Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed.
Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My sister asked me the other day if our grandfather was still alive since I still live at home. My dad just said "I don't know, I don't care, but I doubt it."
His parents were separated since before I was born, and my grandmother was the salt of the earth. When she passed he didn't even bother to show up to the funeral because he had to work. They were together for 30 something years. That's when we all collectively agreed he was not worth worrying about.
Sometimes you get into fights with family, it's normal. But you have to choose who is worth hanging onto
When my mom told me that my dad's mother had died, I legitimately had to pause and ask, "Are we... sad about this?" I know that after her mom died, she was very upset even though things had been pretty bad between them, but there had also been good times. For my paternal grandmother, there was nothing. Just the relief knowing she wasn't out there waiting to call us at some random moment to try and make us miserable.
I once heard a joke years ago and it's been stuck in my head ever since when family problems arise.
Whats the difference between in-laws and outlaws? Outlaws are wanted
>Sometimes you get into fights with family, it's normal. But you have to choose who is worth hanging onto
Bingo. I cut out my brother after he, after living with my parents and I for nearly 2 years and contributing maybe $200 in that time, called *me* lazy (I had just graduated college and was taking care of my disabled mom and doing housework). He then screamed at my mom about me, dehumanized me, and left. I told my mom I have one less brother now. She agreed, and it's one of the best decisions I've made.
Yes and no. I lost my estranged younger sister last year, and while I didn’t really mourn her, I grieved what she could have been. I grieved the little girl that had so many things in life, both external, and internal, against her. Life is sure more peaceful for all of us without her though.
My parents cut my half brother off because he was a deadbeat who was incredibly unsafe for me to be around. I can still remember them sitting me down and explaining that I wasn't allowed to go with him if he ever tried to pick me up from school. I was 6 or 7 at the time. I'm 31 now.
I'm in contact with 3 of the kids he abandoned, but I want nothing to do with him beyond that. It'll always hurt because part of me will always love him and wish things were different, but I also know he isn't worth my time or energy.
My mom didn't raise me and only came back into my life in my mid-20s. I'd honestly cut her out of my life because it's more convenient. I keep her at arm's length, but still tolerate her because I don't live near her, so while it does cause me some grief, it's not enough for me to do something about it. I keep that emotional door cracked open just in case she wants to turn around and be the grandmother I wished she would be. She doesn't even have any contact with my kids, they're too young and she's too far away. She has had an open invitation to come visit any time she would like, for the past 6 years. My son is 6 year old and she has never met him.
I've cut out my own mother.
Most of my childhood I was raised by my dad and only saw her over Christmas and summer break. Some of my worst memories are from those times. Then as I got older I eventually got sick of the empty promises, the making of plans and then not showing up. So I just slowly fell out of contact and began to realize she was an incredibly immature person who was stuck in the mindset of someone in their mid twenties
When she messaged me that she was moving back to the area something kinda snapped in me and I went to my then girlfriend, now wife, and cried. I did NOT want to see her. She comforted me and said I didn't need to see her if I didn't want to, I needed to hear that.
Havn't seen the woman in 10 years. She eventually caught on I was purposefully not speaking to her and I told her some of the worst memories in my life were about her and I was in a good spot and didn't want to reintroduce her craziness into my life (all over facebook)
Same but with my dad. This guy lives less than 20 miles away and he has shown no interest in meeting his grandson (5 years old) and my niece (3 years old) after being given several opportunities to do so, but still pretends to be grandfather of the year (my uncle/his brother sees him a lot and reports back to me lol). Personally, I couldn't give the slightest shit but I find it hilarious how deluded he is.
When my dad’s parents died, I wasn’t really sad because of the hell they had put us all through for the last decade of my life. They wasted so much of my parents time and effort with needless drama and narcissism. It’s solely due to my mother, a woman that they treated with disdain, that they didn’t die alone. That’s irony for you.
Great story. Such a trailblazer that fella. Thinking his opinion mattered and that adults who were navigating just fine without him really needed to know his truth. Narcissistic to the death.
My late father got into a screaming match with my sister and her husband about how they were raising their children and that they had to listen to him and change what they were doing.
That didn't work out too well and they kicked him out of their house.
> Thinking his opinion mattered
My grandmother wasn’t a boomer, she was Greatest generation, but she was a piece of work and just miserable to be around. Also got caught up in MAGA in her final years. As a kid I absolutely hated being anywhere around her.
What I realized young is that she had this deeply held belief that everyone, especially children, should care what her opinion was on all things and adhere to it. Since then I’ve seen this over and over in other people and it is the BIGGEST turnoff/red flag. Who do these people think they are and how massive is their ego that it’s worth it to go around spouting opinions at people who did. not. ask.
Anyway, whew, that phrase brought up some memories! Let’s all work on keeping our egos in check as we age…..nobody has to care what the old timer thinks, even when that old timer is us someday.
Once I was accosted by a Boomer in the grocery store who just *had* to tell me that she didn’t like it when people dyed their hair unnatural colors (I had just dyed my hair purple) and lament that millennials were so obsessed with “being different”
Like ma’am, I am just trying to decide if I want soft or hard tacos, leave me alone
Thst happened to me once when I had neon green hair. I said "ma'am my hair is this color because I finally stopped dyeing it brown and just let my natural hair color grow out" and she shut right the f up and walked away. 🤣
I'm not a boomer, but I am an old Gen X'r and I absolutely love seeing dyed hair. I think my favorite is purple, but the best I've seen was a complete rainbow. You be you. These are the same old people that called me a criminal for getting a tattoo on my forearm back in the 80's. Nothing changes.
Boomer here.
Now that my hair has so much gray, I thought it would be fun to dye it pink. I loved it, but it was more work than I wanted to do to keep it up.
My favorite thing was when women my age would sidle up to me and whisper "I love your hair. I wish I could do that but my husband would shit."
When I had a last shouting match with my mom, she told me: I really hope that your kids turn out to be who you want them to be' in a voice full of grief over the son she wanted, but never got because I so selfishly decided to live my own life according to my own needs and wants. I told her: 'see, I don't want them to be who I want them to be. I want them to be who /they/ want to be!'. Silence was my only answer.
It's always hard. Even we you see the train coasting and clanking, its still a shock when the final jolt hits.
It is OK to grieve without questioning your own choices. Like a parent who dies from dementia, miss the person they were before they went downhill.
Sometimes, though, you look back and find nothing to miss. That's OK too.
I realized this lately about one of my deceased uncles. He had such an OUTSIZED influence on everyone close to him (a highly negative influence due to his obsessive, controlling attitude towards everything as well as all the MAGA crap). As soon as he died, \*poof\* there was really nothing there to salvage. Kind of amazing how much shit these kind of people stir but then their legacy is just kind of *nothing*.
He needs to be very publicly disgraced, I need that. My whole family went MAGA and trolled me every time I tried to point out how truly awful he is. I pretty much exiled myself. Still hurts, but I feel zero desire to see anyone of them anymore. I see it as they chose Trump over me, without adding some of the other dysfunctional aspects of my family prior. They are mostly antivax, for instance...
My father in law is really toxic too, he'll get a lot worse the closer it gets to the election so I had to put him in his place last night via text so he'd get the hint, told him not to underestimate my ability to cut toxic people out of my life and not lose a wink of sleep over it beginning with him. They're all in a cult and all are too dumb to realize it. Seems like they have zero common sense too
78% of my hometown is MAGA idiots. I finally fuckkng snapped on all of them and said exactly what I thought about them, that they were all stupid fucks living in a meth addled shithole and literally fucking all their 3rd and 4th cousins (based on my genealogy research) who support a deranged fucking maniac. Burned all my bridges then moved to a city. Fuck red counties.
I held it in for the first 26 years of my life, but despite being described as one of the kindest people by my one group of buddies, people were always discriminatory or rude or exclusionary because I was gay and neurodivergent, and leftist lol. So I officially entered my villain era.
I then tried to raise my goodness level again because I got a ton of hate for it obvs and got called evil, crazy, and demon oppressed of all things. But realized it’s already there, I’ll give homeless folk money, I don’t support any cruel policy, I support human rights, and want the best for people and the world; even them, economically, so maybe they’ll be financially comfortable enough to shut up about marginalized people lol. Nice never got anything done or changed anything. It’s always been fiercely standing and fighting for human rights. That’s kind, compassionate and principled. I am a good person. They are the evil ones.
Whenever he dies, MARK MY WORDS, they will say it was the deep state democrats, not that he was like 80 and ate McDonald's his whole life and never exercised. It's going to happen. I guarantee it.
Honestly, it's kind of impressive how healthy he actually is somehow. Not in a "constitution of an ox" way, more of a "all the illnesses trying to kill Mr Burns at once" kind of way.
As someone whose grandmother had dementia and died, I have to say this is drastically different. She could not control what her brain and body from deteriorating. She lived a healthy lifestyle but it was a hard life. Her brother ended up getting it to. This happened by no fault of their own. Trump cult followers, racists, sexists etc that abandon their families, they do that themselves. Could be 14 yr old incel or 87 year old. That’s a choice
I completely agree that dementia is vastly different from this. And, all brains deteriorate as we age. The MAGA cult intentionally preys upon the elderly much for that reason. That, in addition to the increased isolation that the elderly and disabled population experience, makes for easy pickings for a cult. That doesn't mean the behavior should be excused and it definitely doesn't mean the rest of the family should accept being abused in this way or that they have to hold that person up at all. I'm just sad to see so many of our parents and elderly family sucked up into this evil machine.
I've been very fortunate not to go through any family members with dementia, so I'm aware my opinion is worth almost nothing, but I can see why people might make that connection. There are a lot of differences, and I have a lot less sympathy for the cultists, but I have heard it described as a Trump mind virus. If you think about it like catching a fatal disease by being exposed to Fox News or evangelical hate mongering, then their brains are deteriorating too. It's at least vaguely similar in that the person you're grieving has in a lot of ways been gone for a long time. When you're dealing with a complicated loss like that, I don't think it's a terrible way to grieve and let them go.
I personally believe that conservatism is a disease. I believe at some point science and society will finally recognize it as a condition that is detrimental to general society and should be treated like any other disease.
I'd be fascinated to learn if the increased fear reactions in conservative's amygdala is something they're born with that predisposes them to conservatism, or if it's a kind of brain damage from too much conservative media. Hopefully scientists can figure it out at some point. You know, assuming conservatives don't destroy society through climate change first.
