Imagine growing up in a household that shit talked Republicans hardcore, and then 12 years after leaving home finding out that dad is a Trump supporter 😮💨
I'm only half joking. I had a neighbor who I used to describe as slightly conservative-leaning. He suffered a brain injury on the job and is now a full tilt QAnon MAGA goofball.
There are several studies that clearly show political conservatism is legit brain damage. It's insidious too because their afraid of everything including admitting they have a problem so they never get help.
I knew a guy who was a philosophy major and his friend group was a bunch of atheist skeptics, so he knew all about logical fallacies and so on. He took a hard right turn into Pizzagate territory once Trump took office and now believes everything short of Flat Earth. (And maybe that, too. We haven't talked in a loooooong time.)
The only way it makes sense to me is to think that if you have no moral compass, you'll go whichever way the wind blows. Humans like to think that we're rational, logical beings (even if nobody else is), but the truth is that we're all driven by emotion. Strong values, such as a love of truth and hatred of bigotry, are what keep people from descending into this nonsense, not mere logic.
One of my old MMO friends came out as a MAGA after a year of raiding together. Tbh, it kind of didn't matter since we were killing shit in a game and it just didn't come up unless I was mentioning watching certain political satire shows. He wasn't an outstanding guy, but I've played with much worse people and would still consider him a friend.
Don't play with him anymore, but that was because of his other terrible life choices, going all in on playing League.
A guy at my D&D table went that way. Kinda glad the nights he doesn't come tbh. Just feel dirty associating with someone like that outside of work.
Oh hi it's you. My wife is an immigrant, my sister-in-law is trans, I'm an angry atheist and my life work is in the environmental sector. You hate my wife, my religion, my sister-in-law, and my career. Yet here I am spending time with you freely.
It helps that in my case, the guy was mostly just enthralled in the cult of personality. Union guy, not religious, etc.. If someone you know was part of a cult, you can either express concern and try and help, or leave them be. I ended up doing the latter, especially since back then maga was still a new term.
I'm sorry that happened to you. It's a mental disease that hopefully gets recognized as such before everyone's dead including them, by their own hands.
Did he attempt to Make America Great Again and fail? Or did he make it great, it immediately stopped being great once Biden took office, and now it has to be made great again?
I like to put watermarks in the middle of songs in my playlists, like a lion's roar in the back with a Steven Hawking-like voice in the fore, saying some flat 'n' plastic-positive thing like "oh yeah!".