Amazingly seemed like my more and more violently coughing midde class family is starting to get disillusioned by the status quo, all had been sick before Christmas with novid obviously. Most of my leftist points were met with comments like "I agree" with glances from depressed and weary eyes. Even my comments on how this virus will end us if we keep this up. That is new.
Boy did the kids especially make me sad though. One 9 year old said when I said their cough sounds pretty bad that "I cough like this all the time now".
I'm not seeing family today because we're Jewish. But Thanksgiving was hard. I'm the only antizionist in my family, my parents and brother are sympathetic, but the rest of my family are raging zionists- my cousin actually fucking moved to Israel and proudly participated in recruitment propaganda. It was a lot
I did not have a raging political discussion, however I did have my sister, who considers herself a leftist but probably doesn’t know who Marx was, attempt to express her extremely vibes-based politics in entertaining ways. She showed up to our dinner late and extremely high. A family friend of ours came for dinner who is from South America and is extremely cool, often regaling us with stories of El Salvador and Chile in the 60s. She’d fit in on the site. She brought up Allende and my sister rolled her eyes and said that he was just like “every other mediocre white man who is overconfident”. I asked her why she felt that way and she said she was “just kidding”. I later brought up the book the Jakarta Method and my sister said that “what is happening in Jakarta and the other places in Africa is terrible on both sides”. She then said she’s in favor of the rest of the world adopting the American dollar because it would be “more socialist”.
The subject of the CIA came up in the context of intervention in South America, and my sister related it to the CIA distributing crack in American inner cities in the 80s. This stood out to me simply because I was surprised she knew about it. She then talked about the healing power of psychedelic medicine for about forty five minutes.
Later on, we watched Its A Wonderful Life, which she said was “a good argument for why we need to replace capitalism with Bitcoin” during the scene when Uncle Billy loses the money. I didn’t even ask. I love her and I actually do think her heart is basically in the right place but she’s like a random number generator and seems to invent her completely incoherent world view as she goes along. I’ve thought about recommending at least some theory but I kind of think she’s happier and pretty much harmless in her mind castle.
The whole trans sports thing came up but fortunately they're not super confrontational so I just rattled off some stats, the line about how no one cared about women's sports before this and if you really care that much about fairness you gotta ban people like Michael Phelps too. They stopped after that, for now anyways.
Not sure who it's from but there's a new talking point about food not being as nutritious as it used to be but in like a conspiratorial way not cus the soil is degrading from industrial agriculture way.
Not a huge argument on my side. Old grandfather consistently asks me to enlist, I always tell him it's not a Christian thing to do, to massacre the people of the world for the benefit of the wealthy. Usually my parents back me up even though they're conservative boomers. Same old same old.
Ooh, I posted it in another thread but it seems relevant here.
Ladies and gentlemen: I give you the official DragonBallZinn's guide to holiday politics!
Number one and also the TL;DR: Do not engage. This is so important I wrote an essay in the rest of this comment about it!
Actually arguing with CHUDs is what they want, it's the TV trope of can't argue with elves. So therefore, the winning move is to not play, but you can do this in a way that makes you look good.
Put out an air that you are too good for politics. You can do this in many ways "why talk about politics when we can be enjoying time together?" You can look at some of your other relatives and say "could we talk about something else? It's Christmas!". If you slip up and give them something to bite on, just say "oops, sorry. now's not the time for me to explain but we can discuss this some other time if you're really interested." Even if it doesn't register to them, it registers to relatives, even more conservative relatives that your uncle/grandparent/cousin/whatever, the conservative, is the one being a burden and not the "wokescold". How pathetic is that when a progressive is outdoing them in the "just enjoy things like normal people" department?
Number two: If you're feeling confident, push back a little bit but refuse to elaborate.
This is more of a plan B if you slip up and engage. For example, for whatever reason China was brought up yesterday and my uncle was going on about how they ban religion in communist countries. I mentioned that China does have Christmas but it's just commercial, and that China recognizes 5 religions including Xinjiang having a huge Muslim population. Obviously the Uyghurs were brought up, but I really just mentioned that the Uyghurs have been there for decades and now's not really the time to go into detail: it's Christmas after all and we can discuss it later (and "later" will never come). The psychology is that I'm openly left-wing, I know some things they don't but I have the tact to know 'now's not the time for argument, we have a holiday to enjoy.' so if he brings up politics afterwards: he's the asshole.
