I’ve been in a mood all fucking day, and shared some choice words with people on social media, including this rant on facebook:
I’ve started cutting more people out of my life today. Ditching a bunch of old fraternity brothers, people from undergrad and HS, people I haven’t spent any time with in 20 years, etc. I’m just over it. I am tired of garbage human beings taking advantage of the fact that we drank together the last century thinking we’re “friends” as they do and say repellent things and vote in ways that hurt people.
We’re not friends. We were drinking buddies. Or shared a frat house. Or worked together. That’s it. We had some good times long ago.
But you’ve become a monster. Someone I don’t want to associate with. You’re doing and saying awful things and actively making life miserable for other people.I’m tired of you using me to think what you are doing is ok and thinking I think everything is alright and you’re a good person. You want to live in a polite civilized world where there are no repercussions for your awful behavior because we shared a joint and some Milwaukee’s Best in 1988.
You think someone jeering Mitch McConnell at dinner is a greater sin than eradicating individual rights or smearing all Mexicans as drug smugglers or all the other awful things you post.
You say “it’s just politics” or “why are you so intolerant” or it’s just a debate.” But you’re not debating. You’re spewing memes and bullshit you heard somewhere and don’t understand and when confronted with it you just lie or chant fake news. You’re a sophist, a charlatan, and a fraud. I’ll wait here while you google sophist.
No, it’s not. The people you are voting for, the bullshit you are peddling, the lies you are spreading- these are hurting real people. You’re not a good person no matter how many “I believe in the lord our God” or “jesus saves” memes you post. You’re a trashy, self-centered, bad person. You think what you do privately in the voting booth shouldn’t impact our relationship . It does.
I don’t owe you shit, and I am tired of pretending that what you are doing is ok. You’re a bad person and we’re not friends.
And if you are wondering if I am talking about you then I probably am. Stop being a shitty person because a decent person wouldn’t be wondering.
I’m 52 and I am just fucking over the bullshit. I am tired of people being awful and doing awful things and thinking they have the right to around without repercussions. I don’t care if this insulates them more and they retreat farther from reality into their fucking maga cocoon, fuck them. They need to be called out, shamed, shunned, and treated like the filth they are. You can’t be nice with them because they just take you for granted, you can’t debate them because they live in their own reality, and you can’t change most of their minds because their beliefs are based on a two thousand year old work of fiction that has been rewritten thousands of times to benefit the people in power each time. So fuck them. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
In other news I made a pork shoulder today. Took about 10 hours and I came up with a new rub, and tomorrow we are doing pulled pork with a carolina sauce and slaw and I will be making some salsa verde and a lime cilantro aoli for carnitas.
Most Excellent News
Odie Hugh Manatee
Farkin’ all right , John! I’ve done this three times in the last two years with three old ex-‘friends’ but you said it far better than I did.
NotMax
Middle aged righteous bar mitzvah speech.
Except for the pork shoulder part.
;)
Another Scott
Hang in there.
I heard a bit of FreshAir today – an interview with Mat Johnson about his novels:
Humans are complicated and infuriating and annoying. And one of the best things about being alive. And we really are perfectible, the future really can be much better, but the timeline is very long sometimes…
Do what you can, but take care of yourself.
Cheers,
Scott.
BeautifulPlumage
Sounds like me back when menopause hit: “fuck this bullshit, I’m not having it anymore”
Screw civility for uncivil people
Jerzy Russian
I need a cigarette.
I need an invitation, and also transporter technology so I can get there before it is all gone.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Amen. These people grew up being the ones who got catered to, whose feelings were always coddled, and whose thoughts [sic] counted the most. Now, people just don’t give a shit about them, or their feelings or their thoughts [sic], and they’re sad and angry. But who gives a red fuck? Now they get to learn what 90% of the people in this country have always felt like. Maybe they’ll learn something, maybe they won’t, but it’s up to them to choose.
frosty
A rant followed by a recipe! Gotta be Cole on Balloon-Juice.
Seriously? You just described 2/3 of my high school class. (Being generous) None of my current college friends are MAGAts. Any classmates that are? I wasn’t friends with them at the time.
Ivan X
Wow. What a banger of a post. I’m going to be quoting it.
Ohio Mom
During the Bush years I told an old friend I couldn’t be her friend anymore — her family helped found the local Tea Party. And they are Jewish!
I dumped her during the high Holy Days, which is a time of reflection and planning to be a better person, and also, ironically in this instance, asking forgiveness from anyone you might have harmed in the last year. Of course she was the one who should have asked for forgiveness.