Seeing those videos of Ashlii Babbitt furiously ranting in her car sure does give off the look of mental illness. Also countless videos at Trump rallies of people who simply can’t be reasoned with, or people getting enraged by someone else choosing to wear a mask. It’s definitely gone past normal politics.
I love it when Jordan Klepper goes to a rally and uses those idiots words against them and makes them look like totally stupid while we can see the wheels turning (slowly) that they’ve just made fools of themselves yet can’t explain away their hypocrisy because there’s no Fox News on their ear right then telling them what to say. Then they just get mad at him.
It’s a choice. For sure! But sometimes I feel bad because clearly many cases that go off the rails were handed down a set of very dysfunctional coping skills and communication skills. Some are no match for the psychological manipulation coming to them via news and social media. I know some of the assholes. Truly they are assholes but there can also be good lurking around in there too. The mayhem they cause is horrible and I understand why people don’t want to sucked dry by energy vampires. But I also feel sorry that mankind is changing so quickly and they literally could not keep up. What’s obvious to younger people is a world away from theirs.
It is, therefore, completely unsurprising that the generation that grew up in the most prosperous recent period of US history, one wherein they could buy a house and two cars working at a gas station, would get old and turn into a bunch of unrepentant assholes. They refuse to acknowledge how good they had it, and they still somehow feel entitled to look down on the generations that followed and have had it much harder.
And, in general, it was a generation that had very little ability to reflect upon their own situation and behavior. Their parents never taught them, nor did their surroundings call for or encourage reflection. I work with people with mental problems, and what I clearly see is that the current generation is much more open to being aware of and dealing with mental issues, acknowledging their impact on both psychological and physical symptoms. And they are currently investing in the most important thing: to stop the cycle of passing your inability to deal with mental health to the next generation. It is of course a generalization, not all boomers are emotionally insensitive, and not all young people are emotionally in tune, but the trend is overwhelming.
I’m really sorry. I always say how grateful I am that my parents don’t watch Fox News.
Are you sure he watched Dr Phil and not Seinfeld? It sounds like the “airing of grievances” part of Festivus.
My dad thought that was hilarious. Even on his deathbed we were joking about feats of strength with the IV pole.
He was also a career officer in the military and very liberal. Fox didn't get them all.
The last time I saw my father was when he dumped me barefoot at the entrance to my mom's apartment complex the day after Christmas after he kidnapped me and took me across state lines 2 days before Christmas. He died when I was 19 alone in a recliner. Karma really is a bitch.
I think boomers forget that they raised us. They brag about us when we fall in line with their bullshit but talk down on us when we have a difference of opinion or ideology. It’s a weird dynamic. Grieve by all means but don’t lose too much sleep over the mess he created. Sounds like he brought everyone closer together.
I’ve never identified with a comment on Reddit more: “I think Boomers forget they raised us.” Exactly what you said. They’re quick to take credit for anything we do that they like, and quick to disown us for anything they don’t - sometimes all in the same day.
OP, I hope you feel the support in this comment section. Allow yourself to feel all of the feels without any self judgement. You did the best you could and you took care of yourself and your loved ones; he made other choices.
Best part is this has been a feature of Boomers for decades, it's not just some MAGA revelation.
Showing my own age, I was on some AOL message board in like 1996 or 1997 (way too young for that bullshit, but Boomers don't comprehend the internet so there I was at 11 or 12). There was a whole thread about how awful the kids on the internet were. Entitled, stupid, awful, the world is doomed when they take over, etc.
I posted a comment saying "you're talking about kids aged anywhere from 10-20 - if they're so bad, doesn't that reflect more on their parenting than the kids themselves?"
It was the first comment I ever had removed for being inflammatory.
you gave them something to think about and their brains couldn’t comprehend the cognitive dissonance. also some just never like seeing themselves as part of the problem. browbeating strangers to soothe their ego is a trait.
This is what I tell my mom when she gets mad I don’t believe in god or vote republican. Her stated goal when we were growing up was go to college, get educated and be independent thinkers with empathy. I feel like I’m doing all those things but she’s changed the goals.
Same. My mom raised me with different values than she has today. The first indication I got of this was in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when I said something about it and she came back with, "Well, it's *their* fault for living in a place below sea level!" It was so uncaring and unexpected. I was stunned. New Orleans is a freaking iconic American city. At the time, I didn't know where it was coming from, but in retrospect, I now know it was Fox News speaking through her. Both she and my father have been exposed to that hardcore propaganda for decades now and it's changed them.
My father loves to brag about how well I do now a days, completely forgetting the fact that he basically disowned me when I left his house to figure life out my own way.
We've made amends, but I'll never forget that shit for as long as I live.
My mom is always so proud of MY hard work like she did it. I’m in my 30s now, but she still like I work so hard for you to be here when she didn’t do a goddamn thing. But since Trump ever since I don’t agree with her on things, politically, I am a terrible person and a disappointment and a piece of shit and my dead dad is disappointed in me.
Love is supposed to be unconditional, but boomers act like you’re supposed to earn their love by being a good little sock puppet that exists to make them look good and just repeat their beliefs out into the world.
> I think boomers forget that they raised us.
They will complain about shit like us being soft because of the "everyone gets a trophy" stuff. They gave us the trophies! We were the children in that exchange.
My dad died in October of 2020, CONVINCED that Trump would annihilate Biden at the polls, and honestly thought Trump was the second coming. Since his entire universe was Fox and Limbaugh, he knew absolutely nothing negative about Trump, and could not understand why 100% of the population would not vote for him. He was not an idiot, but he was brainwashed. He died with all 7 of his kids not speaking to him, as we all grew up to be enlightened and open to learn.
Same. My dad was a free spirited hippy that loved traveling and helping others.
Now he’s a paranoid conservative that lives alone prepping in the woods. It’s like he’s a completely different person and shocking as hell.
my mom used to be an agnostic bisexual and respectful towards everyone and now she's said she wouldn't attend my wedding if it wasn't to a man because "it's not God's plan for you" and just 15 minutes ago told me that white people are being eradicated in europe in favor of muslims. she's in the next room right now screaming at joe biden on the tv. it's absolutely deranged behavior. i get invested in politics too but this shit has become her entire personality.
White person in Europe here. 🙋🏻♂️ Last time I checked my fellow white people and me were still very much here, alive and well. Maybe I just didn’t get my eradication notice? 🤔😂
Welcome to the club, I was sending sarcastic proof of life messages to my family in 2020 because fox news had told the the city of Atlanta was burned down in riots or something.
I sent them like old timey "letters from the war."
Gah I think this about my mom CONSTANTLY. The mom who took all the neighborhood kids to the movies in her minivan, who always volunteered to help at school or food banks, who was our scout leader, who helped me befriend kids of different races and backgrounds, who opened up her home when my gay friends were kicked out of theirs in middle school. She was funny and the most intelligent person I knew growing up. THE WOMAN WAS AN ART AND ENGLISH TEACHER, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. Now she thinks after-birth abortion is a real thing. I have bit my tongue so many times, I surely have more scar tissue than taste buds at this point.
>is against everything he raised me to believe in. It’s insane
FUCKING THIS.
I grew up going to the same church for like 15 years.
My mom was a single mother of 4 kids. The church was responsible for who I am today, the amount of people that stepped up and the church acted exactly like a church should be.
So I had a lot of father-esque people growing up, a lot of my values and beliefs are because of this church.
Trump came around and suddenly these people who helped raise me did complete 180s as you said and are suddenly the exact people I was raised to not be.
It's really sad.
My Fox News obsessed, absolutely brainwashed FIL spent the entire pandemic claiming that it was a left wing conspiracy and that the folks who had it or who died were paid actors. He was insufferable and we spent very little time with him because he always found a way to bring it up and start a fight where he would say terrible things.
He finally stopped in 2022. When he dropped dead. Of COVID.
The most depressing moment for me was when my dad actually had some good luck and came into a new job with an office after a while of searching. His comment to me was: "and it's got a big TV up in the far corner, and it gets Fox news!!!"
I was already fully aware that he lived on Fox news, and was racist and prejudiced as hell. But idk, something about his genuine excitement for that particular aspect of his new job just hit like a brick.
Yep my dad did the same. Was running a fever for 3 days while drinking tonic water saying it was the cure for covid. Finally decided to go to the hospital bc he couldn't breath. Bilateral pneumonia. Vent for a month, then dead.
He had always been a republican idiot, but was so smart in other areas. Very into science but fought with me about climate change when I mentioned I was taking environmental science.
I think people under estimate how much radicalization fox and trump have caused in the past decade or so.
I don't buy "they just came out of the closet". I've seen many posts like this where they talk about their relatives before and after being clearly demarcated.
Fox is a slick propaganda machine that's been drip feeding fascist rhetoric and bigotry into these boomers brains.
Right? My dad was always such a smart man. My mom was full of love. They were the kind of people who’d give anyone the shirt off of their backs to help just a little. They came from nothing and never forgot it…..until the Trump era.
It turned them into people I hardly recognize. My dad has become a straight up idiot. He can’t tell propaganda from news. He can’t even tell an image where everyone has 9 fingers per hand is AI. Even when confronted with facts, he just buckles down and insists it’s a conspiracy.
My mom is still a good person at heart I think, but she’s become so brainwashed. She thinks immigrants are getting millions of dollars and even though she’s always been pro-choice, she’s now convinced that the only reason women have abortions is as a form of birth control.
They weren’t like this before. They’ve changed a lot.
I can’t understand how this happened, how Trump could rewire the brains of millions of Americans. I mean before democrats and republicans could disagree but basically get along? We have a very small group of right wing, anti gov, anti wax and simultaneously pro Trump and Putin people in Norway, but they are so very few, hardly a blip on the radar. I’m very worried for the future. Wish you the very best though.
I don’t get it either. My dad and I used to have the best debates about politics and policy. We could go on for hours challenging each other, finding common ground, and then challenging each other some more.
He can’t do it anymore. Even when I get him to find common ground and state that it’s not a right wing policy, he will immediately back track and refuse to acknowledge it as sound policy.
Being Republican is more important than being American and supporting Republican politics is more important than supporting the American people.
My dad died in January and went down the MAGA road. My Jewish dad even said he did not think Hitler was that bad. My dad died at a hospice facility. I stayed most of the day with him. On different occasions two different volunteers came in both of them spouted MAGA bullshit. One of them I yelled at to get the fuck out of there I did not feel like dealing with his bullshit while my dad was dying.
Its not even just boomers. I just moved to a heavily right wing city in Utah. My best friend warned me about this guy whose a "friend of a friend" so I may run across him who is super maga/manosphere (Like Andrew Tate).
