Trump-hatred, fear, and cutoff
Ever since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 there have been intense reactions, and prominent among them has been Trump-hatred, fear of Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome – whatever you want to call it. It’s something I’ve noticed escalating over time, reaching more and more people and getting more and more serious.
I’m not talking about people who just don’t like Trump or his policies and choose not to vote for him. I know plenty of people like that. But there’s a subset who consider Trump nothing less than demonic.
I mean that quite literally – even though they’re not necessarily religious. The idea is that he’s uniquely evil, up there with the worst of history.
During the last few months of the 2024 campaign, as we know, the opposition compared him to Hitler and called him a fascist over and over. But now that he’s poised to become the next president, most Democrats don’t seem to really think Hitler is coming to power, and certainly the Bidens have given no indication that they believe such a thing, either.
But some people do believe it. They really really do. And I know a couple such people. One – a longtime good friend – is at the moment not talking to me because I support Trump. And this isn’t because I ever talk politics to her, because I don’t bring it up. It’s just because of wrongthink on my part.
The right may joke about Thanksgiving conversations and TDS but it’s truly a terrible thing when it causes that big a rift between family members and/or friends who were formerly able to get along well despite their political differences. It’s tragic, actually. And as far as I know it’s always or nearly always Democrats cutting themselves off from Trump voters. Maybe something similar has happened now and then when Biden was elected and coming from the right, but I never read about it and I certainly never did it nor would I ever think to do it. My perception is that Trump’s first term didn’t have nearly the divisive effect this second term seems to arouse – and it hasn’t even begun yet.
The fears I see expressed are way over-the-top and out of step with anything Trump has actually done or said he will do. It seems to be stirred up by MSM articles, pundits, social media, and the like, stating things about Trump that he never said he’d do and I don’t see any reason he ever would do. Or it’s about generalized fears that have no basis in reality and aren’t even specifically related to Trump, but often are blamed on him. Take this example of the latter:
“I’m afraid I’m going to be murdered” isn’t something you hear a 10-year-old say every day. However, that’s the message a child named Violet delivered during a shocking CNN segment featuring multiple transgender children and their parents.
“[I’m worried that] one day I’m going to be walking down the street, and someone is going to come up and like shoot me or something,” Violet said somberly in the opening exchange.
“That’s a really scary thing to be worrying about at 10 years old,” the CNN reporter replied, affirming this bizarre paranoia as if it were justified.
It is not.
While the debate over the medical transitioning of gender-confused minors, currently before the Supreme Court, is intense, often heated, and sometimes toxic, no one is randomly murdering 10-year-olds who identify as transgender. The other children on the CNN panel similarly indicated that they falsely fear their “lives” and “existence” are at stake throughout the shocking six-minute segment. This is just an extension of the false narrative, routinely propagated by so-called LGBT activists, that transgender people are frequently murdered for their identity when, in fact, their murder rates are below average.
Such fears are hardly limited to children, and sometimes they take the form of believing that Trump will do the killing (or incarcerating) himself or send troops to do it.
Do a search for “my loved ones stopped talking to me because of my politics” and you will probably see, as I did, plenty of discussions. All the ones I saw featured conservatives who said they had been shunned by friends or family or both. But it was the responses to them that were especially depressing. Many of the commenters said the equivalent of, “Of course they don’t want to talk to you; you’re a bigot (or some other extreme misstatement of what conservatives believe).”
Just to take a few typical examples:
You can have whatever belief system you want, but you have to understand that most people in today’s world don’t align with conservative politics, as the entire platform is based on stripping rights and discriminating against disenfranchised people. Most people don’t want to associate with that, and for good reason.
Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of your own actions.
If you’re a republican and feel that half the population should lose autonomy over their bodies, that’s going to lose you a lot of female friends.
And others said things like “if you vote for Trump you vote for someone who thinks black or brown people have no right to be in this country.” Or worse.
But every now and then you see something like this:
To so grossly caricature half of our country (160 million human beings) with such antagonistic generalizations and flippantly condemn them as malicious or degenerates is irresponsible at best and catastrophic at worst.
Once upon a time, we all knew it was possible for one person to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, with political considerations falling all across a broad spectrum. We used to believe that listening to and celebrating differing opinions made us better, as a country and as people. But now it seems that tolerance has been infected by these dangerously divisive assumptions and absolutizations.