Anyway, it’s a happy, proud memory. She died a couple of years ago which made me sad because I can’t snub her anymore.
There are a few acquaintances I’m not sure about; in the interest of maintaining cordial relations I try very hard not to find out what abhorrent things they may believe.
But generally, with the exception of my cousin’s jerk of a husband, I don’t have any right wingers in my immediate circles. I can’t trust someone like that.
BigJimSlade
John, you think you’re bitter and pessimistic now at 52, just wait until you’re 55!!! ;-)
It can be so weird. I have an old high school friend who is generally a good and good-natured person. But he got so wrapped up in the bad-information-zone that he fled across the country to live with his mom (help her was the excuse for job purposes), leaving his wife behind (I hope they come out of this ok) so that he didn’t have to get the vax to return to work (as a SCIENCE teacher, and he went to a college prep high school and ivy league college). There are immortal hydra in the vax doncha know. He just has no idea how to use good-info/bad-info judgement.
We knew he had his own bizarro world view of the world 30+ years ago (not specifically conservative, just out there). But I’ve had to reel my jaw up off the floor several times in the last few years just trying to figure out how he could possibly… and I don’t know how much I’ll have to do with him from here on out.
StringOnAStick
I ended a long friendship with a couple when they kept saying increasingly nasty things about homeless people and the “libtard mayors who enable them”. The last straw was him endorsing a Final Solution for homeless people. I have no further need for those two in my life.
Here’s the best part: getting rid of their drag on our spare time has opened doors to a whole new group of friends who are not only fellow liberals, they are also much nicer people in general. Sometimes moving on is the good and necessary thing.
craigie
@Ohio Mom:
Maybe it’s wrong but that made me laugh out loud.
Mnemosyne
One of the best things about quarantine for me was shedding toxic people. Everyone who wanted to unfriend me has, and I only have, like, one cousin who still pops up every six months to say some stupid shit.
Today my favorite movie star and his fiancee announced that they’re having a baby, so it’s been a great afternoon. (They were kind of forced to acknowledge it by the fact that she needed to go to the premiere of her new movie while obviously pregnant, but I like that they were able to keep it under wraps until they were ready to make the announcement.) I like to see people happy, even when they’re strangers who I likely will never meet.
ETA: Even the two old high school friends who popped back into my life are still as liberal as ever. Phew!
https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/zawe-ashton-mr-malcoms-list-premiere-getting-ready-diary
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
“I’m getting to old for this shit” – Det. Roger Murtaugh
Uncle Jeffy
Bailed out on the relationship between a sister-in-law and us five years ago when she told us she had a sad because she was going to heaven and we weren’t (had not accepted JC as our personal lord & savior). She can see our futures so well, but couldn’t give me a Powerball winning number???
pulled pork sounds great – got some new rubs for Father’s Day and I’m itching to try them out.
John Revolta
Wait, what?
eclare
You just now came to this realization? I joined FB around 2010, got some horrendous friend requests, and that was it. And my IRL circle of friends is carefully curated.
Also, as a citizen of Memphis, home of amazing pork bbq, I am almost afraid to ask, what the fuck is a Carolina sauce?
mrmoshpotato
Fuckin’ righteous! And fuck them!
And spill the
beansspices on that new pork rub if you want.Josie (also)
@eclare: If done properly it is vinegar based.
M. Bouffant
You tell ’em! “I haven’t got time for the pain”, to quote Carly Simon.
Cued up, but if it doesn’t, go to 2:23.
daryljfontaine
Your plans for that pork shoulder sound amazing, John.
Also, you’ve lost nothing of value with the rest of the post.
D
CaseyL
Good on ya, John!
Life is too short to tolerate assholes. No matter how long life is, it’s too short to waste by having assholes around. From the garden variety (people who are just ordinarily dumb, oblivious, self-centered) to the malignant powerful ones out to drive us all back to pre-Enlightenment times.
There are friends I’ve drifted away from because our lives went in different directions; I do miss them.
But there are others I’ve dropped deliberately when they revealed attitudes and beliefs that are repugnant to me. I scarcely ever think about them at all.
SpaceUnit
I’ve cut ties with so many people over the last ten or twelve years. And I’m grateful for this post because it makes me feel a little less like an aberration.
The polarization taking place in this country is a tragedy, and yet there’s no upside to keeping toxic and unredeemable people in your life.
I prefer solitude rather than the company of horrible-minded people who want to pose as decent humans.
Thanks for making me feel a little less alone in this.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
This genuinely made me LOL. I admire your spite. I think it’s a virtue.