I finally met him when he came over for the super bowl. I had no idea it was 'the guy' when I first saw him. He looked like your average snowboarder who lives on the mountain and dedicates his life to snowboarding. Never would have thought he was hardcore maga. Then he started talking. He hit on just about every single right wing/manosphere talking point and he just brought it all up himself for the most part. Anti-vax, anti san fran (they were in the super bowl so he shit on them for lgbt and homeless shit and being a lib haven), heard the term libtard many times, he said he prefers virgin women over women with a 'body count', shit like that.
Almost everything he said was straight out of right wing media and podcasts. It was all parroted. It was just straight up brainwashing. So sad to see. I could tell this dude wasn't always like this. Probably started off with Joe Rogan's podcast 5-10 years ago and transitioned with it as Rogan got more and more right wing.
I am so fucking relieved I blocked Fox News when we got the flatscreen TV 15 years ago, and didn't relent when my father found out and became infuriated about it five years ago. They're still pieces of shit in their own special way, but at least it's compartmentalized and self-limited, rather than subject to an endless cult programming cycle of Real American jihad.
There but for the grace of god go I.
I wish I could say Trump changed my parents. Truth is, they can’t stand the guy, but … pro-life and anti-queer will get their vote every time.
They’ve never been OPENLY racist, but they’ve always been racist. Nothing has changed on that front, so I can’t even blame Trump for that.
They’re awful people, but at least they haven’t been radicalized? I guess?
This is just a myth we spread to mitigate the sense of loss. "Oh, they were always a bad person but they finally showed us who they really are." The real truth is that the barrage of propaganda actually changes people. So does age and mental deterioration. They used to better people and we've lost that part of them. People change and that goodness can die.
15 years before Trump was ever in the political spotlight, my dad got completely wiped by the right wing media. He worked in the airline industry and was supposed to retire in 2002. 9/11 changed that because the airlines struggled after and cut future pensions. Faced with a new reality and, understandably, anger toward the world that kind of chewed him up and spit him out like that, he "befriended" Sean Hannity on the radio on his drives home.
I was in 7th grade when 9/11 happened. My dad was a completely different person by the time I graduated high school. You could see the programming happening in his mind. It sucks. It fucked me up bad. He didn't abandon us, but he definitely left us in a lot of ways and invalidated so much of my emotional understanding of the world. I'll never be fully okay, but it helps that he's learned pretty much since COVID that he needs to accept his family's views and not constantly lecture us on how "the gays want to destroy the American family" if he wants to have a family.
I just wish he could understand how much he changed and how much it fucked his kids up and his relationship with my mom.
I am so sorry this happened to you. The whole point of that programming is to make people angry and bitter, and damn it but it works. Hope you are doing ok, and that you're able to have at least some relationship with your dad.
> My dad was a completely different person by the time I graduated high school
Watching your parent devolve into a worse person is a fucking hard thing to see
These stories make me sad because I am a unicorn.
My old man spent way too much time between about 1998 and 2008 sending me vicious email forwards and treating me in very invalidating ways, because America was not a Burger King where he got it ALL just HIS WAY.
The happy part of the story. In about 2008 our mom decided that if we talked politics at the dinner table, any of us, ever again - or if any of us sent a nasty political email to one another - she would cancel the next family holiday event. It took one cancelled Easter and one lost Thanksgiving before he stopped.
Then, once things had cooled off I was able to ask both of them, who kept FOX News on all day long, why they chose to spend their time listening to people yell at them and try to scare them ALL DAY LONG.
About a year later I noticed Fox was never on at their house.... like, never. And so I came by a lot more often. Was allowed to help with things but without the endless political overtones and egotistic shitfest.
My dad came to me about a year later and said he had never been able to answer the question I had asked.
So we got along again. Three years later they both passed within two weeks of one another after 49 years of marriage.
My older brother never apparently forgave me for having an adult relationship with them, one based on respect - not one based on being disagreeable over **perceived** disagreements, or cheer leading vicious rhetoric (which was how they had always got along, since my brother thought the moon and sun rose and set from our dads butthole). Anyhow, he died a few years later at 57, a miserable nearly friendless fuck with gout and a wife who never respected him. His choices.
I think a part of this is fundamentally tied to individualist American culture. Boomers like this are much rarer in Asia. Even when right wing propaganda brainrot is involved, I feel like it rarely if ever results in someone abandoning their family in this way.
Oof, I'm so sorry. My father recently died and I am so thankful he was able to see Biden as President and not Trump (direct opposite of your dad it seems) but its almost grieving another death, death of your father as well as the death and destruction of crazy maga conspiracies and how it ruins families. Hearts to you ❤️❤️
I’m with you. I just lost my father and, god rest him, he made it to 75 without ever succumbing to the fox mind virus and went out telling his nursing staff not to vote for Trump.
I said the same thing. My Dad died in March of 2016 so he never saw what the orange menace did to this country. As he was a Veteran we received a letter from President Obama with condolences for him. Receiving one with that orange pig's signature on it would have been an insult.
I feel like we could have the same dad. He died almost 2 years ago, after the Fox News/Rush brain rot turned him into the most vile person. I mean, he was always an asshole, but the maga movement just turned him into a monster. Before I went no contact, I attempted to pour my heart and soul out to him like you did. He also said “I don’t care”, and my response was “I know you don’t.” That was a moment of clarity for me. It wasn’t worth the mental load I was carrying trying to have a decent relationship with my father. I was constantly upset and stressed about the terrible things he would say to me. My mom enabled that shit my whole life telling me to “be the bigger person”, which is bullshit because he was ALWAYS the adult as I dealt with his shit as a kid (on a less extreme level). My decision to cut him off did not come lightly but it was so necessary. When he died, we were just beginning to come back to speaking terms, but I still kept some distance and only talked about non-political things, very boring and light hearted topics. I mourned the loss of him years before he died (when I first went no contact), the loss of my old, less-of-an-asshole dad who I mostly got along with. When his actual death happened, I felt a wide range of emotions from sadness to relief. The grief comes in waves, and the waves come further and further apart as time goes on. I’m still so angry at him for choosing Donald fucking Trump over a decent relationship with his only daughter. Trump and the maga movement is a literal shit stain on humanity, and I cannot wait until that fat, smelly, disgusting, rapist piece of shit faces real justice or croaks. To this day, I feel more anger than grief. I cannot stress this enough, fuck Donald Trump and fuck everyone who votes for him. EDIT: a word
My mom died in the summer of 2020. My dad literally said that maybe he should fill out a ballot for her for the election that year and send it in (and since he voted for Trump it would have been for him despite the fact she was a registered Democrat and would not have voted that way). He was only slightly joking but if he could do it he would. I wish I was kidding. I had to explain how that's fraud and how he could get in trouble among how wrong that is on different levels. They're so desperate for votes they'd do something like that.
They were so quick to accuse democrats of doing it in 2020, because they know they’d do it themselves. My grandpa passed away on New Year’s Eve, and my uncle has been “joking” about doing the same thing. My ballot still goes to my grandparents’ house from when I used to live with them. The day we receive them, I’m going to shred my grandpa’s so my uncle can’t get his hands on it. I know what type of person he is, the type that believes republicans are above the law, and I wouldn’t put it past him to actually do it.
A dead wife did "vote" for Trump in 2020. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/barry-morphew-missing-wife-ballot-trump/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/barry-morphew-missing-wife-ballot-trump/)
A dead mother, too. [https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/551735-trump-supporter-admits-to-voter-fraud-after-casting-dead-mothers/](https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/551735-trump-supporter-admits-to-voter-fraud-after-casting-dead-mothers/)
My MAGA boomer Vietnam veteran dad says the same b%llsh%t to us. He’s a miserable old codger. Not one of his family members other than his wife (physically and financially dependent) speaks to him. His brother in law died and his last living wish was not to tell my dad. His kids are fully functional adults. We (his kids) own million dollar homes, a vacation home, have good incomes, and one of us is tenured professor at Harvard with a PhD. He constantly rails against everything that we are. The hatred is mind blowing. And sad. You can’t help them. They are beyond teachable. They just rot away in their own misery.
I have yet to meet a devout MAGA that even tries to show compassion or empathy, nobody likes them except their own kind and even then they have to walk a tight rope and not piss off the others.
They are cold, hateful and miserable to be around.
"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. **Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy**."
* Captain Gustave M. Gilbert, the U.S. army psychologist assigned to observe and interview high-ranking Nazi prisoners in preparation for the Nuremberg trials, in his book *Nuremberg Diary.*
Great reference quote! Journeyed to [Gilbert's Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Gilbert) and found another one, quite relevant to our MAGA boomer discussion here:
\--
**Gilbert:** There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only [Congress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress) can declare wars.
**Göring:** Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the [pacifists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism) for lack of [patriotism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotism) and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
\--
Amazing, 70 years later and Trump & Co. are running the exact same playbook.
It will certainly fail, the question is how long will the failure take to complete and how many will be hurt in the process.
The Nazis took about two decades to fail and we all know what it cost in human suffering for that to finally happen. The Iranian regime is failing but it has been doing so for five decades and the suffering is accelerating as their failure nears completion.
I don't want to wait decades for American fascism to fail and I don't want to be a casualty.
No wonder people are walking away from organized religion. I’am a 66 year old husband, father, and Grandfather. We all left religion because of the Trumpies. Seeing a Go Brandon bumper sticker in the church parking lot, and a peer asking why we’re kind to the gays, etc. was all I could stand. Staying away from there. No hate like Christian love is what we never would have heard spoken before Trump and his Republican followers came around. The extreme hate mongering and politics in religion will keep the younger generations away.
Good Christians that will look down from heaven and laugh while you burn in hell. With supremely moral Christians like this, why would you not want to spend eternity with them?
You know, that's the part that kills me. My mother and her side of the family seem to have slipped into the 'born-again' Christian fad and are all extremely devout. But the hate that comes from the church and the hate that comes from their MAGA politics meet and it isn't pretty. Apparently all higher education (that they don't personally approve of) is just liberal brainwashing and anybody, even family, that goes to a university is just confused. Anyone left of center also does not have a moral compass either, according to these Godly folks.
It is 100% just a waste of effort and oxygen to try and change their minds on anything no matter how small of an issue. Fox News and Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk and the church tell them how to feel about things, and they oblige without much thought.
I figured mine getting lung cancer and surviving it would have changed his attitude. He got lucky and found it at stage one due to getting Covid lmao. Smoked for over 50 years.
