How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in America
How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in America
'According to our research, today, 1 in 2 adults is estranged from a close relative,' write Joshua Coleman and Will Johnson.
He’s a father of a 28-year-old son and he’s hurting. A retired police officer, he proudly voted for Donald Trump every time he ran and never hid his political beliefs from his family. “My son and his wife say that since I’m a fan of Trump they’re no fan of mine and cut me off,” he said. “Now I can’t see my only grandchild who I was so close to. It’s crazy and it’s tragic.”
It’s also increasingly common. The 2024 election spatchcocked the nation, widening a rift that was exposed in 2016 and put in an even sharper gulf four years later. Now, the hyper-partisan politics in the shadow of the 2024 election is breaking the bonds of families to a greater extent than ever before.
Nobody really gets disowned for voting for a particular candidate because voting is private and done in secret. You can lie about who you voted for and nobody can even prove it.
People actually get disowned for constantly talking about voting for a particular candidate, even after their friends and family ask them to stop.
They made their choice to put their politics before their family and need to cry publicly about it to get that sweet persecution complex.
26Social psychologists have long understood that merely identifying with a group in competitive contexts can lead people to view those outside the group less favorably.
Ah yes. It's because they are on the other team that proud Trump supporters are being ostracized. The fact Trump and his allies have blatantly advertised goals that are dangerous, damaging, bigoted, hateful, and generally horrific... and their poorly hidden goals are even more so... has nothing to do with it. It's just competition bringing out the worst in the rest of us.
15I mean, ingroup and outgroup biases are well demonstrated phenomena.
But uh. Sometimes things aren't JUST biases. Sometimes the other team is, well and truly, bad and worthy of our scorn.
5
I have broken all contact with my mother and her Trump loving husband. Best decision I've made in a long time. I personally don't want them influencing my children with their frankly crappy attitudes and shitty politics.
1This reminds me of https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html
At least the reason for estrangement is clearly not missing in the situation(s) being discussed.
2It’s crazy and it’s tragic.
take a drink every time a narc parent uses the words 'weird' or 'crazy' to describe being treated like the horrible person that they are.
97I'm having a hard time relinking narc to mean narcissist and not narcotics in my mind. 😔
26
Two-thirds of survey respondents agree that ending contact with a family member because of political beliefs is not justified and that most family fights over politics could be easily resolved.
Ah yes those pesky, abstract “political” beliefs shouldn’t get in the way of family. Such esoteric ideals like
- I believe in human rights.
- Rapists should not be in power.
- Nazis are evil.
Who could ever let a silly disagreement over politics spoil a relationship? /s
85It’s hard to be told “everything will be fine” when much of the incoming administration believes trans people aren’t real/shouldn’t exist/are all groomers. And it’s really difficult to even associate with folks who voted for this and refuse to see the coming storm.
Fucken, not to compare everything to nazis but it is LITERALLY the “first they came for x, but i am not x so i said nothing”, only it’s the fucking PARENTS hearing THEIR KIDS say “I don’t feel safe” and saying nothing except “can you believe my crazy children?”
30I don’t understand Dem supporters cutting off family that are GOP supporters. Both parties oppose human rights, enable rapists in power, and support currently arming Nazis (Congress had to withdraw a ban on arming Nazis in order to send arms to far-right groups in Ukraine).
If you’re a leftist opposing both fascist rightwing parties, you’d have a leg to stand on. But Dem supporters cutting off GOP supporting family just feels like that meme of spiderman pointing at himself. Anyone supporting either pro-genocide party is in no position to be criticizing the political beliefs of others.
-22Assuming this is a good faith argument, I'll throw in: Some thoughtful, leftist commentary claims that the Democrats and the Republicans are fundamentally the same behind the scenes, with identity politics as the window dressing to distinguish them, and keep the lower classes divided.
Well, look at what we have here: Identity politics successfully dividing the lower classes. The two parties do differ quite a bit in some ways, and the window dressing is causing the estrangement.
5Unfortunately it's a side effect of the team sports of politics. I vote Dem but they obviously have problems to fix. My family mainly votes RNC. I can talk to some on an individual level and get to agreements about political topics. Usually after agreeing on something they will reset back to talking points.
I understand why some people will cut off toxic families, but it doesn't help change the situation. I feel obligated to try to talk sense into people while I still have some patience. Pushing each group further into their echo chamber just helps our oppressors.