Echo chambers and free-thought are analogous to incestuous gene pools and evolution. Without the constant injection of variation, stagnation leads to the end of your kind. These people, who believe themselves to be highly intelligent, seem completely ignorant to the fact that ideological diversity is key to our survival and success as a nation. We need as many perspectives as we can get because who knows what problems tomorrow might bring.
I have yet to see a single comment on these threads from those who advocate cutoff citing actual policies of the actual Republican Party or of Trump himself. It’s all based on things like “he’s going to end abortion” or “he’s a racist who wants to kill black and brown people” or “he wants to take away our human rights,” or “he’ll take away Social Security.” That’s the sort of thing many people sincerely believe – as I said, I know some – and it’s tearing people apart.
This is the consequence of the opposition’s attempt to get Trump and to portray him as an awful person out to do serious harm. There are people who are very vulnerable to it, and with them it has had its intended effect.
“Maybe something similar has happened now and then when Biden was elected and coming from the right, but I never read about it “. If the media could have found it, they would have hawked it 24/7 as an example of intolerance.
Apocalyptic hysteria and rage is what the left lives on. “Never let a crisis go to waste” and never let there be a time which is not a crisis.
And as far as I know it’s always or nearly always Democrats cutting themselves off from Trump voters.
I’m an exception. I have cut myself off from as many five formerly good friends, and one brother. They were always talking politics and repeatedly ignored me when I said I didn’t want to talk politics. And they were always left-wing in their views, often stridently so. In each instance it became too much for me. I would warn them that I didn’t want to talk politics and that I was conservative in my views but that didn’t stop them. So I stopped associating with them. Totally stopped. I don’t see this as a tragedy and I don’t regret what I’ve done.
The “autonomy over their bodies” is such a mindless slogan. (Users deserve being described as NPCs). Medicine is one of the most regulated aspects of society. Your doctor has to be licensed, the license determines what kinds of procedures may be performed, what drugs may be prescribed. The state is between you and the doctors every second.
My brother hardly ever brings up politics, in contrast to his vehemently yellow-dog Democrat wife. After Biden got elected, he predicted in an e-mail that Biden would be a unifier. Anyone who followed Biden in the 2020 campaign or earlier knew full well that Biden’s role as unifier would be “SHUTUP!” Which told me that my brother’s prediction was one more example of his not closely following politics. I made no reply. Our subsequent conversations kept clear of politics.
Demos often have trouble dealing with disagreements. In one conversation, a NYC cousin brought up then-Mayor DeBlasio. I expressed a negative opinion of him. Her reply was that she found it strange that I knew something about Mayor Bill, when she knew nothing about the Mayor of my fair city. She was expecting my agreement with what the “good people” professed. Yet she had a good idea of what my politics were. Rather that her default reason for discussing politics is to have confirmation that she is conversing with one of the “good people.”
Like IrishOtter, I steer away from discussing politics. A recent conversation with cousins and siblings stipulated at my request that we steer away from politics. A yellow-dog Democrat cousin replied that “science, religion, facts” are similarly taboo. I didn’t reply, but when I once brought up a clearly documented number to refute his argument, he replied that was a lie. No point discussing politics with him.
@IrishOtter49 –
So I stopped associating with them. Totally stopped. I don’t see this as a tragedy and I don’t regret what I’ve done.
Have any of them subsequently reached out to you at all? “Hey, long time, what’s up?” or “[X event] is coming up, you interested?” or even a “U MAD BRO?!?!”
I keep coming back to the notion that the human psyche in many people is quite susceptible to this type of mob thought &/or hysteria. The broader panoply of the limitations and reflexive inclinations of the human psyche are what confidence artists learn and try to capitalize on. And in many political cases or situations, “politics” is the ultimate con. You know… the small con or grift, the big con, and politics can be the ultimate con. So sad.
If you lean right it is much harder to cut yourself off from people on the left. If you work at a big company, a lot of the people you have to work with are on the left. If you’re in academia, most of the students, instructors, and administrators. If you have kids in school, their teachers and administrators. If you indulge in popular culture, the music you listen to, the people who write your TV shows and movies. If you have to deal with the government, the people who work there. If you live in a big city or a blue state, most people you meet are on the left. If you’re still getting your news from legacy media, them obviously.