Suzanne
Oh, and I cut those people out a long time ago. And when we moved, I looked for rainbow flags and Dem campaign signs and other liberal visual markers. Because I don’t want to live around them anymore, either. Can’t help but notice that property values are high where Democrats live (broad trend). I made sure my hairdresser is leftist because I don’t want to give Republicans any of my money.
ian
@eclare:
mustard and corn syrup. Never met a person from either Carolina that would claim it as a state product. Its only good if you are really, really, into mustard.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Just saw this today: “The tangy ingredient that makes South Carolina BBQ sauce unique.” Spoiler: it’s mustard.
ETA: I think there are (at least) two or three different Carolina barbecue sauce camps, which all hate each other, of course.
Suzanne
One of my neighbors has a giant flag that reads “TRUMP LOST LOL” and I fucken grin every time I see it. I know we shouldn’t poke the bear (the bear bears arms) but damn, does it make me feel good.
HumboldtBlue
The first note out of Roberta Flack’s body makes me weep. Every time.
Juju
@craigie: that made me laugh out loud as well. If there’s something wrong with you, I have the same issue.
Martin
I know the feeling. Mom is trying to arrange a visit – haven’t seen her since 2019. Not sure I want her to come. A lot of arguments over the last few weeks. She doesn’t see how the Roe decision affected her. Uh, you have a 21 year old granddaughter. Maybe everything isn’t about you?
Fucking boomers. My leftist dad is traveling so I don’t have him to reel me back in.
But I reminded her of my family history. My dads side of the family cut us off because we didn’t hate black people enough. Good riddance as far as I’m concerned. My family isn’t close enough to mourn them more than I would friends.
sab
@Suzanne: I have an across the street cattycorner neighbor who pointed her Trump yard sign at our house. I want my own “Trump Lost” sign but I admit that I would be afraid to display it.
C Stars
I mean, the wingnuts are sadly just a lost cause, no need to have that BS in your life. Right now I’m just piping mad at all the Bernie Bros climbing back out of their holes to self-righteously hate on Biden/Harris because they don’t have a magic wand that can reverse Dobbs. Policywise I agree with them on everything right up until they start throwing toddler temper tantrums about not getting what they want RIGHT NOW and blaming Democrats for that rather than their own voting-averse cohort.
/rant
Juju
I never joined Facebook because I had a stalker. Fortunately I was able to move a number of states away, and he didn’t continue to stalk me. My big fear was that if I joined Facebook he would look me up and figure out where I moved. I found out a few years ago that he died and I could join Facebook without worrying about him. I read things here about people being annoyed with friends and family and whatnot and defriending or whatever it’s called, and I decided I’ve lived without Facebook and other social sites this long, I think I’m good for the rest of my life. If I feel the need to get in touch with a former classmate, I do an address search and write a letter. Facebook used to let me look at one page, but they don’t allow that any longer. So duck them. Anyhoo, I think this is probably the most information I’ve given out here, except that I live in NC, which leads me to what the hell is Carolina bbq sauce? I know there’s eastern NC vinegar based sauce, and western NC which is a vinegar base that also has a sweeter more traditional flavor and thickness about it. Then there’s the SC mustard based bbq, which I’ve never had. Give me a clue.
sab
My mom died in 2012. She was a lifelong Republican and her single most important issue was abortion choice. Her/our family have been Repulicans in the Midwest since Lincoln. She couldn’t bring herself to be a Democrat but she spent the last years of her life voting for us. It was very sad. Her party went whacko. Saddest was her only son and pride and joy went down that rathole with the rest of the party.
mrmoshpotato
@Juju:
You’ve made the right decision.
M. Bouffant
@SpaceUnit: Totally w/ you on this. We aren’t alone, we’re just solitary.
C Stars
Lime cilantro aioli sounds good.
sab
@C Stars: Cilantro tastes like dishsoap.
ETA Why would anyone put dishsoap in their olive oil?
prostratedragon
Heard on Murdoch Mysteries:
“Do you have any idea how expensive it is to maintain a law firm?”
sab
@prostratedragon: When I was a baby lawyer they told us three times our billing hours. One third for us, one third for the expenses (library, rent, secretaries, computers) and one third for the partners. Has that changed?
SpaceUnit
@M. Bouffant:
Yeah.
It makes me really appreciate this online community. Thanks for being a part of it.
BellyCat
Bitchin’ rant. Please advise on how to excise the moral majority of the Supreme Court.
