How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

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Which BEST DESCRIBES how the Trump presidency has affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

I have lost real-life friends.
0
No votes
It has strained/severed relationships with family.
1
11%
I've lost/unfollowed "friends" online/on social media.
3
33%
It has distanced me from my neighbors.
0
No votes
It has brought me closer with my neighbors!
0
No votes
I have gained new friends and strengthened family bonds!
0
No votes
It has not.
5
56%
 
Total votes: 9

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How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by pinback »

Surely a topic about which we can all select one of the following options!
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Flack
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by Flack »

I voted for "I've lost/unfollowed "friends" online/on social media." That's not the only applicable choice, but that the was the most applicable.

I have not lost any close real-life friends. I've had to tell a couple of my close friends that I'm done discussing politics with them. I've never been that much into politics in the first place, and I'm tired of having close friends evangelize to me. I've also ended some online friendships. I had a retired co-worker who unfriended and blocked me when I said I was tired of having him post Trump stuff on my timeline. The guy lives 1,000 miles away and we would never talk again outside of Facebook so, no big loss. I have a couple of high school classmates I consider "friends" who I have not seen past high school who I have unfollowed and unfriended due to the election. I posted a selfie while wearing a mask and someone responded with "you're one of the sheep." Boom, gone. The last time I spoke to that person in real life was to tell them to quit copying off my science test. Again, no big loss.

One of my favorite relatives posts every day about how the only solution to Trump losing the election is an armed militia so... we'll file that one under "strained relationship with family," but that's been the exception to the rule. It's also led to much less communication with the inlaws so... win?

I was taught to argue dirty at an early age. I watched many family discussions go from "disagreement" to "angry" very quickly. I learned that the point of every discussion was to make the other person stop talking, and bonus points if they cried. I largely don't discuss religion or politics because I've lost friends over it. I don't talk about the election to my inlaws because they would disown me in about four minutes, which would make things awkward for my wife. Some people don't argue because they are passive. I don't do it because I don't do it civilly.
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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Haven't lost any friends (I don't think? Maybe they broke the friendship with me and I didn't realize it) and it's not affecting my family. My brother and I engage in a battle of wits and facts on these topics and other ones fairly frequently. He's my brother. We've smacked each other around with hockey sticks at various points in our life. Politics isn't going to separate us and I'm certainly not going to the current administration separate us. I've anonymously screamed at and insulted other anonymous people in pirated NFL streams and such regarding current politics, but what else are those for? They aren't for discussing where to get pirated NFL streams, we all already figured that out.

I do like knowing how people that are thinking differently than I do think. I'm going to use the example of that new Karate Kid show. Johnny Lawrence has all the makings of someone that would pull the lever in the voting booth in a different way than I would, and he was the best character on TV for this year for me. I think it's important for anyone writing to not be close minded. I can't stand reading things developed in an echo chamber, you have to have some empathy for your fellow man in my opinion, in order to write anything worthwhile.
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bryanb
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by bryanb »

My theory -- or rationalization, you might call it -- is that most people who aren't uber passionate about politics often end up supporting a candidate or a party for pretty much one big reason that really hits home for them. My mom likes Trump because she thinks he was the only president who ever lowered her taxes. She's retired, doesn't have a big income, and theoretically shouldn't have been a big beneficiary of Trump's tax cuts, but she got a refund under Trump but not those other guys so she's with him. We've talked a lot about negative aspects of Trump's presidency, and she hates how he acts and many of the things he does. That doesn't matter at the end of the day, though, because Trump helped her out while Biden in her view just wants to grab everyone's money, including hers.

I also have a friend who supported Trump primarily because "he stood up to China." I don't really have a good answer to that because I'm honestly not sure Biden won't be more accommodating to Xi. Nothing Trump has ever said has made me think that he really cares about human rights, the genocide of the Uighurs, or the creeping repression of Hong Kong, but yet he's confronted China about those issues more than most of the people who theoretically do or should care. Sometimes he did the right things for the wrong reasons. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Trump's China hate stems mostly from racist views or what he perceives as personal slights coming from Xi, but at the same time huge swathes of American society are completely silent on these issues. Last I heard Apple was actively lobbying against a bill in Congress that is trying to block products made using Uighur concentration camp forced labor from the US market.

Most people probably engage in a certain level of self-deception when it comes to choosing a candidate or political party to support. Psychologically you have to convince yourself you're making the right decision, and that process usually involves focusing on the positives and ignoring the negatives to a certain extent. It's just that some engage in self-deception and embrace willful ignorance a lot more than others. So I try not to let politics affect my relationships too much. I like to think that if someone liked EVERYTHING about Trump they probably wouldn't be a friend of mine in the first place. There could be relatives that I already don't talk to that fall into that category, I suppose.

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Flack
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by Flack »

In middle school, there was a girl I had a secret crush on. I was already into Motley Crue and KISS and was just getting into Iron Maiden and Metallica when she told me the only band I should listen to was Christian rockers Stryper. I bought a copy of "To Hell with the Devil" and even drew her a big lopsided copy of the black and yellow STRYPER logo on loose-leaf notebook paper, but man was that band awful. Stryper is a band that actually makes music worse for existing.

