Dear Americans, how do you go back to normal after such an election campaign?

To those giving you shit about cutting horrible people out of your life and saying you need to go visit...

Bullshit. Fuck that noise. I have family that I've cut out as well (although, luckily, not my parents). I'm 100% open to them rejoining my life, but their hatred for others is stronger than their love for me, and I won't allow them back until that changes. Spoiler alert: it probably never will, because there's no love like Christian "love".

"Agree to disagree" is reserved for things like "I don't like coffee." Not racism, homophobia, and sexism. Not human rights. Not basic common decency. If I unfriend you during this, it IS personal. We do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in morality.

@cdvaughn16, Twitter, 2020-06-05

Damn. I'm sorry :(

This is the correct energy. You already lost him. What's dying now is some rabies-zombie.

Sorry you had to lose him in such a horrible way. I know exactly what that's like to go through.

My dad is also MAGA but thankfully not very outspoken about it or I couldn't stand to be around him. I'm still quite pissed at Trump and his cult following for putting the thought into my head that his death could be a net benefit to society.

Shit, I’ve been upset for losing a friend, your right, losing a parent is terrible, sorry to hear.

As someone who just lost a parent suddenly.

You will almost certainly regret that.

Nope, when my mom dies it will bring a weight off my shoulders, not having to make sure she doesn't know where I live. The last time she lived by us she wrote manifestos about militant lesbians forcing straight women to become like them and stapled it around work and home.
My father's death was one of the best things that happened to me.
Sure, because everyone's experience with their parents is just like yours
No they won't. I can't wait for my parents to both fucking die so I can reconnect with my sisters without them being emotionally abused.

Fuck racists, I couldn't care less how they die. They oppose my family, I spent 2 decades trying to accept my family, they didn't.

Blood is thicker than your dad's skull. Be bigger than him and hug him before he leaves you forever if it's possible for you. Fuck the MAGA cultist mentality. Overcome his stubbornness and pride.

People are not owed love by circumstances of biological relation. They made the bed they lie in, actions have consequences, bridges can burn.
- Given enough time person might look at their dad less like the asshole and more like the victim of a scam perpetrated by the real asshole, but life is tricky like that
  
  There's a lot that's great about this. Need one change though--"scam" isn't quite the word for this. If you scam somebody you can just fool them once, get their money, and get out.
  
  "Darn, I have been fooled once, in the past, and won't get that money back, I'll look out for that scam now". That's a scam.
  
  Getting up every day and choosing in each instance to be not just shitty, but a nazi, isn't "getting scammed". That's something he participated in and is on the hook for. He had to go really far out of his way to do it.
  
  It's a beautiful and clarifying sentiment that, at most, only partly applies in this situation.
  
  Getting up every day and choosing in each instance to be not just shitty, but a nazi
  
  These people are getting up every morning and all they see are comments downplaying and explaining why it shouldn't be taken literally. They turn on their favorite 'news' station which ignores the obvious and latches onto sensationalized nothingburgers and conjecture. Reality to them is an entirely different thing. They can't see the forest for the trees. Everyone around them is telling them not to look. They step in a little too far and get caught in the undertow.
  
  But this far right bullshit is happening all over the world, started happening as soon as everyone wound up with a phone in their pocket, and it often gets traced back to Russian interference and influence.
  
  And the dumber it sounds, the more credence it gets, because it drives the other half up the fucking wall. Beetles are what's causing the Canada wildfires, hurricane machines, Haitians eating cats and dogs, normal ass people are not letting these things become things organically
- Agreed. I said "if it's possible." Pride is a real motherfucker for some, but I think it can be overcome. Hopefully they can do so with their dad.
The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

Your father is going to pass away and you're really gunna let politics affect your relationship with him like that?

Looks like you're the one in a cult. I feel bad for your pops

GTFO with that "politics" bullshit. It stopped being a purely political difference when Trump made it about racism, sexism, and all other possible forms of bigotry. It stopped being about purely bigotry when he tried to stage a coup.

Above and beyond, you don't know their life. Maybe they needed a life-saving abortion and their father gleefully cackled when that right was effectively removed in many states. Maybe they're black and their father bragged about the shootings of black folks, they're latin and he chortled over the deportation rhetoric, or they're Muslim and he rubbed the travel bans in their face. Maybe they have/had long COVID and their father gave it to them because "it's a hoax." There are so many reasons for cutting MAGA idiots out of your life and Trump's political policy is the least of them
Unfortunately, when "politics" equals "whether certain people deserve basic human rights," it's not a minor issue. I don't keep company with people who think I'm subhuman.
You say ‘politics’ like it is some trivial thing. Politics involves beliefs on personhood, human rights, racism, equity, crime and punishment, and fundamental ideas about morality. I think it is totally appropriate to make judgments about a person’s character based on their politics.
"Someone has an abusive relationship and you're really gunna deny them the right to abuse you like that?"

