Indivisible Northampton

Salvaging Family from MAGA

Many of us are quite concerned about our friends, family and acquaintances that have embraced MAGA and/or Trump. There have been many, many articles written, studies done and and debates over this ongoing issue. I agree that it is thorny, and painful. I’ve been fortunate to have seen family members move through this to a better place. I was able to be part of that process for them. I’m sure they would not like to see themselves in print, so I’ll keep their identities secret.

In the younger generations, most of the southern, baptist conservatism was eroded by education and exposure to new ideas. In the main, they rejected the conservatism of their rearing. In my own generation, one member changed parties due to the development of a gay child, and the soul-searching that involved. They actually became an advocate for LGBTQ rights.

The major earthquake came with the shifting of one of the patriarchs of the family. He was a teacher, with a master degree and was very intelligent. But his experiences of growing up in poverty made him scornful of government assistance. (His father rejected any help), and resentful at those who accepted it. I had vied with him for decades about politics, but something started to change with the election of Obama. He was clearly impressed by how this president so ably brought us through the recession. That changed his opinion of black people. Nevertheless, he voted for tRump because if you’re GOP, that’s what you do. When January the 6th came, our old fellow had had enough. He was thoroughly disgusted by the trampling of the constitution. Through all of this, I was mostly hand-holding and listening. He knew what I thought. That had been clear for decades. But we loved each other, and that helped. He never voted for a Democrat, he just quit voting.

Another family member, one of the younger ones, had not followed in the footsteps of his siblings and cousins. This one was GOP, MAGA, Q Anon and a tRump follower, due to his reverence for the family patriarch. He had grievances about circumstances that were often of his making, and they were nursed by listening to talk radio, while he did his truck routes. When we talked he loved to bait me, get a rise out of me and then we would argue. Don’t you hate it when someone knows all your buttons? I tried very hard to remain calm. But I didn’t quit talking to him because there was still back and forth. There was still some communication and some points being heard. There was, above all else, love. In the lead up to January 6th, he was talking about going to the capital himself. And I suspected he was all talk. But, on the off chance that he meant it, I very strongly urged him against it. We argued again. We finally agreed that we would no longer discuss politics, as it was so stressful. Some people think that calmly discussing differences is the way to go. And they may be right. Perhaps those people haven’t experienced the bantering argument style. But there was no banter over January 6th. just raw pain.

January came and went, and I heard no word. Then, I heard that he had given up on tRump and the whole lot. It was because of how the patriarch reacted to January 6th. Now the young man is strictly apolitical, but really more open. What a relief! I’m so glad he’s still in my life and I think having the lifeline of family there for him when he came out of the cult was very helpful to him.

My takeaway from this is that you can’t really tell what will peel someone away from a cult. And you can’t always help them. But caring and staying in their lives helps. I think that once they know your stance, you just have to be present. And, in my case, it was only possible for me to bear it because I loved them so much. There is a core of MAGA that will never change. They don’t really believe in democracy except for people like them. An ethnographic study was done on this. This is where you actually live among the people to study them. According to this, MAGA want the kind of democracy they associate with the founding; white, christian, male, straight and English or Western European. They have a very poor view of modern democracy because it’s not their kind of democracy. All those other reasons we’ve used to try to excuse or explain their behavior, the study says they aren’t very important.

With my friends and relatives, I think the findings of the study were largely true, although they tried to hide their bigotry. When they changed, it was because their core beliefs were shifted by big changes, often due to family or fallen idols. I have gone the gamut in my emotions, over the years, from blame to empathy. It is easy to make this all very personal, but we are being gamed against each other. The strife was a deliberate introduction to divide us. And it was quite painful for all concerned. The hard and very necessary work ahead is to find a way for us to keep fighting the real perpetrators of this division, whether with MAGA’s help or not.

Nevertheless, it is very satisfactory to land a big fish!

https://conservativestudy.redassociates.com

Image by Sarah Walz