Been reading the Dobbs opinion. Worthwhile slog. Majority reasoning reads like bad FB post fueled by Faux News. The dissent is EPIC BURN. It’s a “breakup letter” and Cole clearly helped with the editing. Imagine having to work with those monsters for the rest of your or their career…
SpaceUnit
Also the pork shoulder carnitas sound intriguing.
Antonius
At 57, I think I’ve sufficiently cleared the decks of trash crew. I have a couple of old friends with… interesting views that aren’t hateful, but misguided. Every two years I back them into logical corners and watch them abandon the debate, but FB was the first thing I threw overboard.
TriassicSands
There’s a very real difference between being a “nice” or “friendly” person and being a good person. People frequently talk about how friendly Americans are, but being friendly or nice is superficial. It’s usually easy when you’re not sick or in pain. But being a good person requires substance and character. It depends on empathy and understanding and a willingness to allow others to live their lives in ways you may not feel entirely comfortable with.
One person that can never be considered a good person is a religious bigot. When the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, they killed religious freedom in this country and with it freedom in general. The six radical religious bigots on the SCOTUS voted to impose their own religious beliefs on everyone in this country. No, you say, they just returned the issue to more local bigots to decide what is and isn’t a fundamental human right.
Freedom of religion requires that religious people be able to practice their own religious beliefs without interference (except in some generally rare circumstances). But it also requires freedom from religion either entirely or, at a minimum, from the coercive beliefs of theocrats like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Amy Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and phony “moderate John Roberts.
Those six don’t care about religious freedom except for themselves. Thus, they don’t care about freedom more generally. They can’t honestly take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution because they reject religious freedom one of the Constitution’s most basic values.
And none of those six, nor anyone who supported the decision to allow the states (and ultimately the federal goverment) to force women to carry to term and give birth to unwanted children can be considered a “good” person.
Tony Jay
My best friend, a helicopter engineer who lives way up in the windswept Tory parts of Scotland, had a brief altercation with a traffic roundabout earlier this year and broke a bone in his spine. He was already in a bit of a bad place with not liking his work anymore (mass redundancies, arsehole management) and living on his own a million miles away from anywhere, so he was overweight, moody and not exactly house-proud, and this was the last thing he needed on his plate.
Hospital was pretty grim, with the pain and the loneliness and the endless, grinding PAIN, but he was out of choices since he literally couldn’t sit, stand or do anything for himself without the pain level going from 11 to eleventybillion. ‘Fortunately’ a couple he knew up there, a fellow engineer and his wife, offered him a room at their house and said they’d keep him fed and watered while he recovered enough to go home again. He was, as you’d imagine, super grateful.
Long story short, they were fucking horrible to him. The eye-rolling conversations about politics he’d had while over there having a beer and watching football suddenly turned into flashing red warning signs that he saw too late. They’re both Tories. Snobbish, money-hungry, IGMFY hypocrites with an entire Daily Mail categorised hierarchy of people who are ‘good’ (hard working, salt of the earth types like them who’ve earned everything they take from the system) and people who are ‘bad’ (benefit scrounging lazy layabouts who leech on their taxes and are responsible for everything wrong with society).
In their eyes, one broken bone in his back risked transferring him from a precarious roost in the former caste to teetering on the edge of tumbling down the social strata into the latter, and they were NOT going to let that happen. I won’t go into the horrors, but let’s just say that their idea of ‘tough love’ and their utter refusal to acknowledge that their ‘friend’ wasn’t being a lazy malingerer who could (shock horror) lose his job and end up “a scummy waster on the dole’ (i.e. on welfare) if he didn’t buck up his ideas and stop whining about a broken fucking back put him through two weeks of complete misery, the second week spent locked in his room because he was actually scared to be around them.
He eventually got out of there the second he could physically be levered into the back of a car without passing out from the pain and has since cut them out of his life, something he feels much better about than he thought he would. He now realises that all of the clues were there; the deliberate snobbishness, the hypocrisy (he was accused of becoming a drug addict for needing pain killers, while the wife is on tons of prescription opiates for her own back complaint, but ‘that’s different’) the sheer greedy, grasping, two-faced, judgemental Toryishness of them, but he let it all slide because he was just happy he had someone he could watch the match with once a week.
The moral of this little story – yeah, conservatives are fucked in the head and choose to be bad people. Who needs that kind of bad odour wafting through their lives.
Roger Moore
@Tony Jay:
I would make the moral a bit more general: the bigotry someone shows in public is just the tip of the iceberg. If they occasionally complain about Those People when you see them in public, they almost certainly have far worse beliefs they’re hiding.