Part of being on the left is being consumed by politics and never shutting up about the left’s views on everything, whatever they are today.
I am convinced there are not different kinds of human brains represented on right and left, but the left disproportionately occupies too much of our common institutions. A leftist can walk around all day in a bubble if they wish, and easily cut off the few who don’t fit in it. The Right does not have that option.
IrishOtter:
Ordinarily the person doing the cutting-off doesn’t see it as a tragedy. It’s the recipient of the cutoff who’s much more likely to be hurt.
If you’re the one who cut them off I’m not surprised you don’t see it as tragic.
I’m reminded of the recent quote by JD Vance about friends and families and politics. I can’t find it now for his exact words, but it was to effect that friends and family are too important to lose over political disagreements. And I agree completely. My daughters disagree with me about politics, but we all understand not to discuss it, because we are family.
Alinksy would be laughing with his muse, Lucifer (if he could).
……………………………………………….
I’ve never believed in celebrating differing opinions, if they are wrong.
…ideological diversity is key to our survival and success as a nation.
No, wisdom and virtue are.
I haven’t cut myself off from anyone, buy I feel some contempt and repugnance (and a little pity) toward the “useful idiots” I know, who have swallowed and promote this rubbish.
Deja vu?
ChatGPT – do democrats cut off republican friends and family more than republicans:
As a hermit I don’t have such issues…
We used to believe tolerating differing opinions was a virtue, not celebrating them. You were supposed to listen and nod as someone expressed themselves, then when they walked away you could say, “You know, freedom of speech, but that’s guy’s nuts.” That’s if you didn’t want to mix it up, and for the most part, no one did.
That was before talk radio and the internet, of course. Before those two things, you had to do your arguing face to face, with knowledge of possible outcomes if someone went too far. You don’t have to do that anymore.
As for cutting off family and friends, I think it depends on whether you announce it or not that makes it contemptible. I’m estranged from several of my cousins, but mostly because they’ve moved far away and I don’t have the desire to continue the relationship. Their politics just makes me sure of my decision.
But those who don’t just stop having contact, who choose, instead of just avoiding contact, to make a statement, whether to strangers on the internet or to the family members themselves, those are the vile ones, because they’re either virtue-signalling or attempting to hurt people’s feelings. They want their absence to be noticed, to be felt.
They also maybe don’t realize the family gatherings will probably be more pleasant due to their absence.
the feedback loop
https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/12/11/propublica-responds-to-pete-hegseth-west-point-story-n2405021
Gringo:
Even steering clear of politics doesn’t matter with some people I know. They cut relatives and friends off for what they think (or what they believe they think) or who they voted for, even if they never discuss politics with them.
IrishOtter:
By the way, the situation you describe is quite different than the one that’s happened to me. Your friends were incessantly talking politics despite your objections. I don’t talk politics, but as I wrote earlier, cutoff nevertheless has occurred because I guess I’m known to be guilty of wrongthink whether I talk politics or not.
neo:
It’s more accurate to say I ghosted them. There was no drama. No furious arguments. No door-slamming exits or angry email exchanges. I simply stopped talking to them — disappeared from their lives. They aren’t hurt by my absence and silence. They haven’t attempted to contact me. Because I’m conservative and they’re not interested in my views which they find stupid and repellent. Because they think they’re superior to me and that I’m wrong about everything.
Because that’s how leftists roll.
I ghosted them out of necessity. Our relationships had become toxic due to no fault of my own. Ghosting them was an act of self-respect — and self preservation. Can you understand that?
Back in 2016 my sister wouldn’t talk to me for several months. She got over it and this time around we don’t talk politics and she’s been perfectly sane.
I was at a dinner gathering the other night, the election came up, I revealed my vote, and a friend sitting across from me who I hadn’t seen in a few years who is a typical Bay Area boomer liberal, shook my hand. What a mensch.
He and his wife have been RV’ing around the country while their house under renovation, and he mentioned how outside of the cities it’s pro-Trump all the way.
