While I’ve certainly seen a lot of posts and cases about the other side of the coin. And not to dismiss this. I’ve seen plenty of stories and accounts of people who have lost family members to the cult of the “cheeto man” himself.

But my mom has gone complete bonkers since 2016 for an entirely different reason. Shes obsessed with hating Trump. From 2016-2021 it was like 99% of what she would talk about. Hell, its gotten a tiny bit better but its still like 50% on a good day of what she talks about at any given time still. During the Mueller era, she had CNN practically 24/7. So much so that one of the headlines literally burned into her TV. She would post and show anyone she talked to anti Trump memes, songs, etc. People started disconnecting from her and she just had this “Well I guess they dont like what I havr to say! They’re Trumpers anyways.” Pretty much lacking any self awareness into how unhinged the election made her and fully leaning into it.

This is a woman who went from not voting and not really caring for either side of the political aisle to running for and becoming a school board member. She was so insufferable in this position that she took a 4 year break because no one liked her, ran again, and resigned because no one on the board or at the school likes her.

Fortunately, I havent lived with her for the most part since COVID, aside from like 3 months when I was in between apartments due to a breakup at the time. But I do still love her and miss the old her from before Trump became president so I keep in semi touch with her.

But I had a conversation with her recently about this election that makes me question the sanity of most of these boomer libs. Despite knowing Im not voting for kamala or Trump, she keeps pushing me. Texting “your vote counts. Theres only 2 candidates” over and over. Even though I literally live halfway across the country from her in California. Shes running short of harassing me to vote for Kamala. And then out of the blue she calls me literally just to talk about this. Spews the same old zionist bullshit that “we should fund Israel, its just Bibi whos bad!” And that “Israel-Palestine is just ONE issue anyways”. And so on the usual crap about J6 and shit.

I said something like “kamala and trump are both evil, Trump is just honest about it”.

And she literally goes off “YOU THINK TRUMP IS HONEST! YOU MUST BE DRINKING THE KOOL AID SON! DONALD TRUMP IS ANYTHING BUT HONEST.”

Basically calling me a Trumper for the mere suggestion of Trump being honest about something. Much less, honest about him being evil. Before hanging up and saying I have nothing better to do. Despite her bothering me about the subject, her calling me to argue, and her lack of being able to talk about much of anything else.

Does anyone else have any stories of crazy lib relatives post 2016? I feel like I cant be the only one.

  • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    23 hours ago

    I’ve often found the quickest way is just to be honest about being a Communist. Start with open support for China against the USA and scale up to full DPRK support if they don’t shut up.

    For instance.

    “Don’t you see that Trump hates America”

    “I am a proletarian internationalist and want the US to collapse and be occupied, he can’t possibly hate it more than me”

    • Doubledee [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      20 hours ago

      In my experience people in real life don’t process this information. You can be super explicit and they’ll just forget you said that, they can’t internalize that you’re more not a lib or a republican. I’ve had Q- brained people pivot to defending Brandon because I’m “being unfair to him” and then just forget that happened.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        18 hours ago

        Sometimes yeah, but in my experience eventually if you escalate to their level of edgelordism and stay consistent they lose the ability to respond. You’ve just gotta get out of their context window and stay there no matter what.

  • Tomboymoder [she/her, pup/pup's]@hexbear.net
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    21 hours ago

    I feel like Boomers in general are just getting more unhinged.

    My parents don’t have Trump derangement in either direction, they are barely political, but the politics they do have and express seems to have gotten more and more reactionary over the last decade or so.

  • MaeBorowski [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    19 hours ago

    Nowhere near as bad as your mom as far as the level of obsession, but as I see it, my dad fell much further from having relatively good politics (for a lib boomer) to a flat, simplistic “Trump bad” position without much concern beyond it and with a seeming sudden lack of curiosity (let alone understanding) about world events and geopolitics that he used to follow.