Argiope
@Martin: Come sit by me in the Adult Children of RWNJs pew. My remaining parents have 4 granddaughters of reproductive age and we are all in OH under a 6 week ban their votes helped bring about. This week involved a clue by four administered by me about what 3/4 of their granddaughters think about their voting history now that fundamental rights have been lost because of it. My stepmom is flooded and says she doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. I’ve told my kid there will be no further pressure from me to relate to her grandparents. If they can’t be assed to stick up for her at a time like this and voice their own values, to her and their reps (Dad says he hates the idea but the abortion decision should be between a woman and her doctor), I’m fine with her cutting ties. I’m sure they will tell themselves it’s about her and/or me, but I’ve broken through that denial pretty directly. Told stepmom I’ll stop talking to her about the issue because I care about her comfort, but that I care about her granddaughters’ rights much more and she should, too.
Betty Cracker
@Ohio Mom:
LOL!
JWR
Great rant, John. Thank you, and thank you for keeping this site up and grinding away for the good guys for all these years.
Meanwhile, as soon as I read the phrase “No more Mr. Nice Guy”, I was shwooshed back to 1973 and my days in cover bands. And for that, I gift you Alice Cooper, who saw me through some really bittersweet, but also joyous times!
No more Mr. Nice Guy
Enjoy!
Baud
Tony Jay
@Roger Moore:
Agree. That timeless quote about believing people when they show you who they are comes to mind.
Betty Cracker
The only wingnuts in my life are family members. I did recently find myself subjected to wingnut bloviation though, and not at a family event.
We moved up here to the boonies about three and a half years ago. I hadn’t been to a salon in all that time, at first because I just didn’t get around to it, then because of the pandemic.
I took a week off earlier this month and thought I’d finally get my hair done — a professional cut and some highlights. Knowing that this is a wingnut area and not wanting to expose myself to Trump arseholes, I pored over reviews and studied photos of shops (sometimes you can tell a lot from the décor) to find one that was unlikely to be run by Trump lunatics, and I made an appointment.
I choose poorly. Not only was the stylist a very opinionated right-winger, he’s a religious nut and a conspiracy theorist. By the time I discovered this, I had chemicals and foil thingies all over my head, so there was no escape.
I mostly looked at my phone the whole time to avoid the convo, which is usually rude but not in this case. He did a great job with my hair, but I’m not putting myself through that bullshit again. Back to getting the spouse to trim my hair.
WTF is wrong with people? I have to make idle chit-chat with folks sometimes in my line of work, and I would never in a million years assume they share my political views and hold forth like that.
Vec
All this!! Good on you John!! And call out the bigotry when you can as well! Just the other day an old man at the community gym I go to said the F word (in relation to gay people) out loud, and I (50 yr old woman) was the only one to say something!! He and his friends got mad (free speech and all that, lol) and I still have to talk to the Parks & Rec director, BUT if they’re not called out they will get more confident to show their racism, homophobia and misogyny in public and turn on the more vulnerable.
Like you John, I’ve been so sick and tired of this shit, but we have no choice but to fight and keep up the hope!
prostratedragon
@sab: Not a lawyer, but I’d bet it’s a general principle.
TriassicSands
@Betty Cracker:
They don’t assume you share their views, Betty. They simply want to cram their “righteous” views down your throat. Live and let live is not a part of their worldview. As the death of Roe showed us, they’re happy imposing their beliefs, religious and political, on everyone.
It’s worth noting that for a lot of them, their religious and political views are inseparable. Every election, they vote for Jesus.
NotMax
‘@Betty Cracker
Can we take it as a given, then, that any tip you left would not fall under the heading of generous?
Argiope
@Betty Cracker: That sucks, emerging from isolation for your first salon visit and getting stuck with this jerk. I know of a stylist trying to figure out how to fire his whack job clients, which seems even harder. Hostile work environment, listening to bigots all day.
raven
I did this shit years ago, maybe that’s why I don’t get all fucking uptight about Facebook. Our neighborhood groups has located many a lost pet!
BretH
Amen. Still processing the white pickup I saw yesterday driving down Rt29 in Charlottesville with a huge “FUCK BIDEN” flag in the back.
It’s true, reason and compassion are wasted on these people.
EarthWindFire
@Suzanne: Same. I dropped my hairdresser once she revealed herself as an anti-vax MAGAt. Have not once regretted that decision.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@BretH: Yeah. I saw a bunch of those shitstreaks the last time I visited the US – passed by a place that had a huge flag proclaiming “FUCK BIDEN AND FUCK YOU FOR VOTING FOR HIM”, and passed by someone else on a boardwalk who was wearing a shirt proclaiming “I’m Pro-LGBT: L(something I can’t remember), Guns, Bible, Trump”. I was with my sweetie so I refrained from asking him when he decided to turn traitor to America.
