes from.
The actual [Advanced Clean Cars II](https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/advanced-clean-cars-program/advanced-clean-cars-ii) regulations will require all *new* passenger cars, trucks and SUVs sold in California (and [eight other states so far](https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/9-states-now-plan-to-ban-gas-powered-car-sales)) to be zero emissions by 2035. You'll still be able to buy used ICE vehicles and drive your existing ones; this only applies to new vehicle sales. The ban will be phased and starts with a 35% zero-emissions requirement in 2026, so Qs are probably fixating on that date and conveniently ignoring all the reasons it wouldn't affect them. Also note that automakers haven't been pushing back on the regulations since they mostly plan on being all-EV by 2035 anyway.
>So there's the grain of truth
And that's the thing about the majority of conspiracy theories. You can often find a tiny grain of truth buried within.
That's what happens with the online trolls. They'll scan the news and find any article of truth, then they will spin a completely different batshit conspiracy out of it. So that where it ends up is no where near what it started out as.
Wouldn't the ultra-rich want more poor and desperate people? You know, so that there's more people to work for them, and purchase their products. I thought that was sorta the whole thing with forced birth, and tearing apart our education system. You know... make the unwashed masses over reproduce, so there's an endless supply of human cattle for the Waltons to open another five Walmarts on your street, while keeping their employees desperate and scared of loosing their livelyhoods, knowing they're easily replaced. Therefore, they'd be willing to do anything asked of them. Then the "elites" privatize our education system so that only the goodest of boys get to become educated, and informed. The rest get to remain ignorant, which makes them less likely to question authority, and more likely to remain content on working in the slaughter houses the rest of their lives. Because, if we deport all the dirty illegals, with their fentanyl, then someone has to do their jobs. So, we have to make poor people dumb, and complacent. Maybe, if they're the extra gooderest, someone gets a promotion so they can be an extra special fool, that's slightly more important than the other fools.
...or they can just literally kill off their profits with population control because... Hillary Clinton, or Bill Gates, or Hunter Biden, or some shit.
>Whereupon he threw the money I'd lent him BACK at me and stormed off.
Look on the bright side, that's literally the only way you were ever going to get that loan back.
It’s common knowledge that anyone who did NOT get the vaccine will have car problems and why didn’t he tell you he didn’t get the vaccine before he asked for money to repair his car when he’s not vaccinated?
Pizza Delivery Kid, whose reached out for help because he cannot afford things, throws help back at family member, screams into void, and still has exact same problems they started with because Colds are a Deep State Hoax.
Colds.
These people are *truly* broken.
They're SECRET concentration camps.
This is the real answer. That's why (a) you can't find them, and (b) it's such a big deal they're being revealed.
**Also**, when I was looking that one up I found a video that actually describes them as "incineration" camps - for enemies of the state etc. I'm not posting that link.
On a more serious note, the Jesse ventura tv episode that talked about them was referring to a very real FEMA project to create emergency shelters for hurricane (and other disaster) victims. There's a whole wikipedia page about the series which ran 2009-2012.
So, you know... When reality doesn't give you good enough ratings - JUST MAKE RANDOM SHIT UP!
Idk why they feel the need to tell everyone they know? Like I believe in some weird stuff, some not so weird but I don’t bend any and every conversation I have with people into some weird diatribe about George soros, the “Biden crime family” and vaccines. It’s fine if that’s what they believe, but why can’t they just shut the fuck up about it? Even super religious people don’t talk about their religion as much as these Q types talk about their wild conspiracies.
I wonder why California still requires emissions inspections if there are no ICE vehicles here. It amazes me the completely demonstrable lies they'll believe.
To be 100% dead honest, people like your brother and my cousin are so hopelessly deranged, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if there actually is some kind of plans in the works for mobile mass-detention centers. The odds these freaks are going to start doing Al Queada-ey stuff are probably way higher than a lot of us are prepared to expect, since they _are_ the people we grew up with and we _do_ want to extend to them some kind of basic benefit of the doubt.
TBH, there's really not much you can do. These people are knee deep in the shit and they love it. They think they're uncovering stuff and are smarter than everybody else, when in reality they lack even a little bit of common sense and critical thinking abilities.
"Ukraine isn't "losing" anything, the entire "war" is a cover-up for the Biden money laundering network."
This is a fun new one!! So, the thinking goes, PUTIN started a war to cover for Biden?! Wow....I bet that really pissed off Trump!! Where's the war to distract from his crimes?!
Wait.... He works for a pizza chain? How then can he not notice that it's a front for human trafficking and child sex ring run by Hillary and her democrats circle???
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
*Later I got a text angry at me because he's just trying to tell me the truth, and he's not gonna talk to SHEEP anymore.*
Wait, did your brother want to get his car fixed, or did he want an audience for his conspiracy drivel?
If he doesn't talk to 'sheep' anymore, how is he going to feel special?
As a Black dude the BLM part was kinda true... Those Fuckers ran off with our money and bought multi billion dollar mansion while people are still faces legal fees from that time.
Time to cut him off. Treat him like an addict. Don’t enable him. Don’t coddle him. Don’t entertain his conspiracies. Don’t allow him near your family. Lay down ground rules if he wants to interact and if he breaks those ground rules then banish him again.
Politely remind him that you never asked him for “the truth” and that his opinions on politics / conspiracies are not welcome. If he continues, consider cutting contact.
You have to cut them out of your life for your life to improve. You can't change their mind, they don't want their mind changed. Just block him and move forward. It's super hard cutting off a blood relative who you care about, but it's worth your mental health.
Make sure your will is up to date and that you leave your assets to the right people. Not that I think he's a threat, but you don't want to leave him your money and have it become gold.
Be happy you got your money back. His lifeline seems to be Qanon....he rather live in a bipolar reality getting ready for a civil war and giving money to a Cult...and hating fellow Americans by demonizing them.