Karmi-
I have come to seriously despise Democrats, who remind me of Stalin and Beria: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
True Democrats are socialists at best, and communists at worse, but all are authoritarian at heart. Look at the history of that party since 1865 !
neo:
Maybe I’m getting, or have gotten, Irish Alzheimers.
You know how it is: You forget everything but the grudges.
There’s a lot of truth in that old joke.
Abortion is homicide past six weeks. Abortion is a hate crime under Loving (“=”) from conception.
Transgender (e.g. homosexuals) should only fear liberals in progressive sects that entertain abortive ideology (e.g. “burden” relief, human rites) under the Pro-Choice religion.
As for gender (e.g. sexual orientation) therapy through surgical, medical, psycho-atric corruption/grooming, wait until the target can offer informed consent, past puberty, and sometime in adulthood.
Be wary of anyone exercising liberal license to indulge Diversity [dogma] (e.g. racism, sexism, and other class-disordered ideologies).
Even steering clear of politics doesn’t matter with some people
Silence is violence! Violence is virtuous.
One of the best things about my extended family is how we have never fallen into this sad situation. I would say we are about 50/50 split (which is somewhat unusual in WA but maybe because we are all from outside of Seattle area) and yet we have never had any political arguments (IRL that is) and have had nobody cut off for political reasons.
In fact our biggest Trump fan, the biggest I have ever seen in person, and our biggest left winger are very close (nephew/uncle) and at every family gathering they are attached at the hip talking about all kinds of things but never politics.
Not sure why this happened with us but it makes for very pleasant family gatherings.
@ Cicero – during my life after crime, after prison, and again after crime—I got legal jobs as an electrician.
My favorite boss and I became friends. I would beat his arse, get fired, and then he would hire me back latter when he needed my reliability. He was a radical democrat—brainwashed as a kid by his father. He was always bragging about the Democratic party – and trying to get me to vote during elections.
After 911 – I registered as a Republican and voted in the 2002 midterms. He wasn’t pleased, but kept it professional, and we still drank sometimes together. He was an obnoxious Democrat, and after the midterms I watched the Republicans abandon Bush…and next time I voted was as a NPA (no party affiliation) – since I can’t stand either party. In 2006 I moved to Dixie County, Florida and became a full-time hermit…
UPDATE: forgot to add — that boss was a natural born Capitalist. He started and ran his own companies…could sell snow to an Eskimo, but believed he was a Democrat…weird.
Griffin:
You are fortunate. I think it comes down to family closeness and love. Some families have a lot more of it than others.
I think it’s also helpful when the family’s political split is more even as opposed to there being just one odd man out.
I know two people moving out of the U.S. to reside in a foreign country. They leave just before the inauguration.
After the election I had several friends state their daughters are claiming they will not vacation in pro-life states.
Once someone rejects facts as irrelevant to their view of reality, no barrier exists to delusional fantasies.
“We choose truth over facts.” Aug. 8, 2019 Former Vice President Joe Biden
I have never had anyone explicitly tell me “I don’t want to associate with you because you have abominable opinions.” Nor have I ever deliberately cut off anyone because I don’t like their views. But over the years such disconnections just happened sort of gradually and organically. We just didn’t have enough in common to maintain the relationship. Politics/religion wasn’t usually the only factor–there was also a lack of any positive common interests.
I had a striking experience in 2016. I had not been on Facebook for very long and had some real-life acquaintances who (somewhat to my surprise) proved to have extremely strong political opinions, one right and one left. Soon after the election, I made a disparaging comment about Trump. Within hours, the right-winger unfriended me. Nothing was said, she just disappeared. The left-winger had started posting pictures of Holocaust victims, saying Trump was going to round up and execute immigrants. I pooh-poohed the Trump-Hitler comparison. Again, the “friend” said nothing, but unfriended me.
I said they were “acquaintances”–that’s really all they were, and due to other circumstances I’ve only run into one of them, the left-winger, in person once since then. Neither of us mentioned it.