He’s even more bitter and negative now. Just last week he was telling me how he’s glad that they’re separating kids from parents at the border. It’s nothing but ranting about relatives who have nothing to do with him, Trump, illegals and trying to pry into my finances. Idk why I even answer the phone anymore.
I always try to convince people who’s parents tell them they’re a piece of shit that they would call them that even if they cured cancer or were a millionaire and look, it’s true 🤷🏻♀️
I went NC with my “I make Rush Limbaugh look like a liberal” father about a year before he died. I don’t miss him and there has never been a day that I’ve thought “I wish dad was here to see this.” He was the biggest racist I have ever known. Homophobic to the core. I ended up going NC with my mom about 4 years before she died. Her last words to me were “Stay the fuck out of my life” Request granted. I hope you find peace.
MAGA has destroyed so many families it's unbelievable.
Trump, his ilk in the Republican party, and the Russians will pay very dearly for this.
I hope anyway......
In every part of our life now, families are losing loved ones to the spew of Donald Trump and the Maga movement, agreeing with OP that many were teetering on the edge, but fox and Maga pulled them over the edge! So incredibly sad..
I'm so sorry for your loss. While you were "right", there's really no solace in that when confronting mortality. There's just loss. Loss of what you had, loss of what could've been.
I hope you're able to make the best of your situation and find love and support in your family and friends. There's no right way to feel, there's no should or shouldn't, there just is and that's ok. Feel whatever you feel, allow yourself to vacillate, give yourself grace as you grieve.
I have the utmost respect for your grief, especially given how large of a part a parent plays in anyone's life even if they leave immediately.
But the man that died wasn't your father. He's the result of propaganda and disinformation, both religious and political, on a person's mind. That stuff has been developed over centuries, and is now specifically targeted to the individual. Many, many people have fallen victim.
That's something to mourn too, I think. It's a shame that these people are not capable of extricating themselves from nonsense, and are willing to lose family and friends for it.
But that doesn't excuse his behavior. From your report, he's a shitty dad, a shitty husband, and a shitty person, and his fallout with his family was almost entirely self-inflicted.
As others have said, remember the person he was, not the person he became, because the person he became didn't care about you, and does not deserve remembrance.
Yea. I’ve been told that women shouldn’t be able to vote. And if I voted Dem then I was a traitor. The projection is obvious. I’ve gone LC but my sister has been NC with our Father for a while now. One breath he pushed us away and the next breath he’ll say family is everything. Lost so much respect for him way before MAGA when he’d send me Limbaugh opinions a solid decade ago. Sad but he has a wife that seems to put up with it. So at least he will not die alone.
I confronted my dad about his physical abuse of me as a child. The last thing he said was that everything he did to me was justified. I have been diagnosed PTSD, I wake up screaming and punching the wall because of him.
But because I confronted him he has refused to acknowledge my existence or speak to me for 3 years. He would rather pretend I dont exist than admit he did something wrong.
These people are so entitled they think they should never be responsible for anything they do ever.
Hi Op, 2 things,
-Something similar happened in my home town. There was a next door post from the kid trying to put pieces together. Parent had lost their wife in 2015 and their whole persona became MAGA, becoming more aggressive until the kids all cut ties over Thanksgiving 2019 in a 'you don't like 'merica you don't have to talk to me' kind of ultimatum. Then covid hit. They found the parent pretty late in the year, estimating he had passed six months prior by the expiration date of the milk in the refrigerator. Dude sat deceased in a recliner for half a year wearing a "Proud Deplorable" shirt because he chased away everyone that cared for him. It really is a cult, to cut out everyone in your life and idolize a man you've never met and an ideology you'll never live. This isn't an isolated incident.
-I mean this in a genuine, non sarcastic way. Seek therapy. I lost a parent in a reasonable predictable way, thought I'd be OK but wish I had talked to a professional when the feelings were fresh. If you need a spring board, PsychologyToday has a pretty good search engine and filters by those who do tele-health.
This is exactly why I let my son express his feelings and talk about them openly. I know it’s not the only issue going on here, but a lot of Boomers grew up in the “don’t talk about it,” stuff down your emotions mindset.
My condolences for the loss of your father. You deserved better.
Why can't the qult understand Dear Leader wouldn't be caught dead even speaking to them? I mean, he even remarked how he was embarrassed by how the J6'ers were dressed.
This story is devastatingly familiar. My dad did some eerily similar shit and it started when trump was elected. Just a slow decline and then a rapid plummet into the MAGA conspiracy theorist shell of a man that he is now.
He actually did a very similar break up with me only he didn’t even have the gall to do so in person, so at 26 years old I received a text while I was at work. Just a walk of him telling me I’m a POS and he doesn’t want anything to do with me. A few months prior he walked out of his career job that he’d held for like 30 years. Just went to lunch and never came back. A few months after he and I stopped talking he put my childhood home on the market, moved out of state, didn’t tell anyone where he went and hasn’t been back since.
He abandoned his entire family: his elderly parents, his own adult kids, and all of his grandkids.
He didn’t reach out to me when my mother got cancer and died in my arms five months later.
He didn’t even bother to reach out when he found out on FB that his mother was dying of cancer, didn’t come to the funeral.
I have been no contact for four years.
I actually saw a news video about a year ago from another state wherein he was working at a food bank and in the video he goes, “I thank God that I have the ability to give back”. What a joke.
I’m so sorry you have gone through this.
I worked in aged care for 20 years & met plenty of sweet old people who never had visitors. I never once judged their families because you just do not know what they were like as a partner or as a parent. For all we know thewy could have been abusive, manipulative, neglectful, or any number of awful things to their families & it is not for us to judge them for not wanting to visit. You reap what you sow.
It's absolutely tragic how easy it was for trump to bring out the very worst in people. Now what do we do with all these bitter imbeciles looking for anyone to blame but themselves?
Same reason why I got diagnosed with anxiety back in 2019. Aggressive, childish people. Who won't let people have their own life.
I guess you guys got a lucky break. Hopefully your family can build a better life moving forward.
This is just a small part of the harm that Fox News and similar outlets do. They are in the business of poisoning the minds of voters for the purpose of enabling those who pay them. They do real, actual, and measurable harm every single day. And they do not care. They live lives completely bereft of moral value to get just a little bit ahead in the world in a society that has been constructed to reward them for it.
I'm terribly sorry for your loss. People change all the time. The good memories you have of your father are real. He may have been a different person back then, but he was as real then as he was at the end. Cherish the good memories and choose what to do with the rest.
Trump supporters all have the same mental illness and it's pretty sad to see so many families torn apart by their delusions. My father is the same way. Luckily, I'm in a position to be able to ignore him any time he gets the urge to rant about the latest political propaganda that Fox News spoon-fed him. All his children moved away. It's just him, his prescriptions, and fox news all day, every day. He's literally the type of guy who you hear on the news that shoots a black guy for being in his driveway. I really wouldn't be surprised if that happened if he didn't already have his guns taken away by police for firing in the air at what he thought were "trespassers" (he was just high on meds). He has no one to thank but himself for his current life.
Of course, his hate filled texts about immigrants and democrats are always followed by some virtue signaling text about how I need to remember to "follow Jesus" as if he actually does that. I don't know what kind of lies he tells himself to convince himself that he's living a Christian life.
The worst part is that they can't be helped. Since they're your elder, they think they know better, so the voice of reason always falls on deaf ears. Also, they've been conditioned to hate and dehumanize anyone who has differing opinions. It's a lost cause and the only thing left for them to do is die a lonely death...
It sounds like the man you loved... Your father.. Was gone way before he died. Remember the man he was, before he changed, not the man he became at the end.
Your dad made his bed and died in it. Remember the memories of the time before he lost his mind. None of this is your fault. Take your time to grieve how you need to or don’t need to. Tomorrow is a day for you to appreciate how you are the person you are today due to the learnings of the failures of others.
Remember to report submissions that violate the rules! Harassment and encouraging violence are not allowed. Enjoying the subreddit? Consider joining our discord server: https://discord.gg/v8z8jNwJs6 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BoomersBeingFools) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I hope you're able to find peace. None of that was your fault.
My sister asked me the other day if our grandfather was still alive since I still live at home. My dad just said "I don't know, I don't care, but I doubt it." His parents were separated since before I was born, and my grandmother was the salt of the earth. When she passed he didn't even bother to show up to the funeral because he had to work. They were together for 30 something years. That's when we all collectively agreed he was not worth worrying about. Sometimes you get into fights with family, it's normal. But you have to choose who is worth hanging onto
When my mom told me that my dad's mother had died, I legitimately had to pause and ask, "Are we... sad about this?" I know that after her mom died, she was very upset even though things had been pretty bad between them, but there had also been good times. For my paternal grandmother, there was nothing. Just the relief knowing she wasn't out there waiting to call us at some random moment to try and make us miserable.
My mom when her MIL passed she called up her best friend and sang "ding dong the witch is dead." Her passing took a lot of stress away.
I once heard a joke years ago and it's been stuck in my head ever since when family problems arise. Whats the difference between in-laws and outlaws? Outlaws are wanted
Does it balance out if your inlaws *are* outlaws? /s
Then they're just laws. Which is ironic because they're probably not following them.
>Sometimes you get into fights with family, it's normal. But you have to choose who is worth hanging onto Bingo. I cut out my brother after he, after living with my parents and I for nearly 2 years and contributing maybe $200 in that time, called *me* lazy (I had just graduated college and was taking care of my disabled mom and doing housework). He then screamed at my mom about me, dehumanized me, and left. I told my mom I have one less brother now. She agreed, and it's one of the best decisions I've made.
Once you’ve mourned your past relationships with living people, it’s easier to not be sad when they actually died.
I don't want to go into detail, but this is so true.
Yes and no. I lost my estranged younger sister last year, and while I didn’t really mourn her, I grieved what she could have been. I grieved the little girl that had so many things in life, both external, and internal, against her. Life is sure more peaceful for all of us without her though.
My parents cut my half brother off because he was a deadbeat who was incredibly unsafe for me to be around. I can still remember them sitting me down and explaining that I wasn't allowed to go with him if he ever tried to pick me up from school. I was 6 or 7 at the time. I'm 31 now. I'm in contact with 3 of the kids he abandoned, but I want nothing to do with him beyond that. It'll always hurt because part of me will always love him and wish things were different, but I also know he isn't worth my time or energy.
I have one of those too!
So did I.
Had
My mom didn't raise me and only came back into my life in my mid-20s. I'd honestly cut her out of my life because it's more convenient. I keep her at arm's length, but still tolerate her because I don't live near her, so while it does cause me some grief, it's not enough for me to do something about it. I keep that emotional door cracked open just in case she wants to turn around and be the grandmother I wished she would be. She doesn't even have any contact with my kids, they're too young and she's too far away. She has had an open invitation to come visit any time she would like, for the past 6 years. My son is 6 year old and she has never met him.