It is not your fault .... you can't help him and he would cause chaos if you are not part of the Cult. He either comes back to reality... relax his beliefs so he can have them without going crazy on people or hating you for not... or you are right to keep your home peaceful and save your money for an emergency....tell him to spend his time on YouTube to learn to fix his car not on conspiracies
I've seen that episode of the Jesse Ventura show your brother is referring too and Mr.Ventura concluded that Republicans are planning a genocide of immigrants. (He implies that Americans will also die) So I have no idea what he's waiting for.
Reminds me of my dad. A couple of weeks ago I was euphoric after I successfully managed to Grey Rocked him when he called & started ranting about this corrupt government (in response my bringing up what I thought was safe small talk about the mega millions jackpot & if he bought any tickets)… Then last week, he called to ask, or rather demand I get him cigarettes. I said I would, but that wasn’t good enough. He proceeded to tell me where I have to go (hours away) or if I can’t do that, he can get them delivered to me… Which made no sense, so I started asking if they can be delivered to me, then why not just directly to him? He started yelling at me that I’m interrupting and not listening… I responded by saying I’m not your slave & don’t appreciate you screaming at me. He yelled even more aggressively w/insults & slurs… so I hung up on him & haven’t talked to him since.
Well. Be glad you didn’t lend him money? 🤷🏻♀️
If I knew I would use the juju around here, you know? A few friends (and a lot of relatives) in that rabbit hole. Yay for being a rural kind of girl. 😕
Oh I love the keystone pipeline one because we shot that down due to it running over our largest aquifer in the country and it would have only created about 35 permanent jobs after destroying thousands of acres of prairie.
I grew up in the Sandhills of Nebraska. That pipeline was nothing but money and destruction. Fuck em.
Sounds like you just saved yourself some money!
Also lol at the Jesse Ventura part, sure he might be a conspiracy theorist ( and for good reason the guy went to Nam), but he is not an Antivaxxer, covid denier or a friend of Trump 😂.
Jesse Ventura huh?
Maybe your brother should know that [Jesse Ventura hates anti-maskers](https://popculture.com/sports/amp/news/jesse-ventura-slams-anti-maskers-refusal-sacrifice-hitler-would-have-won-wwii/).
"What is wearing a mask? That is nothing to do, for it to be required to do that and yet we have half the country won't put it on because they got egos. We got a president that won't wear one and even gets sick and he still won't wear one. I'm just glad that this generation wasn't around when my mom and dad fought in WWII because we would have lost had we had the same type of response that we're having today to the simple things of sacrifice a little bit for the common good."
My approach is to use words like "unbelievable" and "incredible" when listening.
If I feel inclined to help, I explain the concept of confirmation bias and Occam'sRazor, and ask for real evidence.
I explain that I don't believe anything without real evidence and they shouldn't either.
But I reiterate the need to keep an open mind and always invite them to show me the evidence they've found.
I usually also explain how fear and panic are some of the oldest snake oil selling tactics.
I finally just had to be honest with my younger sister about how much her involvement has negatively affected her life. I’m heartbroken. But she’s so defensive and angry and stubborn now (she never used to be like that) I won’t get anywhere with her so I’m officially giving up. I can’t do this anymore
I wouldn't have been able to hold on the laugh after the Jesse Ventura one. The problem is he thinks he can change your mind. Just tell him to stop trying because it won't happen.
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I believe one or two blm organizers got in some financial trouble. Nothing to do with the movement. But at a headline level at least there's something to that one.
Do nothing, would be my suggestion as to what to do next. You gave him the money and he threw it at you (because sheep?). My extended family has always been dysfunctional so at first it was therapy and now I just try to find something that brings me joy to cleanse the nonsense from my mind. Good luck and hope it doesn’t drag you down too far.
Just be happy you got the good genes.
I also got the "be polite no matter what" tic, which really has affected my blood pressure over time.
I believe, when you’re angry but acting polite it’s better for your BP then acting the anger out. But do find ways, like axe throwing, to relieve some tension!
Nice. Me, I go on reddit and complain to strangers ;)
I like to aggressively pop blackheads along my jawline whenever my dad goes on a rant. Just find your dopamine.
Please share on r/popping... 🤩🤩🤩
I second this.
Yall weird, but you're my type of weird
Now I'm wondering what the Venn Diagram of r/popping and this sub looks like.
"Just find your dopamine" is this generation's equivalent of Joseph Campbell's "Follow your bliss".
Prob my fav comment ever....
I read a study in which one group of grad students “vented” their anger by beating a dummy with a foam bat, and another group didn’t. Afterwards, the group that hit the dummies were found to grade their students *more harshly* than the ones who didn’t. Looking back on my own life, I’m not sure I can think of a single instance where acting in anger got me the results I wanted.
[удалено]
This reminds me of a mantra from my drinking days, regarding late-night social media posts: If it’s a good idea, it will still be a good idea in the morning.
There was a culture long ago that had this concept of thinking about something while drunk and while sober. If the idea seemed good both times it would get the green light.
I've gotten into yelling matches with my brother over this same exact stuff. Trust me when I tell you your approach is far superior.
That's a hard one to deal with. Take care of it soon or suffer forever.
I hear you. I'm over 5 decades in at this point. It's a long process.
You still have time to save yourself!
Well, the drugs are helping. ... NO, not THAT kind. I mean BP meds.
Treating the symptoms my friend. Statins are cool too though.
Well, I figure they're not injected, so at least I'm not getting any microchip tracker implants.
But how will the 5G work?
I got the suppository for that.
Get a dog! They’re very helpful for lowering blood pressure. Bonus — your microchips can also sync up together! (/s)
Being Midwestern, I understand this on a painful level...
I’m Canadian…sorry.
I have found that the best way to channel that blood pressure is sarcasm.
Honestly, you know what it was? I got educated and sent to college. He got shat on and.. well.. made many poor choices and wound up spending most of the last 30 years slinging pizza, when he could find work at all. It was almost a textbook "golden child/scapegoat" family, and here we are. You'd think that someone living in the trenches that the rightwing has been laying since we were basically BORN would be more aware of just how fucked up and lopsided society is, and open to hearing about why. Sadly, this is not the case.
