Summary
Recently terminated federal workers face not only unemployment challenges but also hurtful reactions from family members who support the government cuts.
Luke Tobin, fired from the Forest Service, and Kristin Jenn, whose Park Service job was frozen, describe relatives celebrating their job losses as necessary to “make the government great again.”
Former Park Service employee Riley Rackliffe encountered social media comments calling him a “glorified pool boy” despite his Ph.D.
Some workers report family members unfriending them on social media or dismissing their positions as “waste.”
I lucked out in that all of my relatives that are still living are reasonable. I didn’t need to remove any relatives from my life.
Friends however… yikes! Different story there. I moved from a red state to a blue state in October so I need to meet some people here.
One of the harder things in life to accept is that your family can be scumbags.
The most incredible trick the GOP has managed to pull is to convince working Americans to hate each other.
Disown your republican friends & family
However, recognize that grief may result. It’s a loss of the fantasy of people who love you. That hurts.
You’re absolutely right. It’s been 7 years for me. I grieved them and still do occasionally. It’s just not worth it to let them be a part of my life anymore.
I don’t talk to those relatives anymore. It’s done wonders for my mental health.
Growing up, I had always heard “brothers fighting on opposite sides of the battlefield” types of stories from the American civil war. I always wondered how people could let it get that bad. Nowadays though…
I wonder what the long-term fallout from this massive fracture is going to be… even if we somehow manage to avert catastrophe…
I don’t think there’s really a way to come back from this whole thing for, like, most people…
We are marching towards another civil war.
“It’s really hurtful for the president to insinuate that you don’t exist or that your job consisted of sitting at home doing nothing and cashing the paycheck,” he says. “I’d like to see him sifting through spiny naiad in 120-degree weather looking for parasitic snails. He’s the one that goes golfing on the government dime. I don’t even know how to golf.”
Although I don’t think much will get through to MAGA people, the hypocrisy is what gives me the most hope. Trump’s mind is so unlike his voters’ that he doesn’t deserve to represent them.
Like, I wake up earlier than my wife. She has back problems, but I like to keep the kitchen nice for her and not remind her of it. So every day I unload the entire dishwasher, carefully putting away every plate, knife, glass without making noise. I don’t mean it as a virtue-signal, we all probably do little things like this. I just mean, can you even imagine Trump doing something like that? Imagine him caring about someone other than him that much? Imagine having to live so intentionally and carefully for any reason at all?
That should get through to them, right?
The problem is that’s not the Trump they see. They see a hero story told through YouTube, podcasts, angry Facebook/Twitter posts, MSM, Discords and such. It’s immersive. It’s engrossing/triggering enough to turn on family.
I can’t stop saying it. The root problem is the information environment, and no amount of policy or studying or empathy or signaling or even hardship is going to change squat until that is turned on its head.
And I’m more militant about that now. Big Tech is beyond fixing, it needs to be fucked up.
Very few of them are indoctrinated that way. It’s far more Sinister than that. The majority of them I would say get their indoctrination through their local broadcast evening news. The same local broadcast evening news that their parents and grandparents trusted, watched, and relied upon. It’s never been fully trustworthy. But even back then it wasn’t fully owned by Sinclair as it is many places today.
Attacking them for swallowing the Fox News or whatever online Source hook line and sinker. Only pushes them away. Because that’s not what a lot of them are doing. They aren’t seeking the radicalization out. It’s being permeated throughout their environment without them even trying. Go to some of these places where all local Outlets are owned by sinclair. It’s like stepping into an alternate reality. Where Up Is Down left is Right black is white. And you are the crazy one. Because you don’t believe what they’ve been told. Trump is lionized in daily mandatory propaganda segments. All failings or setbacks are because Democrats, DEI, trans, minorities, or any other groups they don’t have regular contact with.
It’s easy and a cop out to think these people are stupid. They aren’t. Or are ignoring the information we’ve seen. They haven’t. Through no intent or effort of their own. Their local controlled media has indoctrinated them into a fascist death cult.
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”
Unless we can turn them against their local broadcast stations or plant the concept among them. That their local broadcasters are part of an actual conspiracy. It’s game over.
IF we can reach them they would be our allies. Unfortunately no one has figured out how to do that. Despite the massive parallels to Nazi Germany 100 years ago. This sort of media control is literally how the Nazi party manufactured support early on. Spinning fantastic lies about minorities to the general public.
You are 1000% correct, half the continent lives in an entirely different reality. That’s why very visibly and loudly protesting and demonstrating at key. It FORCES the dissent into public view where it would otherwise be hidden.
Anything we can do to fight with their control of the narrative is deeply important.
Protests can be deprioritized and warped too! Heck, people are turning on their own kids, so what’s protest on TV or the street gonna do? It just confirms what people were served.
I really hope there’s a tipping point where people pour out of Big Tech, or maybe a giant hack to spur things on.
part of the real value of ai bots is it keeps the rubes in the big tech media bubbles by giving them “people” to interact with as REAL people exit
MAGA people are not capable of empathy.
They are a delusional death cult.
Maybe its possible to convince one of the few remaining Trump critical Republicans, but MAGA people are gone.
I no longer talk to my family because of this.
They only understand pain that personally affects them, and even then, they’re quite likely to delusionally invent a new element to their conspiracy theory cluster fuck that consitutes their worldview/religion.
Maybe they’ll wake up when they, personally, are now homeless and the entire economy around them has collapsed… but maybe not.
I suspect a lot of them wouldn’t even be able to understand what you’re doing or why. And that might make them slightly uncomfortable, so they’d judge you just in order not to have to think about it.
I’d like to see him sifting through spiny naiad in 120-degree weather looking for parasitic snails.
“Those are made-up words!”
Lol
Like people have been saying for nearly a decade now: “I don’t know how to explain to you why you should care about other people.”
This is just me, but if I was fired by some felon rapist traitor trying to appease a bunch of neckbeard losers, and anyone in my life voted for that felon rapist traitor, after he made it clear he was going to do so, I would probably never speak to them again.
Your family has to earn and maintain your respect, just like anyone else does.
While I agree, that’s not usually how ‘Merican families work.
how disgusting for people to celebrate others misery. makes it really easy to understand who is on your side and who is not though, I’ve decided enough is enough and began the process of cutting these people out of my lives.
short term, it sucks right now. but I know down the line, I will thank myself for doing this now
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Make the government great again?? Why sshould normal people have an interest in that? The government should serve the people and not its own „greatness“…
The same people celebrating that Obamacare is gone, and being shocked when Affordable Care Act which they depend on suddenly disappears.
Wait until they lose Medicaid… Most of them probably have no fucking idea that their health insurance is even funded by it.
The stupid is coming from inside the house
I’ve cut out all of my maga family. Fuck 'em. I don’t depend on any of them for anything so the can pound sand.
Trump renamed Denali the mountain but not Denali the park? That seems appropriately half-assed of him.
Is anyone keeping track of how many Americans Musk and Trump have directly made unemployed, even before the effects of economic slowdown kick in?
Employment numbers just came out but of course they’re behind the times already.
“They can’t separate their ideology and their politics from supporting their own family and their own loved ones,” says Tobin.
I can’t say I’m surprised at that trait from those that hold these politics in the first place.