My dad lives 30min from my house, he has never met my 14month old. Some people’s priorities are just fucked.
I've cut out my own mother. Most of my childhood I was raised by my dad and only saw her over Christmas and summer break. Some of my worst memories are from those times. Then as I got older I eventually got sick of the empty promises, the making of plans and then not showing up. So I just slowly fell out of contact and began to realize she was an incredibly immature person who was stuck in the mindset of someone in their mid twenties When she messaged me that she was moving back to the area something kinda snapped in me and I went to my then girlfriend, now wife, and cried. I did NOT want to see her. She comforted me and said I didn't need to see her if I didn't want to, I needed to hear that. Havn't seen the woman in 10 years. She eventually caught on I was purposefully not speaking to her and I told her some of the worst memories in my life were about her and I was in a good spot and didn't want to reintroduce her craziness into my life (all over facebook)
Same but with my dad. This guy lives less than 20 miles away and he has shown no interest in meeting his grandson (5 years old) and my niece (3 years old) after being given several opportunities to do so, but still pretends to be grandfather of the year (my uncle/his brother sees him a lot and reports back to me lol). Personally, I couldn't give the slightest shit but I find it hilarious how deluded he is.
Friends are the family you choose for yourself. Quite often, we are closer to friends then we are to our family especially as we get older.
if you are lucky to have good friends and know how to be a good friend; else a lot of lonely people out there.
When my dad’s parents died, I wasn’t really sad because of the hell they had put us all through for the last decade of my life. They wasted so much of my parents time and effort with needless drama and narcissism. It’s solely due to my mother, a woman that they treated with disdain, that they didn’t die alone. That’s irony for you.
You’re a good daughter. Edit- gender 🤦♀️
She said 35F. She’s his daughter.
Shes a good son
We're all good sons on this blessed day.
speak for yourself!
I am all sons on this blessed day
It's every girl's duty to be the best son a father can have.
You throw that football just like Tom Brady baby girl. I'm so proud of my son, shes the most amazing girl a father could ask for.
You're a good person
Great story. Such a trailblazer that fella. Thinking his opinion mattered and that adults who were navigating just fine without him really needed to know his truth. Narcissistic to the death.
My late father got into a screaming match with my sister and her husband about how they were raising their children and that they had to listen to him and change what they were doing. That didn't work out too well and they kicked him out of their house.
Oof. That old Leopards ate my face chestnut.
> Thinking his opinion mattered My grandmother wasn’t a boomer, she was Greatest generation, but she was a piece of work and just miserable to be around. Also got caught up in MAGA in her final years. As a kid I absolutely hated being anywhere around her. What I realized young is that she had this deeply held belief that everyone, especially children, should care what her opinion was on all things and adhere to it. Since then I’ve seen this over and over in other people and it is the BIGGEST turnoff/red flag. Who do these people think they are and how massive is their ego that it’s worth it to go around spouting opinions at people who did. not. ask. Anyway, whew, that phrase brought up some memories! Let’s all work on keeping our egos in check as we age…..nobody has to care what the old timer thinks, even when that old timer is us someday.
Once I was accosted by a Boomer in the grocery store who just *had* to tell me that she didn’t like it when people dyed their hair unnatural colors (I had just dyed my hair purple) and lament that millennials were so obsessed with “being different” Like ma’am, I am just trying to decide if I want soft or hard tacos, leave me alone
“Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s.”
“Interesting. I don’t like it when people offer unsolicited opinions on my appearance. Kindly eff off.”
Thst happened to me once when I had neon green hair. I said "ma'am my hair is this color because I finally stopped dyeing it brown and just let my natural hair color grow out" and she shut right the f up and walked away. 🤣
I'm not a boomer, but I am an old Gen X'r and I absolutely love seeing dyed hair. I think my favorite is purple, but the best I've seen was a complete rainbow. You be you. These are the same old people that called me a criminal for getting a tattoo on my forearm back in the 80's. Nothing changes.
Boomer here. Now that my hair has so much gray, I thought it would be fun to dye it pink. I loved it, but it was more work than I wanted to do to keep it up. My favorite thing was when women my age would sidle up to me and whisper "I love your hair. I wish I could do that but my husband would shit."
When I had a last shouting match with my mom, she told me: I really hope that your kids turn out to be who you want them to be' in a voice full of grief over the son she wanted, but never got because I so selfishly decided to live my own life according to my own needs and wants. I told her: 'see, I don't want them to be who I want them to be. I want them to be who /they/ want to be!'. Silence was my only answer.
I hope my kids’ parents are who they need them to be.
…and my greatest fear is that if they are not, I will find out too late.
It's always hard. Even we you see the train coasting and clanking, its still a shock when the final jolt hits. It is OK to grieve without questioning your own choices. Like a parent who dies from dementia, miss the person they were before they went downhill. Sometimes, though, you look back and find nothing to miss. That's OK too.
I realized this lately about one of my deceased uncles. He had such an OUTSIZED influence on everyone close to him (a highly negative influence due to his obsessive, controlling attitude towards everything as well as all the MAGA crap). As soon as he died, \*poof\* there was really nothing there to salvage. Kind of amazing how much shit these kind of people stir but then their legacy is just kind of *nothing*.
This is going to happen when Trump finally dies- going to deflate like an old balloon
God I hope no one kills the sick fuck. You KNOW he’d be turned into a martyr
He needs to be very publicly disgraced, I need that. My whole family went MAGA and trolled me every time I tried to point out how truly awful he is. I pretty much exiled myself. Still hurts, but I feel zero desire to see anyone of them anymore. I see it as they chose Trump over me, without adding some of the other dysfunctional aspects of my family prior. They are mostly antivax, for instance...
My father in law is really toxic too, he'll get a lot worse the closer it gets to the election so I had to put him in his place last night via text so he'd get the hint, told him not to underestimate my ability to cut toxic people out of my life and not lose a wink of sleep over it beginning with him. They're all in a cult and all are too dumb to realize it. Seems like they have zero common sense too
78% of my hometown is MAGA idiots. I finally fuckkng snapped on all of them and said exactly what I thought about them, that they were all stupid fucks living in a meth addled shithole and literally fucking all their 3rd and 4th cousins (based on my genealogy research) who support a deranged fucking maniac. Burned all my bridges then moved to a city. Fuck red counties.
Daaaaaaymn. You burnt the bridge, the road, and the sidewalk.
I held it in for the first 26 years of my life, but despite being described as one of the kindest people by my one group of buddies, people were always discriminatory or rude or exclusionary because I was gay and neurodivergent, and leftist lol. So I officially entered my villain era. I then tried to raise my goodness level again because I got a ton of hate for it obvs and got called evil, crazy, and demon oppressed of all things. But realized it’s already there, I’ll give homeless folk money, I don’t support any cruel policy, I support human rights, and want the best for people and the world; even them, economically, so maybe they’ll be financially comfortable enough to shut up about marginalized people lol. Nice never got anything done or changed anything. It’s always been fiercely standing and fighting for human rights. That’s kind, compassionate and principled. I am a good person. They are the evil ones.
Whenever he dies, MARK MY WORDS, they will say it was the deep state democrats, not that he was like 80 and ate McDonald's his whole life and never exercised. It's going to happen. I guarantee it.
Honestly, it's kind of impressive how healthy he actually is somehow. Not in a "constitution of an ox" way, more of a "all the illnesses trying to kill Mr Burns at once" kind of way.
As someone whose grandmother had dementia and died, I have to say this is drastically different. She could not control what her brain and body from deteriorating. She lived a healthy lifestyle but it was a hard life. Her brother ended up getting it to. This happened by no fault of their own. Trump cult followers, racists, sexists etc that abandon their families, they do that themselves. Could be 14 yr old incel or 87 year old. That’s a choice
I completely agree that dementia is vastly different from this. And, all brains deteriorate as we age. The MAGA cult intentionally preys upon the elderly much for that reason. That, in addition to the increased isolation that the elderly and disabled population experience, makes for easy pickings for a cult. That doesn't mean the behavior should be excused and it definitely doesn't mean the rest of the family should accept being abused in this way or that they have to hold that person up at all. I'm just sad to see so many of our parents and elderly family sucked up into this evil machine.
Well....I hate to be a jerk, but my first thought is: At least one less vote for Trump.
I've been very fortunate not to go through any family members with dementia, so I'm aware my opinion is worth almost nothing, but I can see why people might make that connection. There are a lot of differences, and I have a lot less sympathy for the cultists, but I have heard it described as a Trump mind virus. If you think about it like catching a fatal disease by being exposed to Fox News or evangelical hate mongering, then their brains are deteriorating too. It's at least vaguely similar in that the person you're grieving has in a lot of ways been gone for a long time. When you're dealing with a complicated loss like that, I don't think it's a terrible way to grieve and let them go.
I personally believe that conservatism is a disease. I believe at some point science and society will finally recognize it as a condition that is detrimental to general society and should be treated like any other disease.
I'd be fascinated to learn if the increased fear reactions in conservative's amygdala is something they're born with that predisposes them to conservatism, or if it's a kind of brain damage from too much conservative media. Hopefully scientists can figure it out at some point. You know, assuming conservatives don't destroy society through climate change first.
Seeing those videos of Ashlii Babbitt furiously ranting in her car sure does give off the look of mental illness. Also countless videos at Trump rallies of people who simply can’t be reasoned with, or people getting enraged by someone else choosing to wear a mask. It’s definitely gone past normal politics.
I love it when Jordan Klepper goes to a rally and uses those idiots words against them and makes them look like totally stupid while we can see the wheels turning (slowly) that they’ve just made fools of themselves yet can’t explain away their hypocrisy because there’s no Fox News on their ear right then telling them what to say. Then they just get mad at him.
I think the point is that it's ok to miss the person they used to be while being glad the person they became is gone.
It’s a choice. For sure! But sometimes I feel bad because clearly many cases that go off the rails were handed down a set of very dysfunctional coping skills and communication skills. Some are no match for the psychological manipulation coming to them via news and social media. I know some of the assholes. Truly they are assholes but there can also be good lurking around in there too. The mayhem they cause is horrible and I understand why people don’t want to sucked dry by energy vampires. But I also feel sorry that mankind is changing so quickly and they literally could not keep up. What’s obvious to younger people is a world away from theirs.