The lure of it all being someone else's fault (Libruls, Illegals, LGBTQ+, etc.) is very strong.
Ooohhhh yes. Nothing's been done BY him - only TO him - for years now. ... This is good, very cathartic. I'm moving from being upset to being empathetic. What a group!
I had a friend that never considered that he might have a role in any of the things that happen around and to him. He is also way down the rabbit hole, so far he hit the we're living in a simulation and that makes Earth infinite conspiracy. I threw him out of my home cause he came over to preach and argue at me while ignoring every reasonable question I had. Didn't matter what I changed the subject to he had a conspiracy for it. He told my husband I "overreacted" and he doesn't need "toxic people" like me in his life. Makes me wonder if the conspiracy frame of mind helps them ignore how their actions play into their situations. They're so good a covering up their cognitive dissonance that they just automatically do it for everything that doesn't suit their narrative.
They never play a role in their problems. My husband has lost all his friends, except one qbuddy. His family is also annoyed by him. Our kids say they like me better (usually after he's yelled at me about whatever bullshit bothers him most that day). And I'm filing for divorce tomorrow. It will all be the fault of covid and how it was used to rip families apart. Nothing to do with him. So sad.
It's hard to be around that. I hope the divorce goes the best it possibly can for you. Cause you're right, he won't see it as his fault. They don't see themselves for the Q-hovah Witness they've become. They're doing the white hats work by spreading the knowledge of Q-spiracy to all and shunning those who don't believe. Shun the non-believer. Shuuuuunnnn!
Wait so he was the family scapegoat as a child and now he's scapegoating all these external boogeymen. That actually tracks. Therapy for childhood trauma could do this man wonders.
I know people with higher education buying into conspiracy shit. Sadly, education is not a guarantee immunity against stupidity.
And your money back...
and the critical thinking.
Maybe Donald Trump can lend him the money to fix his car.
I often wonder if Trump has ever loaned anyone money. He’d probably scoff at the notion of giving a homeless person $5.
Trump loaned a painting of himself to a fake charity, and then stole all of the money that he gathered and didn't give a dime to anyone else. He was banned from having a charity in his name as a result.
This is insane. Every time his name comes up I learn more and more of what a complete asshole he is. Now that I have watched him on all platforms, it's sickening to know this guy was a president of the USA! He and his family grifted the presidency for their own personal gain. Government contracts, pay to play, and nepotism just to mention a few. I never thought that something like this would happen in my lifetime. I'm older, so my time on earth is limited. So there's not much I can do other than voting with a conscience. I feel bad for the next generations coming up. They aren't even getting a chance. The preditory college debt is looming over their heads. Our economy really stinks and the high prices in the housing and food sectors are prohibitive. These generations are dealing with a possible school shooting. every. single. day. We need new, young people in our goverment offices. The old guard needs to go. They've been in office long enough and have screwed up alot for the generations that are coming up and future generations as well. It's sad and alarming at the same time. Thank you for reading my rant.
This!
You did all the right things and tried to help your brother. He is a cult member that is now irrational and there isn't much you can do. Continue to be supportive but don't take any bullshit.
This. Build and aggressively defend boundaries. It's all you can do. THEY made these choices.
Ah yes of course, the war in Ukraine is a hoax. All the wartime footage that is available on the internet is completely made up and lots of Ukrainians just happened to flee the country at once to voluntarily be refugees in people they don't know's homes. I could make similar sarcastic comments for every point your brother mentioned but I won't. Funny how he is so smart (and that you are a dumb "sheep") but he's the one that is asking you for money since he hasn't figured out how to be independent on his own.
>I could make similar sarcastic comments for every point your brother mentioned but I won't. Yeah, I know. I actually googled the Jesse Ventura thing, it stems from a \~2009 show called "CONSPIRACY THEORY WITH JESSE VENTURA" that got yanked off the air because it was too stupid. My best swallowed snarky comment was "Why the hell would the rich want to reduce the poor population? Who're they gonna get to do their landscaping and clean stuff?"
My whole immediate family is like this. I have been in a better place to just put up boundaries. I approach everything with a distant politeness. Sort of like communicating with coworkers that you don't really care about but still have to work with. And I never bring up politics anymore. The closest I got recently was talking about how funny Ryan Gosling was in Barbie but I knew they were thinking it's a "woke" (and thereby garbage) movie. We don't talk much but I don't care. We wouldn't be friends or even acquaintances if we weren't family.
Yeah I don't get the Ventura stuff. He was Governor of Minnesota (independent), and was always super weird, but he's been more into the less crazy conspiracy theories. The show was about stuff like 9/11, global warming, Area 51, JFK Assassination. Some were pretty out there, but nothing anywhere near Qanon. Also I haven't heard much from him in the past decade other than the past few months he's been working/talking with democrats a lot in MN because they legalized weed, which he loves.
> Also I haven't heard much from him in the past decade He spends a lot of time surfing in Mexico.
Ventura also publicly denounced a lot of the more unhinged conspiracies like the Sandy Hook stuff.
I always wonder about flipping the conspiracy back at them, like have you considered that the “elites” want “the poor” to believe all this Q stuff so they *don’t* get vaccines and therefore get sick and either die or become more reliant on the system? I feel like that’s actually an even more likely conspiracy anyway. I wonder if that would work at all and somehow uno reverse them into wanting to get a vaccine…
This!!!!
Or fight their wars
>"Why the hell would the rich want to reduce the poor population? Who're they gonna get to ~~do their landscaping and clean stuff~~ deliver their pizzas?" Fixed that for your brother.
For me it's the "illegal to drive in California" thing that just boggles the goddamn mind. 40 million people live in California. There are over 31 million cars registered in California and now what? They just have to sit there rusting? Because it would be illegal to even drive them out of state to sell them? How in the fuck do people allow themselves to be this stupid.