It’s not something peculiar to America, either; my mom had a couple of incidents, one a while ago when she was on an airplane next to someone who asserted that Greece had been better off under the junta (this would be the 1967 coup of the colonels), and one just a few weeks ago when a cabbie was taking her to an appointment in downtown Athens, and he complained about how God was going to punish Greece for permitting a Pride event in Syntagma Square, next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
(She didn’t tip the cabbie. Which is unusual for her; after spending most of her life in the US, she’s a habitual tipper.)
different-church-lady
PREACH!
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Yay – my first Twitter suspension under a new nym, for meantweeting at Florida’s dipshit surgeon general over the refusal to preorder vaccines for children.
MagdaInBlack
I became very ruthless about 25 years ago when my husband died quite suddenly and I learned very quickly who was worth my time and energy and who was not. It was cathartic and I’ve never regretted it.
Matt McIrvin
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Because I definitely know exactly what sort of person the… Unknown… Soldier was.
Baud
I prefer Fuck Biden to Let’s Go Brandon. Removes the vaneer of being kid-friendly.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Yeah, yelling “Fuck” about politicians you don’t like is a time-honored tradition that the liberals I know will happily engage in–I don’t have the energy to get too upset about it on any decorum or process grounds. Joe Biden is an adult, he drops F-bombs all the time, he can take it.
But that coy garbage where you hide the naughty word, like you’re too precious to just use it when you use it? It’s so fake-clever.
raven
@Matt McIrvin: fuck lbj
Baud
@raven:
He actually couldn’t take it.
Jesse
Amen John. No need for the nonsense. I signed up for Facebook back in like 2006, but closed my account in 2013 (or 2014?). It had become a cesspool, even then. As one of the steps involved in closing an account, they ask you why you’re doing it. I wrote: “Facebook has shown me that I am surrounded by sociopaths. It is also creating them by radicalizing people.” I never got a response (nor did I expect one, tbh).
I also dropped Twitter around that time, too, for the same reason.
lowtechcyclist
:Googles driving time to Bethany:
Raoul Paste
@Another Scott:
The relentless optimism and calm perspective of Another Scott is always welcome. It helps.
Yet I gotta say I feel like Cole much of the time, especially when I look at the young children in the supermarket and think about their future (or lack thereof) because of climate change.
lowtechcyclist
I hear you. I just never took to Facebook in the first place, gave it a few tries but ultimately decided I just didn’t like the environment.
My wife stays in touch with a lot of people via FB, but she’s been culling the herd since about 2016 (when she was 52 – must be the age to have had it with the bullshit). She’s from central Florida, and most of her extended family and old friends from high school are Trumpers. So she’s unfriended a few, and muted many others. She just doesn’t want to hear their bullshit.
It probably wouldn’t affect your relationship if they never talked about it outside the voting booth, but of course they do. The fuckers can’t shut up about it, and if you don’t like it, well fuck your feelings. So if they whine about seeing this rant then being unfriended, well, fuck their feelings.
And anyone invoking Jesus for all this Trumpist crap…well, as the Bible says, if they say they love God but hate their brother, then they are a liar. Them: “Oh, but we love the sinner, we just hate the sin.” Yeah, they’re making people’s lives miserable, and in many cases dangerous, while invoking the name of Christ. Fuck that shit.
And as I’ve said before, anyone who claims to be ‘pro-life’ who shrugged while a million Americans, and fifteen million or so around the world, died of Covid…those assholes better not talk to me about ‘life.’ They don’t give a shit about life. Fuck them and their bullshit.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: Betty, they can’t imagine that other white people where they live disagree with them. I’ve been told Biden couldn’t have possibly won the election because hardly anyone voted for him – at least they don’t know many people who supported him. They truly believe this, that most places are like the place where they live.
Soprano2
@BretH: I see those here too, and posted in a few people’s yards. What I find hilarious and ironic about it is that a few years ago these people would have fallen on the fainting couch at the idea that a child would see or hear the word “fuck” in public (so uncivil, you know!), but now they proudly put it in the back of their truck or in their front yard.
Eric NNY
Good on you.
Geminid
@Baud: I saw a good Tweet a couple months ago. It was in Twitter feed set up for one of Trump’s rallies. There was a picture of a smiling Joe Biden, sitting in his Corvette convertible with shades on, pointing at the viewer. On top was the caption, “Hi, I’m Brandon”. The bottom caption read, “I’m the guy who kicked Trump’s ass in 2020.”
zhena gogolia
Best thing I’ve read this morning since this from Bill Penzey:
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Geminid:
Good one!