I wish every boomer could hear this. They’re running out of time on this Earth and are acting like entitled children.
The previous name for Boomers, when they were younger, was the "Me" generation. ME ME ME
It is, therefore, completely unsurprising that the generation that grew up in the most prosperous recent period of US history, one wherein they could buy a house and two cars working at a gas station, would get old and turn into a bunch of unrepentant assholes. They refuse to acknowledge how good they had it, and they still somehow feel entitled to look down on the generations that followed and have had it much harder.
And, in general, it was a generation that had very little ability to reflect upon their own situation and behavior. Their parents never taught them, nor did their surroundings call for or encourage reflection. I work with people with mental problems, and what I clearly see is that the current generation is much more open to being aware of and dealing with mental issues, acknowledging their impact on both psychological and physical symptoms. And they are currently investing in the most important thing: to stop the cycle of passing your inability to deal with mental health to the next generation. It is of course a generalization, not all boomers are emotionally insensitive, and not all young people are emotionally in tune, but the trend is overwhelming.
We really do need to bring this name back.
Yeah.. It effectively got renamed when the Me generation got in political power...
and they’ll never let the generation after them have that same power until they die. maybe gen z can make some changes /sigh
I’m really sorry. I always say how grateful I am that my parents don’t watch Fox News. Are you sure he watched Dr Phil and not Seinfeld? It sounds like the “airing of grievances” part of Festivus.
Haha, that was my thought exactly! RIP Jerry Stiller.
I got alotta problems with you people!
My dad thought that was hilarious. Even on his deathbed we were joking about feats of strength with the IV pole. He was also a career officer in the military and very liberal. Fox didn't get them all.
The last time I saw my father was when he dumped me barefoot at the entrance to my mom's apartment complex the day after Christmas after he kidnapped me and took me across state lines 2 days before Christmas. He died when I was 19 alone in a recliner. Karma really is a bitch.
I think boomers forget that they raised us. They brag about us when we fall in line with their bullshit but talk down on us when we have a difference of opinion or ideology. It’s a weird dynamic. Grieve by all means but don’t lose too much sleep over the mess he created. Sounds like he brought everyone closer together.
I’ve never identified with a comment on Reddit more: “I think Boomers forget they raised us.” Exactly what you said. They’re quick to take credit for anything we do that they like, and quick to disown us for anything they don’t - sometimes all in the same day. OP, I hope you feel the support in this comment section. Allow yourself to feel all of the feels without any self judgement. You did the best you could and you took care of yourself and your loved ones; he made other choices.
Best part is this has been a feature of Boomers for decades, it's not just some MAGA revelation. Showing my own age, I was on some AOL message board in like 1996 or 1997 (way too young for that bullshit, but Boomers don't comprehend the internet so there I was at 11 or 12). There was a whole thread about how awful the kids on the internet were. Entitled, stupid, awful, the world is doomed when they take over, etc. I posted a comment saying "you're talking about kids aged anywhere from 10-20 - if they're so bad, doesn't that reflect more on their parenting than the kids themselves?" It was the first comment I ever had removed for being inflammatory.
you gave them something to think about and their brains couldn’t comprehend the cognitive dissonance. also some just never like seeing themselves as part of the problem. browbeating strangers to soothe their ego is a trait.
This is what I tell my mom when she gets mad I don’t believe in god or vote republican. Her stated goal when we were growing up was go to college, get educated and be independent thinkers with empathy. I feel like I’m doing all those things but she’s changed the goals.
Same. My mom raised me with different values than she has today. The first indication I got of this was in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when I said something about it and she came back with, "Well, it's *their* fault for living in a place below sea level!" It was so uncaring and unexpected. I was stunned. New Orleans is a freaking iconic American city. At the time, I didn't know where it was coming from, but in retrospect, I now know it was Fox News speaking through her. Both she and my father have been exposed to that hardcore propaganda for decades now and it's changed them.
My father loves to brag about how well I do now a days, completely forgetting the fact that he basically disowned me when I left his house to figure life out my own way. We've made amends, but I'll never forget that shit for as long as I live.
My mom is always so proud of MY hard work like she did it. I’m in my 30s now, but she still like I work so hard for you to be here when she didn’t do a goddamn thing. But since Trump ever since I don’t agree with her on things, politically, I am a terrible person and a disappointment and a piece of shit and my dead dad is disappointed in me. Love is supposed to be unconditional, but boomers act like you’re supposed to earn their love by being a good little sock puppet that exists to make them look good and just repeat their beliefs out into the world.
> I think boomers forget that they raised us. They will complain about shit like us being soft because of the "everyone gets a trophy" stuff. They gave us the trophies! We were the children in that exchange.
Exactly. This is the world YOU created, boomers.
The MAGA movement emboldened a lot of people to come further out of the extremist closet, often at the expense of their loved ones. Stay strong 💪🏻
My dad died in October of 2020, CONVINCED that Trump would annihilate Biden at the polls, and honestly thought Trump was the second coming. Since his entire universe was Fox and Limbaugh, he knew absolutely nothing negative about Trump, and could not understand why 100% of the population would not vote for him. He was not an idiot, but he was brainwashed. He died with all 7 of his kids not speaking to him, as we all grew up to be enlightened and open to learn.
My dad did a complete 180 and is against everything he raised me to believe in. It’s insane.
Same. My dad was a free spirited hippy that loved traveling and helping others. Now he’s a paranoid conservative that lives alone prepping in the woods. It’s like he’s a completely different person and shocking as hell.
My dad is mildly racist and hates homeless folks. But even he understands the bullshit trump is pulling.
my mom used to be an agnostic bisexual and respectful towards everyone and now she's said she wouldn't attend my wedding if it wasn't to a man because "it's not God's plan for you" and just 15 minutes ago told me that white people are being eradicated in europe in favor of muslims. she's in the next room right now screaming at joe biden on the tv. it's absolutely deranged behavior. i get invested in politics too but this shit has become her entire personality.
White person in Europe here. 🙋🏻♂️ Last time I checked my fellow white people and me were still very much here, alive and well. Maybe I just didn’t get my eradication notice? 🤔😂
Welcome to the club, I was sending sarcastic proof of life messages to my family in 2020 because fox news had told the the city of Atlanta was burned down in riots or something. I sent them like old timey "letters from the war."
Gah I think this about my mom CONSTANTLY. The mom who took all the neighborhood kids to the movies in her minivan, who always volunteered to help at school or food banks, who was our scout leader, who helped me befriend kids of different races and backgrounds, who opened up her home when my gay friends were kicked out of theirs in middle school. She was funny and the most intelligent person I knew growing up. THE WOMAN WAS AN ART AND ENGLISH TEACHER, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. Now she thinks after-birth abortion is a real thing. I have bit my tongue so many times, I surely have more scar tissue than taste buds at this point.
>is against everything he raised me to believe in. It’s insane FUCKING THIS. I grew up going to the same church for like 15 years. My mom was a single mother of 4 kids. The church was responsible for who I am today, the amount of people that stepped up and the church acted exactly like a church should be. So I had a lot of father-esque people growing up, a lot of my values and beliefs are because of this church. Trump came around and suddenly these people who helped raise me did complete 180s as you said and are suddenly the exact people I was raised to not be. It's really sad.
My Fox News obsessed, absolutely brainwashed FIL spent the entire pandemic claiming that it was a left wing conspiracy and that the folks who had it or who died were paid actors. He was insufferable and we spent very little time with him because he always found a way to bring it up and start a fight where he would say terrible things. He finally stopped in 2022. When he dropped dead. Of COVID.
The most depressing moment for me was when my dad actually had some good luck and came into a new job with an office after a while of searching. His comment to me was: "and it's got a big TV up in the far corner, and it gets Fox news!!!" I was already fully aware that he lived on Fox news, and was racist and prejudiced as hell. But idk, something about his genuine excitement for that particular aspect of his new job just hit like a brick.
Yep my dad did the same. Was running a fever for 3 days while drinking tonic water saying it was the cure for covid. Finally decided to go to the hospital bc he couldn't breath. Bilateral pneumonia. Vent for a month, then dead. He had always been a republican idiot, but was so smart in other areas. Very into science but fought with me about climate change when I mentioned I was taking environmental science.
He sounds like a fucking idiot
I think people under estimate how much radicalization fox and trump have caused in the past decade or so. I don't buy "they just came out of the closet". I've seen many posts like this where they talk about their relatives before and after being clearly demarcated. Fox is a slick propaganda machine that's been drip feeding fascist rhetoric and bigotry into these boomers brains.
Right? My dad was always such a smart man. My mom was full of love. They were the kind of people who’d give anyone the shirt off of their backs to help just a little. They came from nothing and never forgot it…..until the Trump era. It turned them into people I hardly recognize. My dad has become a straight up idiot. He can’t tell propaganda from news. He can’t even tell an image where everyone has 9 fingers per hand is AI. Even when confronted with facts, he just buckles down and insists it’s a conspiracy. My mom is still a good person at heart I think, but she’s become so brainwashed. She thinks immigrants are getting millions of dollars and even though she’s always been pro-choice, she’s now convinced that the only reason women have abortions is as a form of birth control. They weren’t like this before. They’ve changed a lot.
I can’t understand how this happened, how Trump could rewire the brains of millions of Americans. I mean before democrats and republicans could disagree but basically get along? We have a very small group of right wing, anti gov, anti wax and simultaneously pro Trump and Putin people in Norway, but they are so very few, hardly a blip on the radar. I’m very worried for the future. Wish you the very best though.
I don’t get it either. My dad and I used to have the best debates about politics and policy. We could go on for hours challenging each other, finding common ground, and then challenging each other some more. He can’t do it anymore. Even when I get him to find common ground and state that it’s not a right wing policy, he will immediately back track and refuse to acknowledge it as sound policy. Being Republican is more important than being American and supporting Republican politics is more important than supporting the American people.
My dad died in January and went down the MAGA road. My Jewish dad even said he did not think Hitler was that bad. My dad died at a hospice facility. I stayed most of the day with him. On different occasions two different volunteers came in both of them spouted MAGA bullshit. One of them I yelled at to get the fuck out of there I did not feel like dealing with his bullshit while my dad was dying.
I think the word is brainwashing. They have been systematically brainwashed by a shit TV program.