In high school, when I got enough balls to start asking girls to go out on what I thought were dates, this girl invited me to hear a guest speaker at her church. I declined the offer, but got to hear all about it regardless. The speaker's angle was how people were letting Satan into their homes through pop culture. He did a whole thing about how the Smurfs were Satanic, and talked about how Smurfette was unnatural and something about if you looked at a map of Gargamel's castle, things were placed around the room in the shape of a pentagon. Then he told them about the how ninjas were the foot soldiers of Satan, and that any family who let their children watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was doing the devil's work. Finally, he told people that unicorns were unnatural and that evil spirits could enter your house and life through the horn on a unicorn statue. She finished all this by telling me she had gone home and taken all the porcelain and glass unicorns her family had given her and smashed them on the back porch. She also got her brother to throw away all his TMNT figures. I hate to see what she would have done to my record collection. I had just picked up a limited edition of the WASP single "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)". By the end of that conversation I had safely and without regret marked her off the list of people I might procreate with someday. She was a nice gal who was smart, funny, and attractive, but I just couldn't handle someone who couldn't think for themselves.

I mention that to say that this same person is leading the anti-mask charge on my Facebook feed. She works in an industry that has been directly and heavily affected by COVID, and instead of supporting things like social distancing and mask wearing to try to end the pandemic, every post is about how the human sheep are ruining her life. Shortly before I unfollowed her, she posted that someone had stolen all the large Trump signs from her yard. "How can we take medical advice from a bunch of sign stealers?"

I should have seen it coming.

Also, my wife is the greatest thing that ever happened to me, hands down, and she puts up with (among other things) my taste in music. She went with me to see bands like Sepultura, Ozzy, Motley Crue, KISS, and countless others, and never once suggested I listen to Stryper. Things worked out.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

bryanb wrote: Mon Nov 30, 2020 11:43 pm We've talked a lot about negative aspects of Trump's presidency, and she hates how he acts and many of the things he does. That doesn't matter at the end of the day, though, because Trump helped her out while Biden in her view just wants to grab everyone's money, including hers.
This is something that absolutely kills me. Likewise - my father will be on the phone and say, yeah, Trump's an asshole and he doesn't like thing 1, 2 or 3 about him. He will literally say that he is an asshole. But the last time I went home, every three hours with the exception of when we were all asleep, he stated that Biden will raise his taxes.

My father is not making $400,000 a year. I mean, we should be so lucky. (shakes fist) That Biden! Now get on the second yacht, Muffy.

But that's the thing, I get needing and wanting to be realistic. I get the fact that - come on, there are some really wealthy people in this country who have had it great since the early 80s and I get the indignation about them not paying their fair share. But Christ, Biden's camp knew that speaking a single word about it was going to be pounced on by liars on the other side. (And it was - we got a flyer in the mail early on that had a quote about Biden raising taxes and of course left off the "if you're making more than 400,000 dollars a year" part.)
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by pinback »

The recent meme about "If you (whatever), you don't have to worry about Biden's tax plan" had one that hit home:

"If you have a bag full of other bags under your sink, you don't have to worry about Biden's tax plan."

Guilty.
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Flack
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by Flack »

We made too much money to get the COVID incentive check, and not enough to be affected by Biden's tax plan. If I can coast in this spot for the rest of my career without dipping a toe into management... meesa win.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by AArdvark »

When I got back on Facebook the first thing I did was to unfriend all the people sharing political memes. Last spring I was replying back to the people, trying to start a discussion. What happened was just more memes. You can't reason or argue with a shared meme, they just drop into your newsfeed and you hide the post. And hide the post, and hide the post. No more, I say. This goes for the anti Trump people as well, there were just as many of them as Trump kool-aid drinkers. Now hardly anything hits my feed but Im happier for it.

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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by Jizaboz »

AArdvark wrote: Tue Dec 01, 2020 5:31 pm When I got back on Facebook the first thing I did was to unfriend all the people sharing political memes. Last spring I was replying back to the people, trying to start a discussion. What happened was just more memes. You can't reason or argue with a shared meme, they just drop into your newsfeed and you hide the post. And hide the post, and hide the post. No more, I say. This goes for the anti Trump people as well, there were just as many of them as Trump kool-aid drinkers. Now hardly anything hits my feed but Im happier for it.
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Jizaboz
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by Jizaboz »

Flack wrote: Tue Dec 01, 2020 9:51 am We made too much money to get the COVID incentive check, and not enough to be affected by Biden's tax plan. If I can coast in this spot for the rest of my career without dipping a toe into management... meesa win.
I was originally one of those "I do not need this, gov. WTF are you doing?"

Then I had to spend 4k+ on replacing all the iron pipes in my house. At this point I am just watching what recently started as Super Obama World turn into Super Clown World as far as this sort of shit goes and never biting the hand that feeds me.
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by Tdarcos »

pinback wrote: Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:36 am Surely a topic about which we can all select one of the following options!
Tdarcos wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 4:35 am You must always include "other" because sometimes none of your choices fit what others would pick.
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Re: How has the Trump presidency affected your RELATIONSHIPS?

Post by pinback »

Tdarcos wrote: Thu Dec 03, 2020 4:35 am You must always include "other" because sometimes none of your choices fit what others would pick.
Maybe you didn't read the question correctly. "Which BEST DESCRIBES..." One of them has to best describe your situation, even if none of them accurately reflect it.
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