ceeboo wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2023 8:34 pm
Hey Cakes
canpakes wrote: ↑Fri Dec 01, 2023 4:38 pm
Can you share some details on how this situation with your cousin came about?
Yeah, I didn't want to say what the reason was in the example I used because I didn't want to discuss the reason/reasons, I was hoping to make it much broader but now that I have read your post (and agree with it) I guess I need to say the following and hope the thread doesn't become political.
The reason my cousin has not spoken to her parents in years is because of who her parents voted for in a Presidential election.
OK, I can understand how that might be a point of disagreement, but there are a number of other factors that can play into this.
My own father is a true-red, dyed-in-the-wool Trump fanatic - even did volunteer work for the campaign - but we still speak, and there’s no way that I’d end up choosing the same candidate as he did.
We’ve constructed a sort of political detente between the two of us, which is basically that we don’t try to talk about politics at all. It’s very difficult for him, because he has spent his entire life ‘othering’ non-conservatives as nameless, faceless entities with the sole aim of destroying the country, and he really does seem to like ‘the fight’ of political discussion.
I guess that I’ve given him some unexpected grief with my refusal to not buy into every fool talking point and conspiracy that he picks up from right-wing media. : D
But, my point isn’t to make this political. It’s only to mention that the Great Divide can be bridged, if only with a skinny little rope bridge guarded on both sides. So, I wonder if there’s something beyond just political alignments at work in the case of your cousin and her parents. Perhaps how they’ve responded to each other historically?
Was there a fairly strained relationship between them that preceded the (for lack of a better way to put it) the
Rise of Trump?