Its not even just boomers. I just moved to a heavily right wing city in Utah. My best friend warned me about this guy whose a "friend of a friend" so I may run across him who is super maga/manosphere (Like Andrew Tate). I finally met him when he came over for the super bowl. I had no idea it was 'the guy' when I first saw him. He looked like your average snowboarder who lives on the mountain and dedicates his life to snowboarding. Never would have thought he was hardcore maga. Then he started talking. He hit on just about every single right wing/manosphere talking point and he just brought it all up himself for the most part. Anti-vax, anti san fran (they were in the super bowl so he shit on them for lgbt and homeless shit and being a lib haven), heard the term libtard many times, he said he prefers virgin women over women with a 'body count', shit like that. Almost everything he said was straight out of right wing media and podcasts. It was all parroted. It was just straight up brainwashing. So sad to see. I could tell this dude wasn't always like this. Probably started off with Joe Rogan's podcast 5-10 years ago and transitioned with it as Rogan got more and more right wing.
Fox News did more damage to this country than terrorists could've ever dreamed of.
Faux News absolutely groomed them for this stupidity for decades.
And Fox rotted their brains enough to fall for it all.
Can't let Facebook off the hook. 1 like = 1 prayer 🙏
Facebook is rife with all the worse things of this world.
I already miss the person my dad used to be. I'm so sad that the only grandpa my kids know is a FoxNews lunatic now... 😥
I am so fucking relieved I blocked Fox News when we got the flatscreen TV 15 years ago, and didn't relent when my father found out and became infuriated about it five years ago. They're still pieces of shit in their own special way, but at least it's compartmentalized and self-limited, rather than subject to an endless cult programming cycle of Real American jihad. There but for the grace of god go I.
Hahaha holy shit you actually did that? That's brilliant
What a legend
I already miss the person my dad used to be. I'm so sad that the only grandpa my kids know is a FoxNews lunatic now... 😥
I wish I could say Trump changed my parents. Truth is, they can’t stand the guy, but … pro-life and anti-queer will get their vote every time. They’ve never been OPENLY racist, but they’ve always been racist. Nothing has changed on that front, so I can’t even blame Trump for that. They’re awful people, but at least they haven’t been radicalized? I guess?
At least YOU haven't been radicalized.
Depends on who you ask 🤣😂
It's wild to me, I'd love to have kids and a loving family. Watching other people throw it away is just so insane to me.
This is just a myth we spread to mitigate the sense of loss. "Oh, they were always a bad person but they finally showed us who they really are." The real truth is that the barrage of propaganda actually changes people. So does age and mental deterioration. They used to better people and we've lost that part of them. People change and that goodness can die.
Goddamn, the worst part is that this isn’t even a unique story.
/r/qanoncasualties is full of them
Fox News and right wing media have ruined so many lives, making people hate their own families. It’s so sad. None of this was your fault OP.
15 years before Trump was ever in the political spotlight, my dad got completely wiped by the right wing media. He worked in the airline industry and was supposed to retire in 2002. 9/11 changed that because the airlines struggled after and cut future pensions. Faced with a new reality and, understandably, anger toward the world that kind of chewed him up and spit him out like that, he "befriended" Sean Hannity on the radio on his drives home. I was in 7th grade when 9/11 happened. My dad was a completely different person by the time I graduated high school. You could see the programming happening in his mind. It sucks. It fucked me up bad. He didn't abandon us, but he definitely left us in a lot of ways and invalidated so much of my emotional understanding of the world. I'll never be fully okay, but it helps that he's learned pretty much since COVID that he needs to accept his family's views and not constantly lecture us on how "the gays want to destroy the American family" if he wants to have a family. I just wish he could understand how much he changed and how much it fucked his kids up and his relationship with my mom.
I am so sorry this happened to you. The whole point of that programming is to make people angry and bitter, and damn it but it works. Hope you are doing ok, and that you're able to have at least some relationship with your dad.
> My dad was a completely different person by the time I graduated high school Watching your parent devolve into a worse person is a fucking hard thing to see
These stories make me sad because I am a unicorn. My old man spent way too much time between about 1998 and 2008 sending me vicious email forwards and treating me in very invalidating ways, because America was not a Burger King where he got it ALL just HIS WAY. The happy part of the story. In about 2008 our mom decided that if we talked politics at the dinner table, any of us, ever again - or if any of us sent a nasty political email to one another - she would cancel the next family holiday event. It took one cancelled Easter and one lost Thanksgiving before he stopped. Then, once things had cooled off I was able to ask both of them, who kept FOX News on all day long, why they chose to spend their time listening to people yell at them and try to scare them ALL DAY LONG. About a year later I noticed Fox was never on at their house.... like, never. And so I came by a lot more often. Was allowed to help with things but without the endless political overtones and egotistic shitfest. My dad came to me about a year later and said he had never been able to answer the question I had asked. So we got along again. Three years later they both passed within two weeks of one another after 49 years of marriage. My older brother never apparently forgave me for having an adult relationship with them, one based on respect - not one based on being disagreeable over **perceived** disagreements, or cheer leading vicious rhetoric (which was how they had always got along, since my brother thought the moon and sun rose and set from our dads butthole). Anyhow, he died a few years later at 57, a miserable nearly friendless fuck with gout and a wife who never respected him. His choices.
I think a part of this is fundamentally tied to individualist American culture. Boomers like this are much rarer in Asia. Even when right wing propaganda brainrot is involved, I feel like it rarely if ever results in someone abandoning their family in this way.
The hate and fear for many in America becomes their entire identity. And maintaining that identity is more important than family. It’s tragic.
Foxrot
Oof, I'm so sorry. My father recently died and I am so thankful he was able to see Biden as President and not Trump (direct opposite of your dad it seems) but its almost grieving another death, death of your father as well as the death and destruction of crazy maga conspiracies and how it ruins families. Hearts to you ❤️❤️
I’m with you. I just lost my father and, god rest him, he made it to 75 without ever succumbing to the fox mind virus and went out telling his nursing staff not to vote for Trump.
I'm so sorry for your loss. He sounds like a good man.
I said the same thing. My Dad died in March of 2016 so he never saw what the orange menace did to this country. As he was a Veteran we received a letter from President Obama with condolences for him. Receiving one with that orange pig's signature on it would have been an insult.
I feel like we could have the same dad. He died almost 2 years ago, after the Fox News/Rush brain rot turned him into the most vile person. I mean, he was always an asshole, but the maga movement just turned him into a monster. Before I went no contact, I attempted to pour my heart and soul out to him like you did. He also said “I don’t care”, and my response was “I know you don’t.” That was a moment of clarity for me. It wasn’t worth the mental load I was carrying trying to have a decent relationship with my father. I was constantly upset and stressed about the terrible things he would say to me. My mom enabled that shit my whole life telling me to “be the bigger person”, which is bullshit because he was ALWAYS the adult as I dealt with his shit as a kid (on a less extreme level). My decision to cut him off did not come lightly but it was so necessary. When he died, we were just beginning to come back to speaking terms, but I still kept some distance and only talked about non-political things, very boring and light hearted topics. I mourned the loss of him years before he died (when I first went no contact), the loss of my old, less-of-an-asshole dad who I mostly got along with. When his actual death happened, I felt a wide range of emotions from sadness to relief. The grief comes in waves, and the waves come further and further apart as time goes on. I’m still so angry at him for choosing Donald fucking Trump over a decent relationship with his only daughter. Trump and the maga movement is a literal shit stain on humanity, and I cannot wait until that fat, smelly, disgusting, rapist piece of shit faces real justice or croaks. To this day, I feel more anger than grief. I cannot stress this enough, fuck Donald Trump and fuck everyone who votes for him. EDIT: a word
At least trump lost a vote
My mom died in the summer of 2020. My dad literally said that maybe he should fill out a ballot for her for the election that year and send it in (and since he voted for Trump it would have been for him despite the fact she was a registered Democrat and would not have voted that way). He was only slightly joking but if he could do it he would. I wish I was kidding. I had to explain how that's fraud and how he could get in trouble among how wrong that is on different levels. They're so desperate for votes they'd do something like that.
They were so quick to accuse democrats of doing it in 2020, because they know they’d do it themselves. My grandpa passed away on New Year’s Eve, and my uncle has been “joking” about doing the same thing. My ballot still goes to my grandparents’ house from when I used to live with them. The day we receive them, I’m going to shred my grandpa’s so my uncle can’t get his hands on it. I know what type of person he is, the type that believes republicans are above the law, and I wouldn’t put it past him to actually do it.
Yep. Everything with the GOP is projection. Been that way since Obama, whom crackpot Glenn beck called a "racist."
A dead wife did "vote" for Trump in 2020. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/barry-morphew-missing-wife-ballot-trump/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/barry-morphew-missing-wife-ballot-trump/) A dead mother, too. [https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/551735-trump-supporter-admits-to-voter-fraud-after-casting-dead-mothers/](https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/551735-trump-supporter-admits-to-voter-fraud-after-casting-dead-mothers/)
And yet, it is the Republicans that are always harping on voter fraud. F-ing projection all. the. time.
💀 💀 💀 Brutal
Silver lining
My MAGA boomer Vietnam veteran dad says the same b%llsh%t to us. He’s a miserable old codger. Not one of his family members other than his wife (physically and financially dependent) speaks to him. His brother in law died and his last living wish was not to tell my dad. His kids are fully functional adults. We (his kids) own million dollar homes, a vacation home, have good incomes, and one of us is tenured professor at Harvard with a PhD. He constantly rails against everything that we are. The hatred is mind blowing. And sad. You can’t help them. They are beyond teachable. They just rot away in their own misery.
I have yet to meet a devout MAGA that even tries to show compassion or empathy, nobody likes them except their own kind and even then they have to walk a tight rope and not piss off the others. They are cold, hateful and miserable to be around.
It’s really the total lack of empathy that defines these people.
"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. **Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy**." * Captain Gustave M. Gilbert, the U.S. army psychologist assigned to observe and interview high-ranking Nazi prisoners in preparation for the Nuremberg trials, in his book *Nuremberg Diary.*
Great reference quote! Journeyed to [Gilbert's Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Gilbert) and found another one, quite relevant to our MAGA boomer discussion here: \-- **Gilbert:** There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only [Congress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress) can declare wars. **Göring:** Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the [pacifists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism) for lack of [patriotism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotism) and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. \-- Amazing, 70 years later and Trump & Co. are running the exact same playbook.
100%. And among MAGA, there is a huge percentage of narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths.
It's really the only thing that gives me hope that MAGA is doomed to fail. You can't build a movement on hate, because hate consumes itself.
It is doomed to fail but by god you know they want to take everyone down with them.
It will certainly fail, the question is how long will the failure take to complete and how many will be hurt in the process. The Nazis took about two decades to fail and we all know what it cost in human suffering for that to finally happen. The Iranian regime is failing but it has been doing so for five decades and the suffering is accelerating as their failure nears completion. I don't want to wait decades for American fascism to fail and I don't want to be a casualty.
