Family Trump Divide

[LillyG]

My family is going through a difficult time as so many of us are divided about Trump. My mother and I are on Trump's side and the rest of the family is venimenytly against him.  They think we are crazy and wrong for feeling the media lies to people, that immigration should slow down. They think he is racists and sexist and won't listen to anything we say.  It's really breaking the family up.

 

Any thoughts on what to do?

[D-Light]

You could attempt to acknowledge their concerns and not dismiss them outright. Show them that you understand why they have these concerns and even that they concern you too. After doing so, see if they are willing and able to see your point of view.  It they are, at the very least your disagreements will be civil. If not, you know what not to talk about around them (assuming you want to remain in a more superficial relationship with them).

[dsayers]

My family is going through a difficult time as so many of us are divided about Trump. My mother and I are on Trump's side and the rest of the family is venimenytly against him.  They think we are crazy and wrong for feeling the media lies to people, that immigration should slow down. They think he is racists and sexist and won't listen to anything we say.  It's really breaking the family up.

 

Any thoughts on what to do?

Ask them if some person they've never met is worth disbanding the family. Ask them if they think that the fact that a person who is X, Y, and Z could achieve a title as to rule over others, maybe having such a title is a bad idea? Ask yourself these questions first though. While you can try to influence others, the only person you can control is yourself. The State wins as people voluntarily divide horizontally among themselves to cling to those who vertically enslave us all. No strings attached! It really is brilliant puppetry if the end result wasn't so very tragic.

[shirgall]

I'm in this same boat, and I'm emphasizing the need for rational discussion, which does not include name-calling, tantrums, or violence. It's not getting anywhere yet, but I'm trying to be soothing.

[deadflagblues]

Perhaps try to figure out what issues are most important to them and then try to market Trump to them in a way which focuses on the issues that you think are important to them. If family is important to them, perhaps mention Trump's childcare tax breaks. 

 

Also try asking them seemingly neutral questions: "America should stop being a warmongering nation, right?". Surely they'll agree. Show them the wars that Hillary voted for, the destruction that she created in Libya, the tensions she wanted to create in Syria through the same actions as used in Libya, and show them Hillary's aggression against Russia. "You want wages to go back up, right?". Show them this page. "You want money and foreign interests out of politics, right? And don't you think it would be good if we could have real change, not just of president, but a guaranteed change of all of congress?" Show them the same page.

 

Next refer to this page.

Contrast this with what Trump plans to do in the previous page. This is a good time to mention funding from governments that legislate the stoning of gays, witches and atheists - Trump doesn't want these people pushing policy in the US.

 

After this, they'll hopefully be more in favour of Trump and less in favour of Clinton - you can now probably ask them things like "How exactly is Trump a [racist/sexist/bigot]? I showed you some stuff against Hillary, so can you get some stuff on Trump for me to look at?". If they bring up Trump's decade old comments on that bus, link them to this video. Ask them: "What's more likely to be legislated? A law which allows men to "grab women by the pussy", or a law which subtly rigs the system against a group of people who are irredeemable "super predators". If they say that she didn't mean "all blacks", you can now use this against them by saying that Trump didn't mean all Mexicans when he spoke out against illegal Mexican immigrants. Mention how Hillary was against gay marriage until 2013 - just after it was signed into law and became a major issue. 

 

On the issue that "the media would never lie!", go to 35 on the wikileaks page that I already linked. Ask them how they can believe that a group of businesses which both fund Clinton and attend dinners with her campaign can possibly be unbiased and bipartisan. 

[dsayers]

I'm really sorry that this is your experiences, folks. I can't help but wonder if it's self-inflicted though. This is a side effect of ascribing to teams and imagining the State is valid in our own minds. A lot of pro-voting/Trump people on FDR said we needed a specific master so that we could have these conversations. He won and here is an opportunity for those conversations. I mean, right?

[LillyG]

Ask them if some person they've never met is worth disbanding the family. Ask them if they think that the fact that a person who is X, Y, and Z could achieve a title as to rule over others, maybe having such a title is a bad idea? Ask yourself these questions first though. While you can try to influence others, the only person you can control is yourself. The State wins as people voluntarily divide horizontally among themselves to cling to those who vertically enslave us all. No strings attached! It really is brilliant puppetry if the end result wasn't so very tragic.

Those last few sentences were deep.  We put.

[aviet]

My family is going through a difficult time as so many of us are divided about Trump. My mother and I are on Trump's side and the rest of the family is venimenytly against him.  They think we are crazy and wrong for feeling the media lies to people, that immigration should slow down. They think he is racists and sexist and won't listen to anything we say.  It's really breaking the family up.

 

Any thoughts on what to do?

 

Is there anything you can pin-point that you think separates you and your mother from your other family?

 

This is slightly different, but I came up with a four-point checklist:

 

- bad experience with the state

- positive experience in the free market

- logical rather than emotional decision maker

- more intuitive (looking at bigger picture, rather then immediate reality)

 

If 3-4 of those are relevant to you, it's probably likely you would identify as a libertarian, or would be partial if you did not know what a libertarian is.

 

I am guessing it was you who were on the call-in the other day, who owned a fashion-related business. So I'm guessing you've had a good experience with the free market; you live in Canada so you've probably had a bad experience with the state; you support Trump so are not given to making emotional decisions; and you are on this board which makes it highly likely that you will be more intuitive - you want to understand larger trends and use this knowledge to make decisions rather than trashing about within a cornucopia of unrelated dots which you arrange to make you feel safe.