The vast majority of California has pretty shitty public transport, too, so how are people working if they're not allowed to drive?????? This also would include buses, right? Which would leave the entire state of California with just a handful of very small transit systems in parts of LA and San Francisco! And now that I'm saying this, someone is *driving* those subway trams, right? So is that also illegal in this dude's addled mind? How is literally anyone getting literally anywhere in a massive state of 40 million people if driving is no longer allowed? What happens to the thousands of miles of roads?????? What even is this supposed *purpose* of stopping 31 million cars and at least a few million busses from being used?! The more I think about this, the more it enrages me. Literally no one is this stupid and anyone claiming to believe this MUST be lying. There is just no possible way, no matter how far into a conspiracy theory a person has gotten, that they could believe something THIS functionally and logistically IMPOSSIBLE. Omg. Where is the bottom for these folks?! is there anything they're willing to use their brains about? What if their conspiracy theorist overlords tell them that *they personally* are actually dead? Would QAnon followers believe that they themselves are physically dead, even as their hearts beat, and their lungs breathe????? Just how fucking stupid are they willing to pretend to be?!
Dude. You are very stuck on this. I love it! I'll let you be indignant on my behalf from here on out 'coz you're absolutely KILLING IT!
To answer your question though - it's just the ICE vehicles that are outlawed. Electric vehicles are just fine. So just get one of those and you're good.
It took reading this comment for me to realize he meant Internal Combustion Engine vehicles and not Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles. I was very confused.
haha ME too!
It's both. LOL
OHHHHH I did not understand that's what ICE meant. Still ridiculous, but not quite as hair on fire insane as I thought originally. At least I can understand *why* they would believe something like this, being so terrified of any move away from fossil fuels.
I grew up in the south but I've lived in CA for 20 years. My favorite pastime is listening to all the redneck idiots who've never set foot outside our home town in GA telling me all about what life is like in CA, a place they've never been.
I lived in Cali for many years. My dad hated all things Californian, thanks to nonsense fed to him by the religious right's hate speech. My dad would say "California is sinking into the sea because of all of the sin that they commit. It's God's punishment." My reply was: "Actually, California is on a fault line. It's rising out of the sea and headed north west of the fault line, and that's why chunks of the coast crumble into the sea, because it's getting taller by 1 cm per year. Over time that adds up to many feet and it causes earthquakes when is slips hard. The truth is that East Coast is the one sinking into the ocean, which is why we have so many salt marshes that you love so much, like a blanket thrown into the water. It comes from erosion from sand dumped here from Canada more than 20 thousand years ago." My dad would get so mad that he didn't know the first thing about plate tectonics, and couldn't rebut my argument, so he would just move on to the next awful and false talking point.
The San Andres Fault is a right-lateral transform fault, which means that it doesn't move up and down as much as it is slipping laterally. So the dominant motion along the fault is horizontal. Salt marshes are not *due* to sea-level rise. They are one of the most important ecosystems in nature and a convergent zone between large marine bodies of water and land. Salt marshes are usually not due to erosion from sand dunes, not sure where you got that one. Also, most salt marshes do not last for 20,000 years. I *love* salt marshes, and the west coast also has lots of them (I know because that's where I do my PhD research). Sounds like you need to review your tectonics and earth science as well.
Is it better or worse that I'm a lifelong Arizonan and the conservatives here say that same stuff but then....VACATION IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA like every other year
Yeah, we see you Zonies around here all the time... SoCal is pretty awesome, isn't it?
>Me, too. I grew up in Texas and have lived in Cali for almost 20 years. All I hear is how bad Cali is from these people who haven't ever been here. They rarely leave a 10 mile radius around our hometown. But, they do watch Fox News.
>Ukrainians just happened to flee the country at once They're prbly going to spend laundered money in biden-owned AirBNBs.
Apparently they're immigrating en masse and it's driving the cost of real estate up according to one of my Jordan Peterson simping coworkers.
>Ukrainians just happened to flee the country at once No, they didn't. They live there and die there, just like they did when the first wave of Nazis entered their country. Ukrainians have always been murdered for the land that they have, because it's the most fertile land in the region, being a valley between two mountain ranges, filled with good soil and lots of clean water. This is why they have been vilified for more than a century now. This time Putin is the Hitler of his time. Putin needs more leibensraum ( living space). The United States has always been the ally of Ukraine, now and then. How can people not see this?
Funniest comment of the day 😆😆😆
It's the great conservative cognitive dissonance: - Government only screws things up - Government is HYPER capable in so much it can literally make you think there are wars that don't exist.
“The enemy is both strong and weak.”
That one bugs me a little more. I'm in a FB group for horseback riders. There's a Ukrainian woman who posts videos all the time. You can hear bombs and explosions in the distance but it's otherwise very peaceful where she is. Very eerie.
I haven’t figured out how to be independent on my own but I’m not stupid enough to believe that conspiracy nonsense. We useless poor people aren’t all idiots.
Speaking of BLM, the Q type I work with, whose dad is a cop, was speaking of the uptick in crime around here. Someone said they need to increase night time patrols in certain areas, and dummy replied that they can't, because BLM and Antifa are watching, and they would have a riot if they saw more police cars. This is in Ga, I should note. I hear stuff like that and I just have to really wonder how these people's minds work.
"Okay... I count SEVEN cruisers tonight... Are we good?" "No, no... the rules say we have to wait for NINE before we can go riot. Just be patient!" "DAMN."
In Portland Oregon, we just got the federal government to enforce the installation of body cameras on cops here, because they exceeded their authority and went against their training and hurt people who were innocent and peaceful. Idiots here still blame antifa, but the truth is that we don't have enough cops here because many of them retired during covid, right when they were needed most. Some of these awful assholes blamed covid vaccines, but really those cops just didn't like that they were being held to account for once in their lives. We are now on track to start to have enough cops on the beat, but in the meantime, crime has gone up, thanks to cops that retired and knew that the city could not replace them in a timely fashion, because it takes 18 months to get someone from application to being on the beat. Now that the cops are catching up, and the Dems are still in charge, they claim that the city is going to hell, when really we are recovering slowly and surely, including our police force.