    When I was a kid in the 90’s he would tell me about US imperialism (though I don’t think he used that word with me) in South America, how terrible it was, and how much the US lied about all of it. He fucking hated Reagan and Bush 1 (for all the right reasons) and strongly opposed both Iraq wars, attending protests against them, even the second one when most of America was deep in the throes of Islamophobic 9/11 derangement. He got really into learning about the life of Che Guevara for a while, reading several biographies on him, though to my disappointment now, I don’t think he ever actually understood the politics, just recognized Che as someone who was genuinely fighting for the oppressed people of the world and respected him for that. I hate to say it, but I’m sure there was also just some glamorization of the revolutionary aesthetic in there too, which is fine so long as you also have an understanding from a materialist perspective and engage with the theory, which is where I suspect he fell short.

    He’s old enough now that I think actual age-related cognitive decline is playing at least some role in this, but the much bigger factor is that since he has no energy, he just lays around watching CNN and MSNBC all the time, and it is really sad to see. He thinks he’s not being affected by the propaganda and still considers himself “on the left” because he also watches and likes the far left radical Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (I know). I was shocked back in 2022 how easily and fully he bought into the narrative for how terrible it was that the big evil Russia invaded poor, innocent little Ukraine just out of the blue. I’m not surprised by it anymore, but now with election season, his politics are centered entirely around Trump. And it’s an odd, almost gossipy kind of talk about Trump’s latest shenanigans that I know is inspired by CNN talking points. It’s not odd in itself, it’s actually very typical, it’s just odd for him, as he was never like that. He often now refers to the news anchors by first name as if he knows them sometimes, which is so uncharacteristic of the way he used to be that I couldn’t have imagined it 15 years ago, or even 5. A few weeks back he was telling me about how he is now boycotting the brand of wine he used to enjoy because the owner of the company is a Trump supporter and how he just couldn’t in good conscience keep giving business to a Trumper. I think he was hoping this would impress me. I asked him if he really thought that any of the other multi-millionaire or even billionaire winery owners were any better, and started to ask if he was fine buying from Biden supporters, seeing as Biden was (is) the one currently committing genocide. But I didn’t say that because we were getting along well and I didn’t feel like it would do any good at this point.

    But yeah, it has been sad to see not just someone I care about but someone who was even formative for me on my own path to leftism become so hooked in to the same kind of thing he used to be critical of, and with so little awareness of it.

  • ShareThatBread [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    23 hours ago

    Spews the same old zionist bullshit that “we should fund Israel, it’s just Bibi whos bad!” And that “Israel-Palestine is just ONE issue anyways”.

    One you can query the libs with:

    If it’s just one issue for some people, but one of many for others, maybe see how many voters you’d get and lose for changing on that one single issue. They can’t really give an answer to it. Be relentless on getting one.

  • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    the level of cognition she seems to be on is hearing the word “honest” and going “EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO WORD: GOOD. THIS WORD INDICATES GOOD.” like she’s not even processing what it means in terms of openness or directness at all, she thinks you used a ‘positive’ word and her knee jerk reaction kicks in immediately

    • Vernon_Tennessee [null/void, he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      I feel like baby boomers just cant process things that might challenge or conflict with their worldview. Which is usually morally black and white and reflective of 80s sitcoms where theres some stupid lesson at the end.

      • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        22 hours ago

        “are you suggesting I could have been wrong my entire life and wasted my time on earth being a shithead?”

  • 2Password2Remember [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    yeah my dad is going down the same path. not to the same extent but he was a republican before trump whos now voting for kamala bc trump isnt respectable and he just never gets tired of making fun of trump. which yeah to be fair trump is a dipshit whos easy to make fun of but it still gets annoying to listen to

    Death to America

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    My dad was sooo convinced Trump was going to prison and I said he had a better chance at being the president again than going to prison.

    Whenever he starts talking about him I ask if he’s going to prison yet lol

    He also says everything Trump says is a lie but also will tell me about whatever evil thing Trump plans on doing if reelected and I say I thought everything he said is a lie?

    • Vernon_Tennessee [null/void, he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      He also says everything Trump says is a lie but also will tell me about whatever evil thing Trump plans on doing if reelected and I say I thought everything he said is a lie

      This has to be some sort of boomer thing. They must think that if someone is bad, that theyre a liar and that if someone lies theyre automatically bad.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        It is so infuriating needing to explain to people that Republicans can opportunistically tell the truth. They aren’t just magical beings bound to only speak in lies like one of the twins from that riddle.