Number three: Especially if you're younger, NEVER go on the offensive.
Follows with tip 1. Make them feel like the burden. If these types can sense that you came here with a chip on your shoulder, they're going to try to make their Christmas dream of "triggering their SJW moral[slur] relative" come true. Even if it feels like you're 'letting them win', the worst case scenario is that they will chalk it up in their heads that they 'won', but it will be a hollow victory because they never got to see you squirm or actually get an argument out of you. I know I'm repeating myself here, but it's more like giving off the impression that you're just a normal guy enjoying the holidays. That does more for the left than any argument ever will.
Number four: If they start going for the jugular and start getting too fashy, and they don't openly hate you, try pulling them aside.
Pull them aside and mention that what they said kinda sucked, and if you want to explain why say something like "I know a few black/trans people and they're alright." obviously they'll double down and at that point just say "I'm not mad or trying to argue, I'm just saying."
Number five: If you're a dude, help out with the setting up or cleaning especially if you simply must show some disagreement.
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Actions speak louder than words. Your aunt can be as much of a tradwife as she wants, she's probably not going to decline when you ask to assist with washing dishes or bringing food you made yourself. It shows that as a man you don't see yourself above "women's work" or her as 'the help' for men. Not only does it establish maturity that you're now part of making it special for the kids, but it can get some of the gears turning on two things: "maybe people who disagree with me aren't all hypocrites if my woke nephew is willing to walk the walk and lend me a hand." to maybe "Hey, why don't the men help out?"
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For anyone who has a more competitive personality type, this can be your avenue for winning a dick measuring contest with your CHUD relatives that can make them look bad by comparison. In addition, you can make some tasty ass food, dress super well for the occasion, or fluff up some of your accomplishments this year.
Number six: here's another plan B if you do get baited and need an out: If your family is white and/or Christian, you can use respectability politics right back.
- CHUDs think they're the oppressed ones, or that they're being subject to excessive punishment for their crimes at best. So if they say something particularly racist, play along with their victimhood and say "No wonder liberals/minorities/LGBT people think we're all a bunch of nazis. Maybe if we weren't such assholes, we'd get the respect we deserve. Just saying"
TL;DR: You have too much class to argue during the Holidays, so don't because investing too much about politics is dumb. If you feel like it, try to win the dick-measuring contest some other way. Make the tastier cookies, tell some cool stories about your accomplishments or skills you're developing. Outdress everyone.
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"You don't think we should do anything about Ukraine?"
Me: "Nope. NATO shouldn't be encroaching on Russia, they're violating non-expansion agreements. And every clip I see of the war, the Ukrainian soldiers are sporting Nazi symbols on their uniforms."
"But that Putin is just another Trump!"
Me: "Yep. And the war is a bunch of awful people fighting other awful people, throwing more guns at it isn't going to stop it. We could be spending that support money on taking care of people here at home. We should massively defund the military and pull back our expeditionary units and close our bases around the world."
"Then what will stop China from invading?!".
Me: "Unlike the US government, China isn't surrounding every adversarial county with bases; that should clue you in about their values and priorities".
My wife prepared dinner for the whole lot because I had uni until Friday and then little one got sick so I had to take care of him while she did the whole thing basically herself, only for her parents and their partners to criticize today's lazy youth, jerk each other off over how much they let themselves be exploited by their employers and telling each other they did nothing wrong with how they raised kids while criticizing how we do it, all the while my wife is running the show. Absolute travesty I wish she could cut them out, its pure poison. Her sisters just sat there as well either trying to harmonize or relativize the indirect beratement or came out to help, while the boomers were gabbing about whatever trying to get in as many sideswipes in as possible.
I'm going to strongly suggest to her that next year we rethink the whole Christmas thing, because she is the whole reason the family got even together like it did. If she just doesn't organize it won't happen.
Christmas day family report:
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I gathered my chuddiest relatives to prime them for me having a son this year instead of a daughter. I more or less told them that I don't give a fuck what they think about it, but if you give my boy shit or make a big deal out of this, I'm going to make your pronouns were/was.
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My 20-something second cousin 110% wanted to fuck. Never mind my partner, or kids, or our generation-wide age gap. We had to have a serious Dad-to-Child style conversation about why that's fucked up and never gonna happen.
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All the kids under 16 are fucking monsters when they play Uno. This is the most normal thing that happened.