That's how you sound, Alice.
"My political opinion is I am going to strangle the person you love the most to death in front of you while you watch, and if you don't let me have my political opinion, then who's the real bad guy here?"

Make anything ok using this one neat trick!
Let's say your mom needs chemo treatments and can't drive herself. You wanna be good to your mom and drive her, but she's recently developed a behavior from the stress and medication that when she's in a car with someone, she fights with the driver trying to grab the steering wheel and aim the car at pedestrians.

It's not her fault that she's developed this behavior, but you'd think she could at least control herself and stop trying to run over pedestrians, but she says she doesn't want to. Technically, since you're driving, you could convince the police that you're actually the one trying to commit vehicular manslaughter, so while you could deflect the blame, you really know it's her own fault.

You could also physically restrain your mom, except for all those pesky elder-abuse laws and what kind of person would do that to their mother anyway?

So, what are you gonna do? Will you be a complicit party to your mom's desire to see pedestrians run over, or will you stop letting her into your car and let her ride the train and bus like an adult? Remember, she's dying from cancer, but lots of other people experience intrusive thoughts without acting on them and lots of other people don't have family to support them but still manage just fine.

So, what's your answer? Support your mom and tell her it's okay to try killing/hurting people, or let her figure things out for herself and hope that she comes to her senses? She could always prove to you that she realized her behavior was wrong and that she's ready to ride in the car with you.

And don't worry, no matter what you answer, I'm still going to call you an asshole, because that's how reductive internet trolls work. Cuz "fuck you, this is your mom, damn," and "it's just simple defensive driving."
Yeah, I really can't understand this. I have family and friends who vote differently to me, but I would never let that get in the way of our relationship, and I can't understand the mentality of people who do.

I mean, if someone I knew turned out to be a full on neo-Nazi, then I'd steer well clear. But if someone just votes for the other main party to the one I do, who cares?
- If my father was on his death bed, chances are I'd put most of it behind me and would ignore a lot of past transgressions.
  
  OPs actions are a bit extreme. That being said, there isn't much that separates a neo-nazi from a trump supporter in my mind. I can't imagine anyone supporting him that isnt a complete piece of shit, and it is 100% a valid reason for cutting ties with people.
  
  My wife and son are from another country, my children aren't safe in American schools, my wife and daughter have less rights than a man in America, my 13 year old son was being bombarded constantly by what a "man should be" racist christofacist bullshit. My parents vote against my family, so they are no longer a part of it. We moved to my wife's home country and never looked back.
  
  I love my parents, but their hate for others was stronger than their love for my wife and kids. They can die alone with their red hats on.
  
  Politics change, but blood is thicker than water. The way people are writing off family instead of just talking to them is awful.
  
  The way people are writing off family instead of just talking to them is awful.
  
  What makes you think we haven't tried talking to them?
  
  What makes you think we haven’t tried talking to them? Often times that detail is left out, and what you see or hear about is how they just don't talk anymore.
  
  Trust me, most of us have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried. Some certainly may have preemptively cut people out without discussion, but most of us have beaten our heads against a wall for almost a decade now, trying to convince them that we're human beings with dignity who deserve respect. We just withdraw from engagement, piece by piece, until there's nothing lost by just giving up. Cutting them off is usually the last and most consequential move, rather than the first.
  
  At the end of the day (or life), your mother/father was and forever have been, your mother and father. Family is immutable, giving up is reprehensible.
  
  I have friends who were abandoned by their parents and subsequently adopted. I lost a half-sibling with mental illness after their religious paternal family subjected them to actual exorcisms and other emotional trauma which eventually led to their suicide. My wife has a new 60-year old biological sister that she discovered 2 years ago via DNA. I have friends who cut ties with physically and sexually abusive parents. Family is quite mutable, we are under no obligation to hold fast to toxic blood relatives, and in many cases what we consider "reprehensible" depends entirely on how "reprehensible" the blood relative's committed offenses are.
  
  I'm going to assume you're just arguing from extremely limited personal experience and save the long list of expletives I want to hurl at you on behalf of my friends and family because I'd prefer not to be banned from this community. Good day to you.
  
  That's entirely different, and valid. I'm sorry for your friends who went through that, and it's something I understand myself. My own mother, who passed away recently, is someone I had cut off for decades due to a very long list of emotional and physical abuses I myself suffered at her hands. In no way I was implying that abuse should be tolerated nor expected. That being said, there was room for a limited form of relationship when she as a much older person apologized, and expressed a desire to repair the relationship and make a meaningful change. I got to see a different side to her as a result for 3 years.
  
  Now to say that you cut family off because of how they vote, is to me, entirely absurd. Either they're misinformed, or obtuse, and in some cases sure, abusive. But cutting family off because they share a different political viewpoint, that's what I'm calling reprehensible.
  
  Also, don't fucking assume shit, I've been through the hell your friends have been through directly, and know it all too well. People who snivel about sensitive feelings when they have absolutely no idea, are best giving some benefit of the doubt, which is something extremists on both sides of the politics could stand to improve.
  