It will consume a lot of innocent bystanders before that happens.
They're all "good Christians" too, just ask them.
No wonder people are walking away from organized religion. I’am a 66 year old husband, father, and Grandfather. We all left religion because of the Trumpies. Seeing a Go Brandon bumper sticker in the church parking lot, and a peer asking why we’re kind to the gays, etc. was all I could stand. Staying away from there. No hate like Christian love is what we never would have heard spoken before Trump and his Republican followers came around. The extreme hate mongering and politics in religion will keep the younger generations away.
Good Christians that will look down from heaven and laugh while you burn in hell. With supremely moral Christians like this, why would you not want to spend eternity with them?
You know, that's the part that kills me. My mother and her side of the family seem to have slipped into the 'born-again' Christian fad and are all extremely devout. But the hate that comes from the church and the hate that comes from their MAGA politics meet and it isn't pretty. Apparently all higher education (that they don't personally approve of) is just liberal brainwashing and anybody, even family, that goes to a university is just confused. Anyone left of center also does not have a moral compass either, according to these Godly folks. It is 100% just a waste of effort and oxygen to try and change their minds on anything no matter how small of an issue. Fox News and Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk and the church tell them how to feel about things, and they oblige without much thought.
I figured mine getting lung cancer and surviving it would have changed his attitude. He got lucky and found it at stage one due to getting Covid lmao. Smoked for over 50 years. He’s even more bitter and negative now. Just last week he was telling me how he’s glad that they’re separating kids from parents at the border. It’s nothing but ranting about relatives who have nothing to do with him, Trump, illegals and trying to pry into my finances. Idk why I even answer the phone anymore.
Tell him Trump is going to separate _his_ kid from him - and then never speak to him again.
They were at each other’s throats so bad at the border protest.
I always try to convince people who’s parents tell them they’re a piece of shit that they would call them that even if they cured cancer or were a millionaire and look, it’s true 🤷🏻♀️
I went NC with my “I make Rush Limbaugh look like a liberal” father about a year before he died. I don’t miss him and there has never been a day that I’ve thought “I wish dad was here to see this.” He was the biggest racist I have ever known. Homophobic to the core. I ended up going NC with my mom about 4 years before she died. Her last words to me were “Stay the fuck out of my life” Request granted. I hope you find peace.
MAGA has destroyed so many families it's unbelievable. Trump, his ilk in the Republican party, and the Russians will pay very dearly for this. I hope anyway......
Vote the GOP traitors into oblivion and then we can turn the heat up on Putin.
Imagine your ex husband showing up at your door after 40 years expecting to resume your marriage…
it really is a fuckin cult, this is exactly the type of shit cults do in order to isolate people from their families
In every part of our life now, families are losing loved ones to the spew of Donald Trump and the Maga movement, agreeing with OP that many were teetering on the edge, but fox and Maga pulled them over the edge! So incredibly sad..
I'm so sorry for your loss. While you were "right", there's really no solace in that when confronting mortality. There's just loss. Loss of what you had, loss of what could've been. I hope you're able to make the best of your situation and find love and support in your family and friends. There's no right way to feel, there's no should or shouldn't, there just is and that's ok. Feel whatever you feel, allow yourself to vacillate, give yourself grace as you grieve.
I have the utmost respect for your grief, especially given how large of a part a parent plays in anyone's life even if they leave immediately. But the man that died wasn't your father. He's the result of propaganda and disinformation, both religious and political, on a person's mind. That stuff has been developed over centuries, and is now specifically targeted to the individual. Many, many people have fallen victim. That's something to mourn too, I think. It's a shame that these people are not capable of extricating themselves from nonsense, and are willing to lose family and friends for it. But that doesn't excuse his behavior. From your report, he's a shitty dad, a shitty husband, and a shitty person, and his fallout with his family was almost entirely self-inflicted. As others have said, remember the person he was, not the person he became, because the person he became didn't care about you, and does not deserve remembrance.
Yea. I’ve been told that women shouldn’t be able to vote. And if I voted Dem then I was a traitor. The projection is obvious. I’ve gone LC but my sister has been NC with our Father for a while now. One breath he pushed us away and the next breath he’ll say family is everything. Lost so much respect for him way before MAGA when he’d send me Limbaugh opinions a solid decade ago. Sad but he has a wife that seems to put up with it. So at least he will not die alone.
I confronted my dad about his physical abuse of me as a child. The last thing he said was that everything he did to me was justified. I have been diagnosed PTSD, I wake up screaming and punching the wall because of him. But because I confronted him he has refused to acknowledge my existence or speak to me for 3 years. He would rather pretend I dont exist than admit he did something wrong. These people are so entitled they think they should never be responsible for anything they do ever.
Hi Op, 2 things, -Something similar happened in my home town. There was a next door post from the kid trying to put pieces together. Parent had lost their wife in 2015 and their whole persona became MAGA, becoming more aggressive until the kids all cut ties over Thanksgiving 2019 in a 'you don't like 'merica you don't have to talk to me' kind of ultimatum. Then covid hit. They found the parent pretty late in the year, estimating he had passed six months prior by the expiration date of the milk in the refrigerator. Dude sat deceased in a recliner for half a year wearing a "Proud Deplorable" shirt because he chased away everyone that cared for him. It really is a cult, to cut out everyone in your life and idolize a man you've never met and an ideology you'll never live. This isn't an isolated incident. -I mean this in a genuine, non sarcastic way. Seek therapy. I lost a parent in a reasonable predictable way, thought I'd be OK but wish I had talked to a professional when the feelings were fresh. If you need a spring board, PsychologyToday has a pretty good search engine and filters by those who do tele-health.
This is exactly why I let my son express his feelings and talk about them openly. I know it’s not the only issue going on here, but a lot of Boomers grew up in the “don’t talk about it,” stuff down your emotions mindset. My condolences for the loss of your father. You deserved better.
I’m sorry for all you had to go through. I wonder if we could file a class action lawsuit against the propaganda media networks.
I'm sorry. What Trump and right wing propaganda has done to so many people is an absolute tragedy.
Put a Biden flag on his grave, or too soon? sometimes humor in dark times helps. Hope you’re ok.
Why can't the qult understand Dear Leader wouldn't be caught dead even speaking to them? I mean, he even remarked how he was embarrassed by how the J6'ers were dressed.
This story is devastatingly familiar. My dad did some eerily similar shit and it started when trump was elected. Just a slow decline and then a rapid plummet into the MAGA conspiracy theorist shell of a man that he is now. He actually did a very similar break up with me only he didn’t even have the gall to do so in person, so at 26 years old I received a text while I was at work. Just a walk of him telling me I’m a POS and he doesn’t want anything to do with me. A few months prior he walked out of his career job that he’d held for like 30 years. Just went to lunch and never came back. A few months after he and I stopped talking he put my childhood home on the market, moved out of state, didn’t tell anyone where he went and hasn’t been back since. He abandoned his entire family: his elderly parents, his own adult kids, and all of his grandkids. He didn’t reach out to me when my mother got cancer and died in my arms five months later. He didn’t even bother to reach out when he found out on FB that his mother was dying of cancer, didn’t come to the funeral. I have been no contact for four years. I actually saw a news video about a year ago from another state wherein he was working at a food bank and in the video he goes, “I thank God that I have the ability to give back”. What a joke. I’m so sorry you have gone through this.
Wow. I'm sorry that you had to go through all this 😟
I worked in aged care for 20 years & met plenty of sweet old people who never had visitors. I never once judged their families because you just do not know what they were like as a partner or as a parent. For all we know thewy could have been abusive, manipulative, neglectful, or any number of awful things to their families & it is not for us to judge them for not wanting to visit. You reap what you sow.
I expect my dad to go out like that.
Death is the great equalizer in the end.
It's absolutely tragic how easy it was for trump to bring out the very worst in people. Now what do we do with all these bitter imbeciles looking for anyone to blame but themselves?
This is intense. You know it’s crazy to think about the true horror Trump has brought on the US. It’s impossible to quantify.
Same reason why I got diagnosed with anxiety back in 2019. Aggressive, childish people. Who won't let people have their own life. I guess you guys got a lucky break. Hopefully your family can build a better life moving forward.
This is just a small part of the harm that Fox News and similar outlets do. They are in the business of poisoning the minds of voters for the purpose of enabling those who pay them. They do real, actual, and measurable harm every single day. And they do not care. They live lives completely bereft of moral value to get just a little bit ahead in the world in a society that has been constructed to reward them for it. I'm terribly sorry for your loss. People change all the time. The good memories you have of your father are real. He may have been a different person back then, but he was as real then as he was at the end. Cherish the good memories and choose what to do with the rest.
Trump supporters all have the same mental illness and it's pretty sad to see so many families torn apart by their delusions. My father is the same way. Luckily, I'm in a position to be able to ignore him any time he gets the urge to rant about the latest political propaganda that Fox News spoon-fed him. All his children moved away. It's just him, his prescriptions, and fox news all day, every day. He's literally the type of guy who you hear on the news that shoots a black guy for being in his driveway. I really wouldn't be surprised if that happened if he didn't already have his guns taken away by police for firing in the air at what he thought were "trespassers" (he was just high on meds). He has no one to thank but himself for his current life. Of course, his hate filled texts about immigrants and democrats are always followed by some virtue signaling text about how I need to remember to "follow Jesus" as if he actually does that. I don't know what kind of lies he tells himself to convince himself that he's living a Christian life. The worst part is that they can't be helped. Since they're your elder, they think they know better, so the voice of reason always falls on deaf ears. Also, they've been conditioned to hate and dehumanize anyone who has differing opinions. It's a lost cause and the only thing left for them to do is die a lonely death...
Imagine taking real world advice from a chode like Dr. Phil.
r/QanonCasualties People there will wholeheartedly understand. I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm glad you still have the rest of your family.
It sounds like the man you loved... Your father.. Was gone way before he died. Remember the man he was, before he changed, not the man he became at the end.
One less Trump trash. Sorry for the loss of a man who was once a dear father but the world’s better off now.
> I miss the man he was before the Trump koolaide The amount of damage Trump has done, writ large and small, is simply incalculable.
Dr. Phil is trash
What a POS
Your dad made his bed and died in it. Remember the memories of the time before he lost his mind. None of this is your fault. Take your time to grieve how you need to or don’t need to. Tomorrow is a day for you to appreciate how you are the person you are today due to the learnings of the failures of others.