He doesn't have the wisdom I thought he did.

One of the starkest shocks I had during the initial trump candidacy and pandemic was the veil being lifted on so many people I worked with or knew.

People I thought of as intelligent, level-headed, and reasonable suddenly appeared hateful, mulish, and willfully ignorant.

They didn’t care about the environment. They didn’t care if they got people sick or killed them with covid. They didn’t care about the open overtures to authoritarianism or fascism - if anything they directly welcomed this. The wild and rampant stupidity behind the conspiracies and Q-anon. The concerted attacks on women’s or lgbtq rights, the denial of equality or justice for people killed by police. The complete willingness to throw their fellow humans under the bus for any reason at all to spare themselves the inconvenience of not being able to eat at Applebees without a mask.

And they manufactured whatever slights they could think of to justify their actions regarding the above. It was retaliation for loss of perceived status as White People In Charge.

It completely killed discourse because you can’t have a discussion with someone who isn’t willing to argue in good faith. Who Gish Gallops and buthwhatabouts. Who exhausts their opponent with conspiracies that are so full of shit that you don’t even know where to start rebutting because they have no place in reality.

The trump election sharply split America in two. The country and the world are a far less stable place than a decade ago.

Goddamnit southerns, you are Yankees. The only southerners that weren't Yankees were confederates who can also be called treasonous traitors.

Essentially, if you're not a Yankee you're a goddamn traitor.

Hang out with grandpa and just ignore the trump shit. If it's just them liking trump and that then learn to let go and just be with people if you liked them before trump. Not your job to change people. But don't burn bridges. Internet taught a generation there are these clear lines that we can't ever cross. My dad is a die hard trump supporter. Love him to death. We have many heated arguments and he fully knows he won't listen to facts. I also refuse to listen to sources like fox or New York Post or other bullshit. We have many impasses. But I love him and would never dream of thinking less of him or going no contact over something that use to be a thing we all kept to ourselves. Not worth it. Don't let trump make you burn the people in your life that are family.

But I get if they're violent or deep deep deep into it. But also we should all get better at looking past this stuff. Trump will be gone one day and the bridges we burnt over it will never be worth it.

He doesn't have the wisdom I thought he did.

I know it's armchair/backseat advice, but if it comes up I suggest telling him this word for word. It's the kind of thing that would (or at least should) pierce the soul of a man his age.

When I see stuff like this, I'm happy my father died when he did. He was also suffering at the time so seeing him no longer in pain was a good thing. I won't get into that whole story, but he started going that way when he became a bit too forgetful. As in, he couldn't even follow along with a normal conversation anymore. Happened sometime in the mid to late 2010's.

He watched stuff like Fox, and listened to guys like Rush Limbaugh, and he was religious. I don't really follow any media/news organizations, I don't listen to pretty much any broadcasts specifically, nor follow any specific celebrities, and I'm atheist/agnostic/non-religious (I have some beliefs, but they're not relevant to the story. I will say that I generally abhor any organized religion with a few exceptions).

I never saw him get consumed with hate over these things. He wasn't aware enough that he could have even realized that Trump was president at all.

I should also disclose, were not Americans. We're Canadians, but ask pretty much any Canadian about American politics and most of us will have a good understanding, meanwhile we generally know less about our own politics.

In any case, at the time that this decline into hate mongering started, his mental faculties were all but non-existent.

I'm truly sorry that you've had to deal with this op. I wish you the very best of luck moving forward.

I've been having the same conversations. Told my family I love them as people but I'm moving because their politics quite literally are devolving into third world territory.

Can't keep power on, roads and bridges falling apart, rights being taken away.

If that's where you want to live that's cool but peace.

I'm in a very similar spot. My mom is starting to slip mentally and the further she slides, the more hateful she becomes. Before she knew and were friends with many diverse people. Now she hates their kind. Gays, trans, immigrants, blacks, etc.

I theorize the more you decline mentally, and lose your ability to critically think, the most convincing arguments are most repeated ones. I've noticed that the strength of her opinions are usually based on the frequency that she hears it. I can predict how often she's gonna start ranting about black people, trans pedophiles, electric vehicles by the amount of content she's watching. The more she watches, the more she argues.

I can't seem to break her out of this cycle. The right has thoroughly brainwashed her that Democrats and leftists are scum and should only exist to be shamed and exiled. If an opinion or fact is even slightly related to democratic values, she just shuts off and rejects it.

She had a PhD and was extremely successful but now she has difficulty just using the oven. There are days when she is lucid and relatively straight thinking but other days she is entirely unintelligible and relies heavily on hand gestures.

Sometimes I wish she would pass. She causes so much pain for everyone around her (my sisters went no contact) and she is in pain herself. She is so extremely stressed and fears that antifa is going to burn down all of the great American cities, the homeless and blacks are going to ravage and loot everything and the left will be complicit since it's their "ultimate goal" to destroy america.

It makes me extremely sad.

I'm from the South so I feel your pain, people are painfully ignorant. I'm more interested in the fact that you said the woods sound and smell different, could you elaborate?

I'm sorry. It's still hard to grow up and realize that people aren't who we thought they were. Never meet your heroes, as they say.

Of course it's them - hateful and aggressive - not understanding you.

Why would it ever be you - knowledgeable, well-informed guy writing nice, respectful posts about them on the internet - not trying to understand them?

Probably better to move out south.

My Dad growing up was probably fairly conservative but cool where it mattered - people are who they are, live and let live, that sorta shit. We never really discussed politics or anything.

When I graduated he remarried, sold the trailer I grew up being told would be mine, bought a house he lost within 2-3 years and kicked me out of basically immediately. I ended up in the Army, caught an IED, got seperated. Couldn't even use the "guest room," charged me $500/mo (in 2008, kinda insane then but maybe not so bad now lol) to sleep in the open basement and kicked me out again cause I wasnt paying up fast enough.

An ex convinced me to call him years later. First words out of his mouth - "You have that money you owe us?" I never reached out again.

Over covid, he tried to add me on Facebook. I'd blocked him but he made a new one. Hell no, but you're my dad I'll let you creep. On a post about the protests going on - "Those protesters wouldn't be a problem if we just gun em down." I blocked him and then had to tell me aunt ("you can't just block family over politics") that this isnt political, its moral and I don't want anyone like that in my life. Bright side, I never have to feel bad about it ever again.

Its OK to let people go and cut them out. Blood family, chosen family, friends, they all stay with you even if your paths split apart. Never let old bonds tie you to a toxic situation. My Dad killed it growing up, now he's a fascist. As you said, the man I knew was gone, and I do NOT owe whoever this new guy is anything. If thats the life they want to live, let them.

There's a really cool community on reddit called QAnonCasualties. Maybe we need that here.

He’ll be 87 soon. Most likely, I’ll never see him again.

suck some orange cock. Fucking really? That’s your fucking Messiah?

Once you've reached 87, I wonder if you'll reflect back on that last time you ever saw your grandfather, but maintained too much distance because he had the wrong political alignment.