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A (same age) cousin received a warning that he needs to shut the fuck up before we headbutt him so hard we both scream. RE:
CW: gender slurs
he WOULD NOT STOP SAYING "removed", "removed", or "traps." Never mind him rambling non-stop how much he hates homeless people.
All in all it was a lovely Christmas.
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Thanks to all of our brave troops posting in the IRL trenches.
My wife and I are planning to have a struggle session over dinner tonight. Followed quickly by a snuggle session.
Heated debate about transgenderism. Looks like my dad had taken the bait and watches too much media. He dismissed transitioning as a legitimate treatment for gender dysphoria, insisting that those afflicted should take SSRIs or some such. My wife and I made the point that transitioning IS the treatment; it is drastically better in terms of outcomes and (can be) much less invasive and impactful. I think he also watched that (PragerU?) "documentary" that was promoted on X, I was able to shut him up by telling him that only 1 or 2 people in the last decade have regretted transitioning, but conservative media makes these cases seem more common than they are. Finally moved off the topic by pointing out that I dont really think its a big deal who plays which sports, considering the material state of the world. Now I'm kicking myself for not saying trans rights are human rights, and for moving to a meta-conversation about discourse like a fucking lib.
Trying to figure out my wife's cousin-in-law's views. Back when I was still on Facebook we posted similar hot takes and memes but it's was mostly stuff that could just easily be Demposting. So I've always just assumed he was a Dem maybe. We were talking quietly about the current political things on Saturday and he did a comical looking over his shoulder bit. I was like "so you are Dem leaning or..." but all he said was that he his views were closer to Dem.
So now I'm overthinking it lol. That could mean he's like Christian left or it could mean he's a libertarian or centrist or whatever.
I'll take overlapping views tho since the rest of the family is yuppity chud-central a lot of the time.
For example my brother-in-law just made a dumb comment on "if we are allowed to still call them tomboys" as if the commies have some sort of stranglehold on PC words or what he can and can't call people showing trans-positive traits or girls that just don't wanna wear frilly fucking dresses all the time. Like "here's my casual transphobe comment for the day!"
I just stayed home with my wife this year. My whole family is some kind of neuro-atypical but my wife and I being the most atypical, we always get bullied, my wife especially. Its just not worth the long drive to get drunk in the balmy south. My sister in law is always making snide comments, my brother tries to keep peace to a fault, my dad ignores it all, my mom is a narcissist, and my sister is weird like me but defends herself with being mean. I love them but they're exhausting and I want my wife to have a nice christmas.
We made a spinach lasagna for christmas eve, a big ham that we'll be processing for weeks for christmas day, and far more cookies than 2 people should be able to eat.
not an argument but im avoiding calling certain family members. im still mad about what she said about my mom.
Got into a debate with a friend about voting for Joe Biden.
I said I'd never vote for someone with full throated support for genocide and I would never budge regardless of harm reduction bullshit. She said "What's more important, American workers or people in Gaza?" Then she immediately changed it to "They both support genocide, so lets at least get the one with better worker rights."
Behind every mayo is the mask of an absolute fascist dictator.
Pretty bad one for pre-christmas get together. Grandma fear mongered about fent, dad and uncle were talking completely about chud politics and how the abortion rights protection referendum would allow abortion up to the date of birth, and sister started ranting about trans people.
We were at a restaurant, so I just announced that the food was making me sick and waited it out in the car.
My nearest family aren’t very chuddy and I’m the one that gets the most heated out of em so they’re cowed it isn’t really an issue at mine. Interesting to see all these examples.
Only one who can be a bit off is nan who has Alzheimer’s but somewhat strange beliefs. She loves the Somali, Kurdish and Iranian immigrants she interacts with but hisses about Finns.
I just sat at home all day because most of my family caught Covid.
Avoided extended family entirely this year. My partner and I hung out at home for the holidays, with Christmas movies on in the background and cookies in the oven. It was wonderful and relaxing without the social obligations and expectations.
Of course we got a little bit of the guilt trip, but we got COVID 2 weeks ago and that put a real damper on everything. Between social anxiety and still feeling like dogshit, we didn’t let the guilt get to us.
Fuck everyone, do what you want!
Not an argument but my leftist dad has been obnoxious since he came to Taiwan. He's never forgiven them for aiding Guatemala's right-wing dictators. So he keeps making jokes about Taiwan being the rebellious province of China in front of my wife's family. Thankfully she's the only one in her family that can speak fluent Spanish and just chuckles at them.