 

When you come across people who, for example:

 

- have a good experience with the state, like having a cushy government job that is not tied to performance

- have never owned a business or faced the free-market

- make reactionary decisions based on emotions

- make decisions based on limited input - inability to identify patterns

 

It will be impossible to change their mind with a conversation; and because they are emotional and Donald Trump threatens their order, life- and reproductive-strategy. One of the key differences between Trumpites and Brexiteers and our detractors is they are far more given to emotion, while we are not and as a result have more fortitude. If we come up against an opponent, for example marching in London against Brexit, we are more likely to laugh at them. When a Brexiteer marches in London, the detractor are more likely to have a complete meltdown and say its the rise of fascism. That's what has happened.

 

I think its only likely you could change their mind and negative perception of you by giving them some experiences that will change them. Some possibilities:

 

- drop them in the middle of Russia with no money

- send them out shooting

- send them to survive in the wilderness

 

I was never given to communism, but I was raised where the supremacy of the state was implied rather than drilled. There was never a question of state legitimacy, but plenty of corners were putting out information that suggested capitalism and individualism were bad and dangerous. Again, none of this was drilled or coherent. It was just a smattering of data-points that led me to adopt a lot of positions that many young people do, such as a strong suspicion of any business activity and the notion that wealth is earned through dishonesty and exploitation. Yet due to my mental chemistry, once I had free market experience and was exposed to the philosophy of liberty, I move over. I am hard-wired to succeed in the free-market as opposed to needing to use emotions to manipulate resources to spill down my bib.

 

Stefan has produced a few videos, which may be of use. I will dig them out and send them via PM.

[Donnadogsoth]

Inexorably I will have a political discussion with a branch of my family who do not support Trump.  Neither I nor they have raised the subject, but sooner or later it will surface.

 

I will explain it in terms of globalism versus nationalism.  Either we move towards the ever greater "bigness" of international socialism, making government completely remote and unaccountable to the people, whilst erasing Nation-States themselves as their populations, territories, and capital will be absorbed into global empire, or we go the other direction, towards nationalist governments accountable to the population, including concern for the maintenance of the majority population and the living principles and traditions that define the respective Nations.

 

In that light, ask, what would we expect a nationalist President would do, to preserve his Nation?  What would a globalist do, to do the opposite?  And if the no-longer-perfectly-mainstream media is aligned with the latter, how would we expect them to talk about the possibility of a nationalist leader versus a globalist?

[shirgall]

I'm really sorry that this is your experiences, folks. I can't help but wonder if it's self-inflicted though. This is a side effect of ascribing to teams and imagining the State is valid in our own minds. A lot of pro-voting/Trump people on FDR said we needed a specific master so that we could have these conversations. He won and here is an opportunity for those conversations. I mean, right?

 

My Marxist sister would hate me even more if I openly expressed disdain for the state as an institution of mechanized oppression. She never respected my positions on government. She hates me for saying that Trump will accelerate the distrust of government that all people will feel and I don't get to die in a reeducation camp in for a little while longer.

[DaVinci]

My Marxist sister would hate me even more if I openly expressed disdain for the state as an institution of mechanized oppression. She never respected my positions on government. She hates me for saying that Trump will accelerate the distrust of government that all people will feel and I don't get to die in a reeducation camp in for a little while longer.

I agree. I already said in an earlier thread this was similar to the flag pole scenario. I don't want to break windows, but I'm going to do so if I have to save myself from further injury or death. 

 

To the OP, if you want to show them how the media is lying, then show them that CNN clip of the Hillary protestors that CNN faked by using a former cameraman as a "protester". 

[dsayers]

I agree. I already said in an earlier thread this was similar to the flag pole scenario. I don't want to break windows, but I'm going to do so if I have to save myself from further injury or death. 

To which I explained that enslaving hundreds of millions of people is not breaking a window, nor self-defense. It is creating a new debt, disproportionate to the scale of 300 million to 1.

 

The flag pole scenario is meant to coax people to dispense with their self-ownership. Breaking another person's window IS immoral. And all that truth does for us is tell us that once the window is broken, who is responsible for its repair. The person on the flag pole (which has never happened; go figure) of course wouldn't have an issue paying to repair a window for the sake of saving their own life. Are the voters prepared to make restitution to all the people they pretended to enslave as the invocation of the analogy would indicate is forthcoming?

[LillyG]

I agree. I already said in an earlier thread this was similar to the flag pole scenario. I don't want to break windows, but I'm going to do so if I have to save myself from further injury or death. 

 

To the OP, if you want to show them how the media is lying, then show them that CNN clip of the Hillary protestors that CNN faked by using a former cameraman as a "protester". 

 

I try to reason with my father, but he just won't listen. He can't get past the filthy talk (pussy, Rosie, sorry to put those two together :s) and that this kind of person is now president. He doesn't see that bigger picture. He has been brainwashed by the media.  He is not on Twitter and is not exposed to other reasonable points of view. He thinks if they are not on TV they are not legitimate.  There is absolutely no reasoning with him. Get's so mad hearing a positive remark about Trump.  It's why he likes CNN to because they reinforce his beliefs on Trump. He can't be challenged.

 

My dad doesn't pick up his phone to talk anymore. He always picked up his phone in the past. This has made him bitter beyond measure.

 

The same applies to my other family members.  They are deeply brainwashed by the media.  I have asked them where they get their news and it is always, CNN, CBC, etc. What's really hard is that they truly believe Trump is a racist, sexist loser who won the White House by playing off peoples fears.

 

My mother and I are literally the only ones who see Trump for who he really is.  All our friends and family members... completely in the dark. My mother and I are the only ones who actively seek out information. 

 

Tis a very lonely time...