3
"Choosing bonds of identity over familial obligations" has judgemental connotations.
The thing about "bonds of identity" is that those people respect your right to exist and your personal agency. The family that deserves to be cut off does not.
If you've had it explained to you multiple times why the decisions you make are harming the people you claim to love, and you don't change your behavior, don't be surprised when that person you say you care about tells you to piss up a rope.
84And for some of us we've built a culture around it because family has historically failed us as a community
6
Yes, the grandfather is hurting and is clearly the victim. It cannot be due to his own choices and his children calling him out for being a shit person.
ACAB
78he proudly voted for Donald Trump every time he ran and never hid his political beliefs from his family.
This sounds like an extremely euphemistic way to say he would not shut the fuck up about Donald Trump and his political beliefs. And his family likely gave him every chance in the world to quit that shit, and when they eventually just stopped wanting to be around him, he blamed everything but his own shitty behavior.
I don't know if that's what happened in his case, but it certainly sounds like it.
72How Assholes Have Become an Epidemic in America
55Like so many problems in modern America, you can trace it back to Reagan.
Back in the day, it was important for politicians to try and maintain a civil tone with one another in public, no matter how much they despised each other behind the scenes. Reagan publicly used 'Liberal' as a pejorative and implied that those who disagreed with him weren't really patriotic.
51Nah, the absolute god king and bastard father of ratbag politics is richard fucking nixon
16These days, it's more like they're literally buddies behind the scenes while expressing partisan vitriol in public for show. It's fucking gross.
6One thing people don't realize. Back in the day, travel was difficult. Elected officials would stay in Washington for months at a time. Members of Congress [R and D] routinely hung out together. These days they spend the weekends in their districts courting votes.
Another problem is the weaponizing of C-SPAN. Before 24 hour coverage a speech on the floor was routinely ignored. A Memeber could talk down a Bill on the floor, knowing his local paper would cover it, and then make a quiet deal behind the scenes. Now everyone is forced into intractable positions.
1
Oh no! People are socialially ostracizing fascists.
Anyways, I hope it doesn't snow today.
49Celebrate adult children calling out their boomer parents on their hyperindividualist bullshit
45When asked to reflect on how their actions and choices have lead to their families cutting them out, they responded "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
40This suggests we may need to put in extra effort to take responsibility for our role in conflicts, show greater empathy for others’ values and perspectives
Hah! That's pretty much exactly what I've said to my (right wing) relatives on a number of occasions but it doesn't work. Does the author not realize that this perspective is very liberal?
Liberals and progressives are the folks with empathy that can't fathom how anyone could vote for Donald Trump; a well-known grifter, actual criminal, tax cheat, and total scumbag who cheated on all of his wives.
I have a ton of empathy yet I still don't understand conservatives. The only thing that makes sense to me is that they're authoritarian and their chosen authority tells them to hate certain people, that any given thing is a conspiracy, and that no government-run program is ever a good thing. But to tell them that to their faces is like telling them that they're stupid and suckers. To them it's incredibly insulting.
Yet when you try to figure out how they (someone who lives off Social Security) came to believe that, "Mexicans are stealing our jobs" it's the only thing that makes sense. They really are suckers. They may have been "smart" at some point in their life but not anymore. They choose how to vote based on anger at imaginary enemies and fake news.
39Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
They want Order. Specifically, an Order where everyone is put on the Proper Rung of Society and Keeps to Their Place. And of course their Place is above X (insert minority group here) because they are Special because of Y (insert ridiculous circular reasoning—usually racist—here).
These people literally believe that if Society becomes Unordered, it will collapse. And of course the only ones who can maintain that Order are the Great and Glorious White Men. The proof is that all the richest, most powerful people are White Men! (Any rich, powerful person who isn’t White and Male obviously got there through DEI action or cheating somehow.)
Innuendo Studios has a pretty good video on this in his Alt-Right Playbook series.
9Yes, and my favorite example of metaphorically watching the same movie, but seeing a different story is the phrase, "law and order." Plenty of us see the word Order and think of civil order, of happy communities of people going about their business without danger or conflict. The right and alt-right hear Order as social hierarchy. Black Lives Matter is a threat to Order just by existing, as Black people trying to move up to a higher rung on the social ladder than they belong on.
Similarly, we hear Law as rules that everybody follows to ensure peaceful coexistence (order). They hear Law as in "the law," as in the exercise of power by authorities, either to maintain the hierarchy (the old right) or just 'cuz it's fun to hurt people (the alt-right).