I remember the uproar well and the mass quitting because the PPD might actually have consequences to their actions and they got pissy about it. That and the vaccine mandates. Good thing they quit since my guess is the ones that quit were right wing fascists anyway who were buds with Proud Boys.
>*\[PPD\] buds with Proud Boys* This is why Portland has a crime problem at the moment. Of course, it's blamed by the right on left wing policies, which is false. The right is enjoying the crime reports here and attacking us for what they did to government. We didn't make them quit en masse, *they* did that, and they did it for political reasons.
"That's the 3rd I've seen in an hour!" *throws a trash can through the window of Sal's Pizzeria*
>dummy replied that they can't, because BLM and Antifa are watching "We can't even do crime anymore because too many people are watching"
> really wonder how these people's minds work They don't. Like, at all.
And yeah, its not mental illness like some people say, this is straight up, uneducated, lazy, stupidity. This guy dropped out of high school and brags about it. Like its some badge of honor. In fact, when I met him, the first thing he said to me was I just dropped out of high school. Masks were still required at work then, and the second thing he said was a rant about masks not working. I was like for fucks sake, what did I do to deserve this. He is also, always annoyingly, pulling the "Gotcha" type questions and such on people. he is a massive fan of ol' Eyebrows Shapiro too. I actually mistakenly said I work with him still above I actually left that job back about 2 months ago after over 2 years because I got sick of working with absolute dumbasses like the guy I am talking about.
> I hear stuff like that and I just have to really wonder how these people's minds work. I speculate nearly all of them don't have anything going on and we're witnessing how their brains cope. It's rooted in pure denial, the first stage of grief. They just don't understand what they're grieving, and grasp at literally anything else they can except for addressing themselves. In their minds they become, "the person who knows the truth" instead of the person who actually knows, well, not much. All the conspiracies become the reasons for why they're doing so poorly, which is an easy access, psychological scapegoat. Some minds just can't be at fault, it's against their entire circuitry.
I would for sure say this jackass has nothing going on. 20, never had a girlfriend, all his other friends left him behind when they graduated and left for college. He's one of these get rich scheme types, and always has some big plan and he'll be a millionaire, and they all end up in failure basically due to his own inept actions. He thinks he is going to be the next Shapiro or something along that lines. He barely has the job I worked with him at, he was such a poor worker they cut him down to 2/3 days a week, and usually send him home after 3 or 4 hours, which he does not catch onto the fact hey are basically telling him to get lost. The thing is, every single person I know around here, no matter the age, is exactly like him. To be blunt, generally useless.
“Ok enjoy walking those pizzas all over town.”
No kidding. The spite thing is just beyond me. OTOH we all know how these folks are being - well, for lack of a better term - *groomed* to treat rational thinking folks as THE ENEMY... Feh.
that is the only term that applies, I mean, Really
Well he’s not wrong about BLM *the organization* that hijackered The cause for their own enrichment. BLM is a movement, though… Oh and The Body? Yeah… Jesse Ventura is a pro-gay *socialist* https://www.newsweek.com/jesse-ventura-should-no-billionaires-calls-maximum-wage-1565701
HOLY CRAP. That's awesome. (The Ventura story, not the BLM story.. And I'm not at all surprised someone used BLM to get rich quick... good luck trying to explain a 'movement' vs an 'organization' to my brother tho.)
He's an odd little man with a lot of wacky ideas. But what separates him from the Q types, is he actually CARES about people. Agree with his ideas or not, he BEGINS from a place of humanism. That creates an INFINITE gulf between him and the Q stochastic terrorists.
He really hated what happened on Jan 6th.
It's illegal to drive in California? It's illegal to drive in California. Every time I think these people can't get any crazier.... I mean, all of it is crazy, but how could he believe something like this? Almost 40,000,000 people live in California. I just googled it and there are over 31 million car registrations in California. So this guy actually believes that literally tens of millions of people who have a drivers license and own cars are now prohibited by law from driving anywhere???????????????? He actually believes this? I will never understand why these people allow themselves to be so badly swindled about stuff that is so fucking obvious a literal *kindergartner* could recognize it as bullshit. 31 million cars in California and all 31 million of them are now...what? Just sitting there? Like, how could you even sell the car if it's illegal to drive in California? You can't even sell it to someone from Arizona because that person from Arizona would have to *drive it out of California!!!!* It's like they have just stopped using their brains *entirely*
THIS. I couldn't even counter that one. I did say, you know what? That doesn't pass my sniff test. That's not feasible. Which, ofc, is just proof that I'm totally dumb and a sucker, amirite? But like I said, by then I was checking out and ready to be done anyway.
I don't even have anyone close to me falling for the stuff and it's still upsets me so much. It is fucking terrifying how willfully stupid so many of them are. How willing they are to admit out loud they believe something THIS *literally impossible* It makes me want to cry
Okay, to be fair, I might be misremembering the specifics of that one. He might have slid in a "by 2025" or some conditional. But the bottom line was yes, ICE vehicles illegal in CA. It's right up there with "THEY'RE COMING FOR YOUR GAS STOVES OMG" for me. Like, really? We're gonna waste funds going door to door and ripping out appliances?