Didn't have an argument because I had to remain shut the whole dinner. But let me tell you if I had remained there 1 more fucking minute I would probably be hated by now.
They didn't touch on the Palestinian genocide or anything of that sort, but the antivax narrative, which is new comming from them, and the stuff they said about the 2 poorest neighbourhoods in our city is disgusting. Not only that, but there's also their praise of rich people, which is just, uuuhgh.
New Year's eve is gonna be worse, I can tell already.
explaining to my family that the reason i dont wear a wedding ring isnt because im a slut but because im not into consumerist rocks that cost 20k usd. im a fucking communist how do they not comprehend this ive said it a billion times. these same people will complain about shit like hijabs
also, despite them being christian, they were bewildered that i spend so much time helping homeless people. theyre so profit brained that jesus would lynch them for calling themselves christian
None to report this year, but mostly because my brothers and I played videogames all day. Very rare indeed.
I won't be having any familial conversations this year, but I imagine it would go like, "of course COVID is 'back', it's an election year
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I’m lucky to live in a family of turbo libs, but the casual ableism and transphobia is almost impressive at times
The type of people to give you all the affirmations while shedding tears as they lead you into the gas chambers tbh
My dad knows that if he defends nato in front of me I'll call him a dumb motherfucker until he shuts up. My mom doesn't really care
I actually had an OK-ish chat with my dad about transness...he's a huge contrarian and a pedant which makes talking about many things quite annoying, but thankfully he is not on social media at all so he is not completely pilled in any one direction. Once I introduced the phrase "decoupling sex and gender" he was able to at least grasp that, so.....baby steps. But who knows where we'll be at next year.
I got lucky and didn’t
Not me, but my dad and study abroad dad got into an argument about the Ukraine war. My dad is a standard pro Ukraine American liberal. Study abroad dad is also a liberal, but he stans Mearsheimer, so he has this weird hodgepodge ideology where he criticizes NATO expansionism but also loves Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
The closest I came was saying I wasn't a fan of Miracle on Ice, so it went very smoothly. I still had to get away a number of times cause I was getting overwhelmed by too much talking and simultaneous loud conversations.
GOOD thread
Can we have wholesome stuff too?
My fam (mostly centrists) watched Barbie on Christmas Eve and they now kinda start getting what the difference between liberal feminism and actual feminism is, without me having to interfere, this is the most i could get out of this i think so it was a good day.
had my political fight with the dumbfuck when the wizard game came out, he's still licking his wounds ig
was kinda hoping he would start shit so everyone could see that HE is the one trying to start shit forcing me to educate his ass, but no diceoverall a lovely dinner was had
Mine wasn't too bad. My brother-in-law said the standard (both sides) lib shit that John Oliver didn't really bother to dispell. I just dropped the subject, honestly.
Not a raging argument as such but still a
opinion from a relative.My mother in law does some off the books housekeeping work for an aristocratic family. They're the kind of upper class people who are utterly helpless when it comes to practical stuff and who can afford never to have learned to cook, clean and do laundry. My mother in law has assumed a weird kind of parental relation to the wife and talks a lot with her.
This Christmas my in-laws were going on and on about how poor these aristocrats were and how bad it was for them. My in-laws are as working class as it gets, they are both on disability, they don't own property, they've broken their bodies doing manual labour all their lives, they have to resort to off the books work and black market trading to enjoy just a little financial comfort and here they are feeling sad about the finances of someone who owns a fucking castle, a sizable amount of farmland and several rental properties. They can afford to serve their kid to some fancy foreign elite athletics school and to employ a housekeeper and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them for having no money?
False consciousness is one hell of a drug.
Urgh my mum keeps talking shit about young people not being able to buy houses and it's just so frustrating and stupid. She's barely worked a day in her life except for some easy job in the.com bubble but suddenly she's a financial authority.
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no granny, i will not be taking care of my brother another year, if he want to come with me fine im applying to grad school i hate my life i hate this town this place killed my mother and it will kill me too, i hate it here i hate breathe here, i CANT KEEP LIVING FOR OTHER PEOPLE, I NEED TO MAKE MYSELF HAPPY FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, I HAVE GIVEN EVERYTHING OF MY SELF TO OTHER PEOPLE WHO DONT FUCKING APPRECIATE ME. MY LIFE IS MY OWN. AND ALL I WANT IS TO GO TO A NICE GRAD SCHOOL AND TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF AND TO ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING HARD FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE.