Another friend, this one a semi-close one with whom I had worked for many years, loudly announced on Fb that anyone who voted for Trump should unfriend him. I thought, in the spirit of WFB’s famous “Cancel your own damn subscription,” do your own unfriending. He never did though he knows I’m at minimum sympathetic to Trump and Trumpism.
neo,
Yes, we are a very close family, a couple years ago we decided to break up into our own little families for Thanksgiving because we had about 35 people and it was unmanageable, and it was a VERY big deal with many people saying how it wasn’t the same. It was the first Thanksgiving I had spent apart from my sister in my 50 plus years.
Probably not a coincidence that this happened shortly after my mom died as she was the last of her generation in our family and was loved by all.
We’ve been very fortunate in this area and I have a hard time understanding how this happens but I know that it does.
neo @ 4:08pm,
On several occasions I’ve had friends ascribe somewhat cartoonish, non-nuanced political opinions to me and I’ve replied with, “that’s not what I believe at all,” and then gone into a politically complex explanation that demonstrates an understanding far deeper than their own. I remember 3 occasions specifically, but it has happened more than that. Every time the person was an all in Democrat.
I’ve heard a lot of other folks relate this affect; if you’re politically interested at all, but not on the Left, you are immersed in the Left’s opinions and views and can speak to them, since the Left controls so much of the media, academia and culture. For the same reason, a lot of folks on the Left are underinformed. They don’t hear any other views unless they seek them out.
Griffin,
By and large it seems the same with my extended family. I think one thing that helps is humor is given a lot of import at family gatherings, and that takes precedence over personal feelings. Many of us have very different, even opposing, views on politics, religion, human sexuality, race relations, gender roles… but we all cherish the importance of being kind and understanding with one another, and there is a lot of teasing and good natured ribbing that helps things not get too serious.
Mitchell Strand
That makes a lot of difference, I believe. I have had a lot of experience in face-to-face political discussions. In recent years a fellow HOA member and I spent Friday nights for 9 years at a local bar arguing politics and also discussing HOA issues. (The bar closed, and he sold..) Decades before, during the Vietnam War I argued in favor of Conscientious Objection in dorm corridor discussions. A Marine sent to college was among my corridor mates. Disagreements never got heated. We remained civil. (Why I once was a pacifist and why I am no longer one is another story.)
Online discussions lack the feedback that face-to-face discussions have. Which helps explain while in decades of face-to-face political discussions I never got angry, a cousin angered me in the only online political discussion we had (He was the one who introduced politics). I didn’t reply in kind, but stopped the discussion.
Griffin, my grandmother and I didn’t agree on religion and on civil rights, but we agreed to disagree and kept their discussion at a minimum. At my initiative, she recorded 7 hours of family stories and history. For some recordings, I was there. Some recordings she did solo. At her request, I spoke at her funeral.
Rufus T. Firefly, humor definitely helps. One endearing quality about my grandmother was her ability to laugh at herself. The funniest stories about grandma came from grandma herself.
Neo, fortunately I do not know such political fanatics, who cut off people merely for whom they voted.
neo @ 5:04pm,
I like that theory and it seems to apply in my situation. At a large family gathering, or even among our friends I’d imagine the split is close to 50/50, and there are probably at least 20%, who, like myself, feel no allegiance to either party.
I wonder if being Catholic also has something to do with why I don’t see a lot of irreconcilable political blow ups at social events? The Catholic Church has been close to split down the middle for decades, so maybe we are more used to avoiding/dancing around political topics at social functions?
Shortly after Thanksgiving, one of the zillion merchant emails I received was from Macy’s, and I’ve kept it in my inbox as a kind of perfect distillation of all that is wrong with the modern Zeitgeist: “You survived the holiday, round 1,” it reads, “Time to treat yourself.”
Notice that neither Thanksgiving or Christmas are even mentioned by name. The idea of Thanksgiving being an ordeal because of one’s retrograde older relatives was hyped up by Obama. And since the recent election, the line is that it is not just unpleasant, but immoral to tolerate them.
Surely, you deserve to treat yourself then! That’s what “the holiday [parts 1 and 2]” is all about, isn’t it?
The divisive killjoy-ism of it really irks me. The more so as politics is probably the major factor in the gradually diminishing interactions I have with less close friends and relatives. And even among closer connections, it has put a damper on things. It’s not quite natural to have a cone of silence between people on subjects most of them are keenly following.
NancyB,
That is a very sad message. Looks like some Macy’s customers are in need of watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.