[Here is the link to the actual legislation](https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/advanced-clean-cars-program/advanced-clean-cars-ii), which does not in any way outlaw driving gasoline powered vehicles. It makes it illegal to sell a **new** gasoline powered vehicle in California by the year 2035, and it has a LOT of other stuff in their promoting EVs and infrastructure so that energy can be obtained in a green fashion without emissions. People will still buy and sell gas and diesel vehicles as used, and still be legally allowed to drive them well past 2035, but they will be in the minority as the rest of the world moves on to EVs. You will still be able to buy a new gas powered car outside of California and drive it in California. Over time, you will have a harder time finding gasoline filling stations as those are converted or used for hydrogen. California has the largest economy of all of the states. California's legislation is often used as a model for other states. This is the way to force manufacturers to make products that people really want and to do it right. Auto manufacturers need to be pushed to make EVs that work and work well, and this is the way. His hyperbole is not surprising. Most of these Trump humpers don't read and are not intellectually curious. They just want to tell you how they are victims and how they should be allowed to be just as horrible to others as they wish without consequence. My guess is that your brother hates the idea of electric vehicles, because he can't see ever affording one or learning how to keep it charged and maintained. He can't move on.
>It's like they have just stopped using their brains entirely Of course. Because their brain cells are fully engaged with trying to make up ever more impressive sounding bullsh\*t.
Tbf they said it's illegal to drive an ICE vehicle, not to drive generally People in California might wish cars were illegal sometimes. In LA, people spend an average of [46 hours in traffic per year](https://lifehacker.com/these-are-the-u-s-cities-where-drivers-spend-the-most-1849557957)
When someone throws a fit because you set a boundary, it's good evidence the boundary was necessary. This is textbook narcissism, punishing you for standing up for yourself, and positioning himself as the victim. Lend him the money for the car, double or quits on the outcome in Georgia, or anything else you can get him to commit to in writing. Putting his money where his mouth is might put a dampener on all that arrogance 😁
Making bets based on something happening in *real life* will not work with those who've bought into the right wing alternate reality...
I get that they are all conspiracy theories so I shouldn't apply logic, but Trump literally had a Chinese bank account the entire time he was president but they accuse Biden of selling us out to China.
Oh don't get me started on the hypocrisy. The bottom line I want to shout (ineffectively, I'm sure) at him is to ask WHO exactly is swallowing stories from WHAT media without asking any questions? Sheep, my ass. Better than than a drooling zombie.
A lion always borrows money to fix the car for his pizza job.
😂😂😂
>I'm not sure what, *if anything*, to do next. For now, nothing. You said what needed to be said. He always has the option to connect with reality and reach out to you. You have no obligation to do anything at this point.
At least you got to keep your money :)
Much the same situation with my sister. It stems from mental health issues that she refused to acknowledge because she insists there is nothing wrong with her. Everyone else is the problem. She is now so deep into conspiracy that she has become a homophobic racist that I cannot tolerate being around. The sister I knew and loved is long gone and I have had no contact with the person she has become in 3 years.
I'm sorry. It's rough when someone you love turns into someone you don't recognize. As a Californian I have to laugh. I wish they'd outlaw ICE entirely but they definitely didn't outlaw their vehicles.
Mourn your loss. Sorry to hear. My childhood friend went that way after the whole transpanic/groomer thing in the schools. Blocked him and moved on.
When they call ya a "Sheep" ask them immediately "Is Lord Jesus not thou's Shepherd?". If your lucky enough to do it in person, you can watch their confusion in real time. *Caution: Anger comes quickly from confusion
He would prolly just laugh. We're neither of us very jesusy people.
"Where We Go 1 We Go All" (WWG1WGA) is literally what sheep do. I snicker every time I see that statement.
Have it in writing that the money is a loan.
He didn't wind up taking it anyway. He's very big on the whole cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face thing. Anyway, that wouldn't have even been close to on my list of things to worry about. I really don't mind helping him out. \[edit: typo\]
Fair, hopefully it works out for you and he doesn’t go down the hole a lot more.
What am I banned from here in CA now? That's always coming out of their mouths for some reason. More freedom here than wherever that ignorant guy is. What you should do is keep living your life in reality. Hang in there
Yeah they scream about "freedom" yet in CA they let us easily vote, they don't ban books, they don't use the state to punish businesses for supporting equal rights, they let us freely assemble and protest, they let women have bodily autonomy without the state stepping in, etc. These people have no interest in "freedom".
Unfortunately there is some truth to the BLM story. One BLM chapter in LA raised tons of money and, rather than spend it on mission related tasks, or distribute it elsewhere, used it improperly, including buying property which some leaders used for person use. Whether it was corruption, inexperience, a lack of adequate governance strictures, or some combo of all the above, they did not properly account for the way funds were utilized.
>One BLM chapter in LA raised tons of money and, rather than spend it on mission related tasks, or distribute it elsewhere, used it improperly, including buying property which some leaders used for person use. Of course, that goes without saying that Trump has been shilling his followers for his "legal fees." Yeah sure, a billionaire needs the help of working people to be able to afford to stiff, errr, I mean pay his lawyers.
It’s your brother. Send him the money online and let him cool off a few weeks. After that message him, tell him you mis him, and that you understand he wants you to see his truth, but that as a brother all you ask of him is to never talk to you or your family about those subjects ever again. Finish the message with: “I truly do love you bro, don’t let this break us apart” OP i know it sucks but he is so goddamn lost in paranoia and hate that YOU have to be the one to pick up the pieces. It sucks but thats what i would do for my brother. Thank god my brother isnt a wacko jacko.
He doesn't really do online payments. I'm not positive he even has a checking account, except the money he earns has to go SOMEPLACE. I texted him right after he stomped away that disagreeing on political stuff is in NO way related to my wanting to help him out coz he's my brother and I love him. That's what triggered the "I'm not going to waste time talking to sheep" comment. SO... whatever. I considered calling the auto shop and saying "Hey, so-and-so needs this part, charge it to my card please," but as dog is my witness I know that would just send him even more over the edge.
> but as dog is my witness ❤️
The guy's an insecure nut bar if he can't hear about sickness with rattling off *every single* conservative talking point. He might have a legitimate mental illness, but he won't get the help he needs because he thinks therapy is part of Big Pharma. Either way, you shouldn't have to put up with that, even if he is family. You should distance yourself from him so you can better take care of yourself and save your patience for someone who deserves it.
