17th August 2025, 4:45 AM
I suppose I'm lucky. My family are all pretty firmly liberal, grew up watching Bill Maher (good god has he fallen from grace, though - his recent sane-washing of Trump was enough for us to ditch him). My mother's side of the family are all also mostly Democrat, save for a cousin who loves Trump. We usually just don't bring up politics on our yearly visits.
I've got a couple of friends I grew up with who, for reasons I will never understand, love Trump. It's really bizarre - one of them excoriated the Song of Ice and Fire book series, insisting to me that they were offensive to her as a woman. Years later, she's posting Trump's inauguration speech, saying how inspirational he is. She's also an evangelical Christian tradwife who's on like her sixth child. So it's not completely out of nowhere, but again, I don't understand these people's philosophy.
The other fell down some antivax rabbit holes and loves RFK Jr. He's just icing on the cake, though: she voted for Trump twice before 2024. It's really bizarre, because she otherwise seems like an intelligent, well-read, well-reasoned, charitable, open-minded person - not racist or homophobic. She's always been a Republican, or libertarian, whatever, but Trump?
I'm just completely perplexed in what these people see in him. I've earnestly tried to keep an open mind and see things from their perspective, listened to what they had to say. One of them linked this Cracked piece which honestly helped a lot. But I'll never 100% get there.
I really want to know what they think of him now, after everything that's happened, but I refuse to have a conversation about it. It's just going to make my blood boil. I don't keep in touch with the first friend, and the second friend, if politics comes up, I just try to be deferential and steer things to common ground. There's no point in losing friends/family to politics (for me personally, at least). I've made that mistake before.
I've got a couple of friends I grew up with who, for reasons I will never understand, love Trump. It's really bizarre - one of them excoriated the Song of Ice and Fire book series, insisting to me that they were offensive to her as a woman. Years later, she's posting Trump's inauguration speech, saying how inspirational he is. She's also an evangelical Christian tradwife who's on like her sixth child. So it's not completely out of nowhere, but again, I don't understand these people's philosophy.
The other fell down some antivax rabbit holes and loves RFK Jr. He's just icing on the cake, though: she voted for Trump twice before 2024. It's really bizarre, because she otherwise seems like an intelligent, well-read, well-reasoned, charitable, open-minded person - not racist or homophobic. She's always been a Republican, or libertarian, whatever, but Trump?
I'm just completely perplexed in what these people see in him. I've earnestly tried to keep an open mind and see things from their perspective, listened to what they had to say. One of them linked this Cracked piece which honestly helped a lot. But I'll never 100% get there.
I really want to know what they think of him now, after everything that's happened, but I refuse to have a conversation about it. It's just going to make my blood boil. I don't keep in touch with the first friend, and the second friend, if politics comes up, I just try to be deferential and steer things to common ground. There's no point in losing friends/family to politics (for me personally, at least). I've made that mistake before.