If someone said “Let’s Go Brandon” to me, I’d probably respond with “Yeah, God bless Brandon and God damn Trump.”
Soprano2
Sadly you’re describing probably half the people I work with, so I can’t just cut them out of my life. I haven’t unfriended any people, but I’ve had a couple unfriend me because I didn’t like TFG – one is a cousin, the other is a former roommate, so not people who are just casual acquintances.
oatler
Very sharp, the kind of thing I’d like to say. My sister married a guy who voted TFG in 2016 and supposedly we both enjoyed breaking his balls over it. But this year TFG fulfilled his campaign promises and broke the planet, his followers declared jihad with a court packed with genuine Nazis, and civil war is likely. Do I advise her to stab her husband, who she loves? Or am I plagiarizing a Meryl Streep movie?
zhena gogolia
No MAGAs among my friends or family, but a non-MAGA neighbor clued me in few years ago that I’m surrounded by them. I just don’t socialize with the neighbors that much, so it hasn’t come up. I don’t know about the guy to our south, he seems too nice. Only the ones across the street put up signs, except for one guy up the hill with the trashiest yard, who has a big faded Trump banner hanging above his Virgin Mary grotto.
Of course we’re the ones who hire the long-established local firms to do our roof and our deck, the kind with insurance who work during business hours. The people across the street with a Trump sign hire the troupe of Spanish-speaking people in a truck who work days and evenings and on Saturdays and Sundays. It’s the Mar-a-Lago way!
lowtechcyclist
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
I’d say, “yeah, go Eagles!” and enjoy the quizzical look on their face. Then I’d ask them if they’d tried the tacos at Jimmy Hula’s, since it’s only a few blocks away. “A few blocks away from where?” “Brandon High School, duh.”
(Seriously, if you’re ever in or near Brandon, FL, the tacos at Jimmy Hula’s are the best I’ve ever had. Fucking awesome.)
artem1s
BURN! nominating this for a rotating tag!
Thanks for so eloquently expressing what I’ve been feeling for over 20 years. The toxicity of nice polite people on both sides trying to force their friends, neighbors, family to keep the peace is poison. I noticed in high school that the politeness was only extended to the IN crowd. I started to noticed the correlation between who was required to be polite was related to gender – women always – men rarely were chided for rude behavior. In college and grad school the misogyny grew and now that I was in a less homogeneous community the racism in tone policing became obvious too.
It was during the W administration that I started cutting friends and family out of my life. I can’t count the number people, women mostly, who openly advocated for grinning and bearing all the awful behavior, racism, fascism, war-mongering that followed 9/11. This will pass, they said. I have to be nice or I’ll lose my job; a customer; my spouse; a place to live, etc. White women have been the frogs slow cooking in the pot of now boiling water since forever. I lost a lot of job and promotion opportunities because I wasn’t willing to suck up to the ‘nice polite Republican’ way of existing in the world. I never considered being alone and apart from the polite crowd a loss – it was a relief each time I decided I would either stay away or refuse to stay silent. It is still painful to know that so many people I grew up with are living breathing vehicles of hate.
I know I have a white person’s privilege of choosing to stay away or resist or be impolite where other can’t. Taking the downside of losing opportunities has to also be part of that. That’s what being a good ally is. But honestly, it’s worth the peace of mind.
Matt McIrvin
@raven: Indeed.
Tony G
I have some casual acquaintances — former co-workers — who are Trumpists. I haven’t seen them in years, so they’re not really part of my life. I also have a few relatives In my extended family who are Trumpists with some pretty awful political viewpoints. I’m not about to cut them off, because they’re family. Illustrating (to me) the complexity of human beings, one of those Trumpists (a female first cousin) has been wonderful in the limited context of family — doing a lot to help our elderly, ailing uncle. No real point here except to make the obvious point that people are complicated.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: I think we’ve had this conversation before, but though I’m not a Christian I’m kind of fond of Jesus (the character in the book–I’m making no particular historical assertions here), and when awful people who hurt their neighbors and yell “Lord, Lord” on the streetcorner wave him around as some kind of penal substitutionary salvation trinket I get steamed on his behalf.
To be fair, the “no one comes to the Father except through me” stuff was probably inviting it. Right-wing evangelical rhetoric basically removes everything BUT that–a faith whose only mechanism is to propagate itself.
BellyCat
@TriassicSands: Well said. Freedom *from* religion is freedom *of* religion.