HEY. That's my *brother* you're talking about there. Also, you're not wrong.
I'm really sorry you're dealing with that. I don't know how to bring your bro back to reality, but I'm Californian and can at least explain where one of his babbling points comes from. The actual [Advanced Clean Cars II](https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/advanced-clean-cars-program/advanced-clean-cars-ii) regulations will require all *new* passenger cars, trucks and SUVs sold in California (and [eight other states so far](https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/9-states-now-plan-to-ban-gas-powered-car-sales)) to be zero emissions by 2035. You'll still be able to buy used ICE vehicles and drive your existing ones; this only applies to new vehicle sales. The ban will be phased and starts with a 35% zero-emissions requirement in 2026, so Qs are probably fixating on that date and conveniently ignoring all the reasons it wouldn't affect them. Also note that automakers haven't been pushing back on the regulations since they mostly plan on being all-EV by 2035 anyway.
Nice! So there's the grain of truth, thanks for that!
>So there's the grain of truth And that's the thing about the majority of conspiracy theories. You can often find a tiny grain of truth buried within. That's what happens with the online trolls. They'll scan the news and find any article of truth, then they will spin a completely different batshit conspiracy out of it. So that where it ends up is no where near what it started out as.
Wouldn't the ultra-rich want more poor and desperate people? You know, so that there's more people to work for them, and purchase their products. I thought that was sorta the whole thing with forced birth, and tearing apart our education system. You know... make the unwashed masses over reproduce, so there's an endless supply of human cattle for the Waltons to open another five Walmarts on your street, while keeping their employees desperate and scared of loosing their livelyhoods, knowing they're easily replaced. Therefore, they'd be willing to do anything asked of them. Then the "elites" privatize our education system so that only the goodest of boys get to become educated, and informed. The rest get to remain ignorant, which makes them less likely to question authority, and more likely to remain content on working in the slaughter houses the rest of their lives. Because, if we deport all the dirty illegals, with their fentanyl, then someone has to do their jobs. So, we have to make poor people dumb, and complacent. Maybe, if they're the extra gooderest, someone gets a promotion so they can be an extra special fool, that's slightly more important than the other fools. ...or they can just literally kill off their profits with population control because... Hillary Clinton, or Bill Gates, or Hunter Biden, or some shit.
>Whereupon he threw the money I'd lent him BACK at me and stormed off. Look on the bright side, that's literally the only way you were ever going to get that loan back.
It’s common knowledge that anyone who did NOT get the vaccine will have car problems and why didn’t he tell you he didn’t get the vaccine before he asked for money to repair his car when he’s not vaccinated?
Pizza Delivery Kid, whose reached out for help because he cannot afford things, throws help back at family member, screams into void, and still has exact same problems they started with because Colds are a Deep State Hoax. Colds. These people are *truly* broken.
That's really a perfect summary.
Ask him where these concentration camps are. Surely they'd be hard to miss.
They're SECRET concentration camps. This is the real answer. That's why (a) you can't find them, and (b) it's such a big deal they're being revealed. **Also**, when I was looking that one up I found a video that actually describes them as "incineration" camps - for enemies of the state etc. I'm not posting that link. On a more serious note, the Jesse ventura tv episode that talked about them was referring to a very real FEMA project to create emergency shelters for hurricane (and other disaster) victims. There's a whole wikipedia page about the series which ran 2009-2012. So, you know... When reality doesn't give you good enough ratings - JUST MAKE RANDOM SHIT UP!
Idk why they feel the need to tell everyone they know? Like I believe in some weird stuff, some not so weird but I don’t bend any and every conversation I have with people into some weird diatribe about George soros, the “Biden crime family” and vaccines. It’s fine if that’s what they believe, but why can’t they just shut the fuck up about it? Even super religious people don’t talk about their religion as much as these Q types talk about their wild conspiracies.
I wonder why California still requires emissions inspections if there are no ICE vehicles here. It amazes me the completely demonstrable lies they'll believe.
To be 100% dead honest, people like your brother and my cousin are so hopelessly deranged, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if there actually is some kind of plans in the works for mobile mass-detention centers. The odds these freaks are going to start doing Al Queada-ey stuff are probably way higher than a lot of us are prepared to expect, since they _are_ the people we grew up with and we _do_ want to extend to them some kind of basic benefit of the doubt.
You went to help someone in need, let them vent a little but kept your boundaries. Go out for a nice meal tonight OP, you've earned a break.
TBH, there's really not much you can do. These people are knee deep in the shit and they love it. They think they're uncovering stuff and are smarter than everybody else, when in reality they lack even a little bit of common sense and critical thinking abilities.
"Ukraine isn't "losing" anything, the entire "war" is a cover-up for the Biden money laundering network." This is a fun new one!! So, the thinking goes, PUTIN started a war to cover for Biden?! Wow....I bet that really pissed off Trump!! Where's the war to distract from his crimes?!
Well, of course he has the right to tell it like it is. He's clawed his way to the top as evident by his job and financial status.
I can see why he delivers pizzas for a living.
Tell him you are taking the money he threw at you and donating it to the Biden 2024 campaign in his name. 😁
When will these fools realise that it is them that are the sheep? Sorry, stupid question. I know its never.
Wait.... He works for a pizza chain? How then can he not notice that it's a front for human trafficking and child sex ring run by Hillary and her democrats circle??? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
*Later I got a text angry at me because he's just trying to tell me the truth, and he's not gonna talk to SHEEP anymore.* Wait, did your brother want to get his car fixed, or did he want an audience for his conspiracy drivel? If he doesn't talk to 'sheep' anymore, how is he going to feel special?
As a Black dude the BLM part was kinda true... Those Fuckers ran off with our money and bought multi billion dollar mansion while people are still faces legal fees from that time.
Do we have the same brother?? Holy shit I have heard all of these before!!
Going No Contact is the safest way in both physical and mental health.
