My parents are getting more and more conservative over these years. They believe in all 🦇 shit conspiracy theories, support Trump hard core, read Breitbart all day . The dinner table conversations we end up having once in few months are getting more and more uncomfortable. I used to call them few times a week, nowadays I still make a call and check but we don’t talk much since they have an opinion on everything from left wing schooling system to Bezos conspiracy theories. It’s almost as if we are on extreme ends. Any suggestions on how to handle this? I can’t disown them obviously- they struggled and sacrificed to pay for my early life and college and mean a lot to me. They are educated too ( a doctor and a school teacher in a Red state). I *was* a Republican who supported McCain and Romney. I am a libertarian. I also strongly support second amendment, own multiple firearms, I support smaller government, lower taxes and lower government spending (including defense), charter schools etc. But Trump is a conman and not a conservative. Sad to see my party getting destroyed by someone with dictatorship tendencies.
Believe it or not, I relate to this in a very weird way. I am Indian and I see very similar line of thinking. The Trump equivalent being modi. It's very difficult to see sheep mentality affecting the people who taught you to be objective and thoughtful
Retired aunts and uncles sharing stuff on WhatsApp doesn't help either.
All actors and producers and most elite journalists and billionaires are against your parents' views. If anything you are the sheep, who goes along with the mainstream, while they are going against the grain. Sad times when children are less rebelious than their parents. SMH
What I have observed for some os that as the left becomes more extreme it causes educated moderates to react more extremely. Just as it is frustrating to see someone believe in conspiracy theories about Bezos it is as equally frustrating to watch believers in that all meat eating is evil. For some, perhaps like your parents, that causes them to react passionately and only others in extreme right would share that passion. To answer your actual question, just listen to them. Just like friends who have different views from yours, listen to them provide your thoughts if you think they are interested. If not, find other topics you can share with them.
This
There’s nothing you can do honestly. Just don’t discuss politics.
Sorry to hear that. A few things I wanted to share that may help think through this: 1. We live in crazy times where even the people closest to us can surprise us. You're not alone in experiencing this. 2. It must be hard to feel like you don't want to speak to your own parents, but sometimes it can give you peace. Estrangement is not black and white, and as this article below details, 40 percent of adults experience estrangement at some point in their lives. 4-0 %! https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/i-cut-off-all-contact-with-my-mother-it-made-my-life-much-better/2019/01/18/cc454e9e-1529-11e9-90a8-136fa44b80ba_story.html 3. You can love someone even if you don't agree. Try not to think in binary about this and you'll have a better time accepting. 4. Humor goes along way--I would say I'm estranged from my parents, for wildly different reasons, but when I do communicate with them its always light hearted and fun, and I kill any weirdness with humor if I can. I laugh, because it's the universe's way of humbling me. Theres a saying, "if you think you're so enlightened, go spend a weekend at home." Truer words have never been spoken! 5. Education means nothing. Google "school to prison pipeline" and "Tuskegee experiments" to better understand how bigotry thrives in medicine and education. 6. Don't feel like shit, don't hide it, and don't pass it on! Be better than your parents are on this stuff. Raise kids who wanna make the world a better place.
Good for your parents. They desire the great society they grew up in and now recognize how degenerate America has become. I applaud your parents.
The society they grew up in supported a living wage with real minimum wages and the top corporate tax bracket was probably between 75-90%.
They grew up in an ethno-state that had unity and high trust. The American Republic is dead. Now it’s disunity, low trust and societal fragmentation.
Your parents are older and have more knowledge and life experience. It’s normal for people to become more conservative as they age and it’ll likely happen to you too. There’s a saying that if you are not a liberal at 20 you don’t have a heart but if your not a conservative by 40 you don’t have a brain. Try to be more understanding and open minded towards their perspectives. Don’t be so quick to dismiss everything they say.
You are locked into your own bubble, honestly. Try to listen to them and look into the issues.
Your comment is laudable but in defining “far right” as OP did it is quite usually easy to identify. My father started believing the earth was 4000 years old and that science magazines were a conspiracy to hold down the view of Christianity and angels being spotted in deep space. Additionally, this was when he also started parroting verifiably false inflammatory conspiracist statements from Breitbart and further right sources and memes. It’s easy to identify whether you are left, centrist, or right.
It's getting harder to be a lefty as the party moves way to the left. Really (ridiculously) late term abortions. Extremely unrealistic green new deal aspirations. Inventing racism incidents to pin it on Trump (Smolett). So many bigots...particularly near Berkeley.
Either cancel their cable or enable parental controls to block Fox News. That channel is optimized for scaring old people.
They are quite rich and don’t depend on me!
They will depend on you when you enable parental control.