        • Vernon_Tennessee [null/void, he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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          21 hours ago

          I think it makes sense when you realize that boomers LOVE TV. And most boomer shows are simple narratives with “good guys” and “bad guys”. Cop shows, court dramas, fake judge shows, soap operas, MSNBC, etc.

          As much as they shit on “kids these days”. ALOT of boomers were the original ipad kids. Raised by TV due to neglectful parents.

  • hypercracker@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    That fucking sucks. I have a friend who got sucked into the anti-trans youtube/substack rabbithole but nothing so all-consuming as your situation.

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    Only one of them is. Brings him up all the god damn time and coddles the Democrats as if they’re people who care for the working class and only want what’s best. This same person is also very nationalistic and has an obsessive fear of anything Chinese.

    I think Trump winning again will completely break their brain. So far they’re able to be quiet about it around their friends, but that won’t last long if he wins again.

      • MaeBorowski [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        19 hours ago

        Weird, that’s a big part of the reasoning I have for wanting the Democrats to lose. (It shouldn’t need saying, but just in case: I don’t want either of the two fascist parties to “win,” and it probably wouldn’t be wise to say what I do want to happen to both the candidates illegal-to-say, but since one of them unfortunately will be winning the election…) I think a Trump win will make it harder for these people to pretend they care, because they actually have to, you know, pretend. Which is the hard part. They can’t just go back to brunch again (as they did when Biden won), simply ignoring everything the profess to care about (like children in cages) and saying that all is right in the country, or at least on the right path, since one of their good guys is in office. Their brains are in dire need of breaking imo, and that won’t happen if Trump loses.

        • Lussy [any, hy/hym]@hexbear.net
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          Cutting ties with your mother for being too antitrump in your political discussions with her will surely bring you inner peace. Next order of business, just stop going outside OP.

            • Lussy [any, hy/hym]@hexbear.net
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              Don’t abandon your mom because of her misguided political opinions, especially when it seems like she’s experiencing some sort of cognitive decline? Seems pretty self-explanatory.

              • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 day ago

                You are missing the point completely; Her political opinions are irrelevant here, it’s her obsession with it and with browbeating OP about it. There are communists like that too (many of us have been that communist), liberals breaking that off are honestly doing something reasonable, even if they are politically incorrect in general.

                • Lussy [any, hy/hym]@hexbear.net
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                  24 hours ago

                  You are missing the point completely;

                  I really don’t think I am.

                  There are communists like that too (many of us have been that communist), liberals breaking that off are honestly doing something reasonable

                  Any liberal breaking off ties with their mother because she calls him in the middle of the night to talk about workers owning the means of production is being unreasonable.

              • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 day ago

                Fr, abandoning your mother for hating Trump too much is way more insane than what she’s doing. And like, the election is soon and it’s either she can keep doing this for 4 more years and then it’s over and she has to move on, or he loses and it’s over and she has to move on. This isn’t abusive behavior, if anything it’s a sign she needs less isolation. Don’t disown your parents just cause they’re annoying, all parents are annoying.

          • OptimusSubprime [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 day ago

            This is not like dealing with generic libs who are just strangers. At a certain point you just direct them to https://hexbear.net/PPB or tell them to fuck off since a lot of them don’t want to argue in good faith.

            No this is family. What they are doing ends up pushing you away. And that shit hurts. But if you don’t fucking move on, it ends up fucking you up and I’m not going to let them fuck me up.

            So I’m sorry you hate my advice. It comes from a place of having to deal with that Trump hater bullshit myself and ultimately having to say “enough with this shit”.

            OP can take it or leave it. I’m done.

            • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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              23 hours ago

              meow-hug Hang in there, comrade. I pretty much lost my mom to QAnon conspiracy brainworms, and I’ve been low-contact ever since. The only upshot is that I’m a grown-ass adult with a family of my own and that I haven’t needed to depend on her for anything in the past 20 years or so. She’s also a raging narcissist, so it was bound to happen sooner or later vivian-shrug

    • hotcouchguy [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      22 hours ago

      Note that OP did not actually ask for advice, and we’re not really informed enough to give any. Like anyone, OP is going to have to consider how unhinged she is in totality, how much is tolerable at this point in life, if any other actions are feasible, and many other factors. None of us should be jumping to conclusions here, we’re just projecting our own experiences onto OP. Giving this type of uninformed advice is no more helpful than a random guess, but probably more irritating to receive.