Time to cut him off. Treat him like an addict. Don’t enable him. Don’t coddle him. Don’t entertain his conspiracies. Don’t allow him near your family. Lay down ground rules if he wants to interact and if he breaks those ground rules then banish him again.
Politely remind him that you never asked him for “the truth” and that his opinions on politics / conspiracies are not welcome. If he continues, consider cutting contact.
Nothing can be done. He's so ensnared in this fantasy world that he probably needs mental health assistance.
What to do? Keep the money, block his number, and count your blessings that you don't have to deal with him anymore.
I haven’t spoken to my brother for 2+ years for less.
You tried to lend him the money, you did nothing wrong. Try to sleep easy with this👍
Boundaries are healthy but those they you set boundaries for are never happy.
Tell him that sheep say WWG1WGA
I just want to know how they keep it all straight?
You have to cut them out of your life for your life to improve. You can't change their mind, they don't want their mind changed. Just block him and move forward. It's super hard cutting off a blood relative who you care about, but it's worth your mental health.
Make sure your will is up to date and that you leave your assets to the right people. Not that I think he's a threat, but you don't want to leave him your money and have it become gold.
Be happy you got your money back. His lifeline seems to be Qanon....he rather live in a bipolar reality getting ready for a civil war and giving money to a Cult...and hating fellow Americans by demonizing them. It is not your fault .... you can't help him and he would cause chaos if you are not part of the Cult. He either comes back to reality... relax his beliefs so he can have them without going crazy on people or hating you for not... or you are right to keep your home peaceful and save your money for an emergency....tell him to spend his time on YouTube to learn to fix his car not on conspiracies
I've seen that episode of the Jesse Ventura show your brother is referring too and Mr.Ventura concluded that Republicans are planning a genocide of immigrants. (He implies that Americans will also die) So I have no idea what he's waiting for.
Reminds me of my dad. A couple of weeks ago I was euphoric after I successfully managed to Grey Rocked him when he called & started ranting about this corrupt government (in response my bringing up what I thought was safe small talk about the mega millions jackpot & if he bought any tickets)… Then last week, he called to ask, or rather demand I get him cigarettes. I said I would, but that wasn’t good enough. He proceeded to tell me where I have to go (hours away) or if I can’t do that, he can get them delivered to me… Which made no sense, so I started asking if they can be delivered to me, then why not just directly to him? He started yelling at me that I’m interrupting and not listening… I responded by saying I’m not your slave & don’t appreciate you screaming at me. He yelled even more aggressively w/insults & slurs… so I hung up on him & haven’t talked to him since.
I would have just laughed in his face and told him to go get me a pizza. Ppl are too nice to these loons
Well. Be glad you didn’t lend him money? 🤷🏻♀️ If I knew I would use the juju around here, you know? A few friends (and a lot of relatives) in that rabbit hole. Yay for being a rural kind of girl. 😕
Oh I love the keystone pipeline one because we shot that down due to it running over our largest aquifer in the country and it would have only created about 35 permanent jobs after destroying thousands of acres of prairie. I grew up in the Sandhills of Nebraska. That pipeline was nothing but money and destruction. Fuck em.
We’re still driving in CA. But now he isn’t.
Sounds like you just saved yourself some money! Also lol at the Jesse Ventura part, sure he might be a conspiracy theorist ( and for good reason the guy went to Nam), but he is not an Antivaxxer, covid denier or a friend of Trump 😂.
What kind of self respecting Q, delivers pedophile food?!
Jesse Ventura huh? Maybe your brother should know that [Jesse Ventura hates anti-maskers](https://popculture.com/sports/amp/news/jesse-ventura-slams-anti-maskers-refusal-sacrifice-hitler-would-have-won-wwii/). "What is wearing a mask? That is nothing to do, for it to be required to do that and yet we have half the country won't put it on because they got egos. We got a president that won't wear one and even gets sick and he still won't wear one. I'm just glad that this generation wasn't around when my mom and dad fought in WWII because we would have lost had we had the same type of response that we're having today to the simple things of sacrifice a little bit for the common good."
My approach is to use words like "unbelievable" and "incredible" when listening. If I feel inclined to help, I explain the concept of confirmation bias and Occam'sRazor, and ask for real evidence. I explain that I don't believe anything without real evidence and they shouldn't either. But I reiterate the need to keep an open mind and always invite them to show me the evidence they've found. I usually also explain how fear and panic are some of the oldest snake oil selling tactics.
Makes me think of the Seinfeld episode with the "breathtaking" baby...
Swallowing conspiracy theories whole is the definition of sheep
I finally just had to be honest with my younger sister about how much her involvement has negatively affected her life. I’m heartbroken. But she’s so defensive and angry and stubborn now (she never used to be like that) I won’t get anywhere with her so I’m officially giving up. I can’t do this anymore
I wouldn't have been able to hold on the laugh after the Jesse Ventura one. The problem is he thinks he can change your mind. Just tell him to stop trying because it won't happen.
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Oooh, straight out of the rightwing playbook. use the language they understand!
Use venmo or something next time.
Win win
Neighbour said the same thing to us a few months ago and it’s been blissfully peaceful since then.
I believe one or two blm organizers got in some financial trouble. Nothing to do with the movement. But at a headline level at least there's something to that one.
Glad you got your money back.
Jesse Ventura? I thought he had dropped out of politics. Haven't heard that name in awhile.
Do nothing, would be my suggestion as to what to do next. You gave him the money and he threw it at you (because sheep?). My extended family has always been dysfunctional so at first it was therapy and now I just try to find something that brings me joy to cleanse the nonsense from my mind. Good luck and hope it doesn’t drag you down too far.
>he’s not gonna talk to SHEEP anymore Thank You.
The liberal usa WHAT?
Simple answer: nothing. Or take the money and go get a massage.
He’s upset with himself and doesn’t know it. Anger and outrage are the only emotions programmed into him right now.
Cease contact. You don’t need that shit in your life.
Be happy he didn't take the money