2
Don’t try to equate liberals to understanding the empathy of progressives. Liberals are supporting a genocide as we speak. They’re rightwingers who believe themselves to be on the left. They are not.
-14Liberal and Left are literally synonyms. The distinctions you want would be left/far-left or liberal/radical.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/leftright/
[In politics, the word left is applied to people and groups that have liberal views.]
supporting a genocide
You use "genocide" so many times that you are causing me to yawn every time I read that. You don't have the slightest clue on the actual things that would be required to fix Gaza. "Letting Trump win" is absolutely nowhere on that list.
0
It would be more than that if people had a place to go and a way to get there.
Also it's not just trumpism, it's that your family can be intelligent but fall for grifters... or they will be kind 90% of the time and then without prompt will casually say something really fucked up at dinner.
37Yup. Best I could do was to go to a friend's for Thanksgiving. Now it's back to hearing the 'all waking hours' fox news and talk radio.
7
Maybe its just that I was disowned in 2015 for being trans, but I find it hard to be sympathetic. We choose who we vote for and if your loved ones say your political views are so reprehensible that they won't speak to you, either take the cue or accept that you shit the bed and now you have to lie in it
36Womp fucking womp
28Maybe he just shouldn't be such a snowflake. As they say, facts don't care about your feelings, and the fact is that every single Trump voter tacitly approves of what a repugnant human being he is.
You are the company you keep.
Too bad, so sad grandpa. Do better. Be better. BE BEST.
I don't really care, do you?
25Gullibility and ignorant malice are an epidemic. Hate and stupidity are an epidemic. Estrangement is self-preservation and a symptom. We aren't boomers, we don't stay in abusive relationships because "that be how the world be".
22Well said.
2
Calling the bigotry and violence of fascist rhetoric "political beliefs" is lying by construction.
If you want to be friends then why aren't you friendly?
They’re a bloodless thing, politics, abstract, almost administrative sometimes. Making decisions about who you associate with based on political views is apparently like getting into a screaming fight over an improper stapling methodology on one’s TPS reports, or ending a friendship over pizza toppings. And at other times, political views are sacrosanct, holy, the most special and personal part of a person’s belief structure, something that a decent person would be no more likely to critique, much less reject, than they would be likely to tell a new mother that her baby is ugly.
I have noticed that whether political views are trivial or sacred seems to depend on the point the professional mourner of crumbling civility is trying to make in the moment, in order to bolster civility. They are usually trivial when we are meant to make friends despite them. They are usually sacrosanct when we try to point out what they are.
But some of us have noticed that politics are neither of these things, have noticed that politics are where power is arranged and distributed, and have been listening not to the civility mourners or the supremacists they defend, but rather to the many people who are directly harmed by harmful policies driven by harmful political views, who have no luxury to believe in false separations. They know that politics are, in fact, a matter of spiritual alignment, and that spirit is not something to do with ghosts, but with the blood and guts of how collective belief touches their lives.
19What are the odds this guy wept for the CEO and wants to see the suspect executed?
15Probably low. Hatred of health insurance is bipartisan. He probably thinks that Trump is more populist than democrats (which is wrong) and that he's more likely to rein them in (also wrong. They're tied with democrats and a snowballs chance in hell)
Even Ben Shapiro is getting raked over the coals for sympathizing.
2Even Ben Shapiro is getting raked over the coals for sympathizing.
Ooh, that is actually a fair point indeed. It definitely lends credibility to that notion since even Daily Wire enjoyers are in the camp.
...Although this guy has gone so far as to put his sob story into publication so I feel like the odds still put him closer to Benny than the general populace. I still like the odds I think.
1
This thing reads reads like the the person in the middle of the disagreement trying to broker peace.
12I am recently estranged from a narc parent.
Unfortunately in my case, it isn't both of them. I have tried to explain to the other why I can't roll with it, but it has been very difficult. Collateral damage, but I feel like I have no other option.
Scruples are about the only thing a lot of us have anymore.
12Spatchcocked?
12Like a chicken. Where you split the breast so it can lay flat. To illustrate the deepening divide.
18If you're not spatchcocking your country, you're just wasting time and ruining it's breasts to save it's thighs, really.
17Removed our spines and flattened us to allow for more even cooking. If you remember when those dudes in black suits came around and did that to everyone, that's what this is referring to.
11Gobsmacked, even.
3