The MMSC (Moral Majority) placed narrow and bigoted theocracy over humanity and science.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Matt McIrvin: Congratulations, you just sparked a EUREKA moment in the back of my head.
Evangelical religion is like a virus, and proselytizing is its infection vector.
SW
I’m older. I went through the same process over Iraq. There must be something about your late forties or early fifties that cries out for a major pruning of you social network. You look around and realize that there is some horrible shit growing in that garden.
Citizen Alan
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
My go to response (thus far used only in line) has been ” Go Brandon yourself with a Brandoning chainsaw you ignorant mother-Brandoner.”
grumbles
I’m in the same place as John. I’ve cut a lot of people out.
The reactions that make me craziest is hearing, “But you’re a man/not gay/white!” It tells me that I was exactly right to cut them out. But it also is so very depressing, both that they’re already proudly declaring they don’t believe in the things that actually made this country great, and also that I didn’t react sooner.
In conclusion, people suck and I want to go back to bed, and the work day hasn’t even started here yet.
Paul in KY
Right on, John! You can’t have people in your life that are always bringing you down.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: Rock on, Suzanne!
Paul in KY
@mrmoshpotato: That’s my decision too. Had a fine life pre-Facebook & think I can finish mine up fine without it.
Tony G
@frosty: My high school too — although (not coincidentally) I haven’t kept in touch with any of those meat-heads. I remember back in 1969 — the height of the supposed “counterculture” — some of those doofuses reacted to the news of the My Lai Massacre by wearing buttons that said “Free Calley” (ask your granddad what I’m talking about, kids). I haven’t talked to those idiots in many decades, but I assume that (if they haven’t drank themselves to death) they voted for Reagan, the Bushes and eventually Trump. Trump was just the culmination of a long period of rot in this country.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: You can certainly enjoy a fine football match without any human accompaniment (IMO). Hope he realizes that now. Also hope he is healing up from the terrible back trouble!
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Because they are dicks and are hoping you’re a dick too as that validates their pathetic world that they have to live in.
Paul in KY
@Argiope: The stylist can try pricing himself out of their price range or just be ‘busy’ at any appt time they try to get or just tell them they don’t want to do their hair anymore and then end the conversation.
Paul in KY
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Probably Lechery, as Trump was in there…
Pennsylvanian
@sab: If cilantro tastes like soap to you, you are probably a super taster. My sister is one, and it is very common for them to have that reaction to cilantro.
Tarragon
@mrmoshpotato:
I don’t know what Cole uses but for pork in the smoker I like:
There’s no salt in this. You should salt the meat ahead of time and apply this rub right before cooking
The Pale Scot
Which is SO why I have no social media presence. We use to throw epic toga parties, there would be cars from 10 states on the lawn. My agents report that some “old friends”still ask around about me. The story is I live in a trailer and work at a dollar general in Arcadia and joined the Aryan Nation in prison. That cools the interest fast. (May have to get some henna nazi tattoos and post a pic eventually)
And also avoiding the family dramas.
dnfree
@Martin: I’m a boomer, one of the oldest. I met my college roommate for lunch the day the decision came out and we were both distraught and furious. I dropped by to see my 16-year-old granddaughter afterwards, and she wanted to know what my roommate and I thought. I think it helped her a little to know that some of the old folks are with her. I hope I didn’t scare her too much when I told her about the old times before 1973.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@TriassicSands:
Donald Trump is Jesus?
JaneE
I have been trying to clean out the house so we can move and simplify a little. There are so many things that used to mean something to me that just don’t anymore. I have more important things to focus on. Maybe that is what old age does for you – it gives you a different perspective on things.
You are right, John. We don’t have time for people who are “doing and saying awful things and actively making life miserable for other people”. Thank you for building a community where we can meet decent, caring people.
Emily B.
Some of my Republican cousins unfriended me on FB several years ago. Sometimes I feel sad about that, but if they couldn’t handle my outspoken—but civil—political posts, maybe it’s better that we let the tie drop.
catothedog
@zhena gogolia:
This a 100 times.
Don’t say Supreme Court did <this>.. Supreme Court did <that>
Wherever you can, on social media, on this blog, state it clearly
Pro-life judges did ..<this>..
Supreme CourtPro-life judges limits EPA’s authority to regulate power plants’ greenhouse gas emissionsSupreme CourtPro-life judges throws out gun regulations..and so on
Make them own it. Specifically associate all these anti-life destruction with their great “campaign of virtue” of supporting “innocent life”
TheTruffle
I unfriended someone after she went full MAGA. I never said anything, just unfriended her. I couldn’t take it anymore.