      Edit: I’m referring to the thread overall, not just singling you out specifically.

      • OptimusSubprime [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        And yet she continues with her Trump derangement syndrome, pushing away OP.

        I’ve seen it firsthand with my own mother. And I’ve had to let her go, no matter what I say to get her right thinking again, because she won’t listen. She is stuck in her hatred of Trump.

        So no, no “dummy” here. Just someone who decided to move on and get on with their life.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          There has to be reasons for you doing so beyond her hating Trump too much. Like, damn, you both hate the guy although for different reasons. Abandoning family cause they aren’t leftists is doing cultural revolution shit before a real revolution. You do you, but it seems very petty and weird to disown your own mother for the sole reason that she hates Trump too much.

          • OptimusSubprime [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            24 hours ago

            GarbageShoot said it best earlier:

            Her political opinions are irrelevant here, it’s her obsession with it and with browbeating OP about it.

            The keyword here is “obsession”. OP’s mom is literally spiraling. My mom was literally spiraling. Both of our moms were actually being abusive.

            That is why I said to let go. When they become abusive, you have to leave them. Period. Sometimes, realizing you’ve been left alone because of an unhealthy obsession can snap a person back to reality. In my case, for my mom, me leaving helped her. To her, losing me was way worse than having some orange skinned imperialist buffoon in the white house.

            I don’t know if OP leaving their mom alone will have the same effect, but from what OP described in their opening statement, OP’s mom became abusive towards her child with her derangement, her obsession. From that revelation, my comment was about leaving an abusive relationship. Nothing more.

            • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              23 hours ago

              I don’t live with my parents so I only need to put up with them being annoying on my own terms, so if one were to go that way I’d probably be more concerned than anything. op doesn’t live at home so it really just amounts to bullshit you need to deal with when visiting. I’m sorry but being annoying doesn’t count as abuse. If as OP said she was decent and cool prior to Trump, there’s probably more than just Trump going on here. I don’t know you, your mom or your situation but as an adult with aging parents, I’d be spending more time with them and talking to them more and I’d probably talk to a doctor or something if it seems like a major behavioral shift. If my mom was mentally spiraling I’d do the decent thing and be there for her. If she’s not in her 70s or older then she’s gonna outlive Trump being a viable president anyway, it’s either 4 years or he’s done in November, the source of the obsession will go away.

              I would have liked to discuss how Trump derangement syndrome has made old libs more or less as crazy as Maga people but it had to become the ‘you should disown your family’ post. You don’t get to abandon people when they become annoying. OP doesn’t live with his mom, OP can leave, there is no power dynamic in play that I’ve read that can constitute abuse in any way, being obsessive isn’t a form of abuse. It’s a sign THEY need help.

              We are so not gonna have communism if this is how people react when their mothers decline mentally. How about you consider what’s happening to them. If you don’t have to live with your parents and can leave whenever you want to when interacting with them, it ain’t abuse.

        • LigOleTiberal [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 day ago

          I have trump supporters and evangelical christian converts in my family but I don’t cut them out of my life completely. that’s an over-reaction.

          • OptimusSubprime [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            And at a certain point, when they become toxic, you have to cut them out. Or risk “drowning”.

            There are other people I can help and other people more open to the truth, in the Marx-Lenin sense, of the world around them.

            And like I said earlier, you can be there for them when they are ready “to come back to their senses”. But what you will not be able to do is to change them. They have to want that themselves.

          • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            Nah I have familu members who are fascists that won’t openly admit it (“I’m just a liberal, trust me! Yeah I want to exterminate trans people and Muslims, but I’m just a liberal!”)

            I can’t get them out of my life because at the moment, I have no choice because leaving would make me homeless.

      • TheBroodian [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        Not to dogpile, OP will have to decide for their self if that’s the course they want to take or not, but I’m fully in the “disown your folks for your own well being” camp if necessary

    • Vernon_Tennessee [null/void, he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      22 hours ago

      I have taken breaks of contact with her for completely different reasons. Albeit, she has a tendency to be self centered and gaslighty and this def reflects in her beliefs at times. But I dont go no contact with someone over politics unless theyre far right