  I'm a US Army combat veteran, my wife was a foreign national (we left America), my son was born in his mothers home country making him a foreigner in America, my other two (son and daughter) were born and raised in America.
  
  My parents voted against support for Veterans, they voted against immigration, they voted against gun regulation (guns are the main cause of death for children in America), they voted to take rights away from my wife and daughter, they voted against my family. Ignore all of that I kept trying to talk to them, kept trying to keep in touch.. my dad told me in a letter, that if we aren't for trump we're against him and told me to no longer try to contact him or my mom.
  
  I'm glad they cut ties, because I was already done. I just helped them keep to their words and have ignored them since.
  
  I'm really sorry man, first off thank you for being a veteran, and your story carries weight. Your dad making that statement is a terrible thing. Nobody should be doing that, especially when you're voting with your conscience. There's no need for "with us or against us" absolutes, and the common ground between people is there. People just tap into being told how to think, the rhetoric, and absolutes that don't need to define us. A large part of conservatives I talk to aren't actually anti immigration, they just say shit like "they need to do it legally" to which I ask them "Do you have any idea what legally means, and how long it takes?".
  
  I think back to the mass influx of immigrants that had to come by Ellis Island in the late 19th century, and how wide open the country was back then, to which those people built a nation and powered through racism of a different nature back then. The whole history of "I don't hire Irish" and the "black Irish", or even how Potter derisively refers to "garlic eaters" in "It's a Wonderful Life" shows the long history of harshness towards immigrants in this country yet the best of times were built by immigrants themselves. When conservatives hear this stuff, they deprogram and become pro-immigration, but then realize how shitty our legal process is. I hope that some of them can hear this type of thing and start advocating for the right kind of change instead of treating humans as lesser for factors they have zero control over, like where they're born.
  
  I don't know you or your family, but that you stood by your wife and kids after serving a country with ungrateful parts is beyond commendable and a show of your awesome character. Respect, sir, I truly hope you and your family are well, and I wish more people could demonstrate the compassion you and yours deserve.
  
  If they treat you badly, cutting them out of your life is fine. No one should put up with that from anyone.
  
  But cutting people out of your life purely because they vote differently to you is just weird and petty.
  
  I agree. I wish Donald's cultists would talk and listen to these family members trying to pull them out. It is a shame that Repubs are writing their family off and instead deciding to believe bigoted delusions.
  
  I agree with you, and it's also a shame that Democrats are writing their family off instead of deprogramming in a non-hateful way. You'd be surprised how Trump supporting relatives can get onboard with socialized medicine, by just talking to them as if they're not monsters. That's something a lot of the fucking idiots here on LW could benefit from, instead of yelling "bigot" while acting like a bigot themselves.
- Maga are nazis, so you're phrasing your agreement like a disagreement, but agreement it remains.
- The problem is that said political party is in bed with if not just straight up neo Nazis now. Maybe ten years ago your perspective would be reasonable but it simply isn't anymore.
- What's the remaining distance between a MAGA and a full-on neo-Nazi in your mind? Like as long as they're voting for the US equivalent of the NSDAP, they're not officially there yet?
  
  Insane that anyone can be comfortable writing a strawman like "it's just a different vote," when they're voting for "I need generals like Hitler's, I will be dictator for a day, it is legal to murder political opponents, we will do mass deportations, Haitians are eating cats."
- But if someone just votes for the other main party to the one I do, who cares?
  
  People who will get hurt by that other party gaining the presidency, or people who care about people getting hurt. Or just people with an ounce of empathy.
  
  None of which seem to apply to you.
- 💯👌
- Libs think there's a difference between the parties and the Republicans are fascist. Republicans don't see an actual difference which is where you're at. Leftists don't see a difference, but think both sides are fascists. I don't sit down with fascists, but you do you
  
  You assume my entire political philosophy and views based on the fact I'm civil with people?
  
  For the record, I'm in the UK and would vote Harris in the States.
  
  Frankly, I think I nailed it. You're comfortable around fascists because you're supportive of fascists. Harris is a fascist, so is Trump. Without going into your comment history, I'm betting that you support the bombing of gaza. That you might understand that crime is a social construct, but also that criminals should be punished sometimes severely. It's OK that you think it's OK to sit down with a fascist. I'm of the opinion that it's OK to punch them.
  
  Okay, you're clearly a terminally online person.
  
  Only one of the two candidates is talking about turning the US into a dictatorship with them at the helm.
  
  You're right. The supreme court has said that the president can't do anything illegally. What have the democrats done to reverse that? The democrats do the same things as republicans, but they're more palatable. There's a lot of people on the left that think Trump is the harm reduction candidate because people are upset when he does things.
  
  So what you're saying is that in order to not be fascists, the Dems would have to pull out some actually fascist dictatorial tricks in order to reset things?
  
  I'm sure you can imagine how well that would go.
  
  I'm saying, they haven't even attempted to change things. They're complicit.