Twitter Reports MAGA Relatives Having Second Thoughts

[Soph0571]

Twitter noted a new trend this Thanksgiving Day: MAGA relatives who are having second thoughts or maybe even outright rejecting their Trump worshipping past.

That's great, BUT...

Watch out! The media would love to kum-bay-ah these numbnuts back into the political fold. NO WAY! They don't get a pass to pretend they never knew Trump, like they did with George W. Bush. NO Tea Party rebranding. No "I'm an independent." No pretending Trump never existed and now they're going to wear coffee filters on our heads and scream about "The Democrat Party and Socialism!!!"

[link:https://crooksandliars.com/2018/11/twitter-reporting-maga-relatives-having|

We'll see...

[katmondoo]

1. Starting January 2019 the news will be filled with what the Democrats are doing

to right the wrongs caused by trump, it will be every day. I can't wait.

[dawg day]

2. Sigh, mine said she was "proud" to have voted for him.

The only good sign was she turned her face away and wouldn't look at me when she said it, and couldn't say why she was proud.

She also said, "It doesn't matter. I'm old. I won't be alive next election."

I suggested that if she is, she might think about those who won't be dead for a long time, like her grandchildren.
I wish that would matter to her more than some tax cut she didn't even benefit from (being on social security).

[Cousin Dupree]

3. Just watched the movie "The Brainwashing of my Dad". Worth watching. Good explanations of the

right wing plot to turn people.

[sharedvalues]

7. +1 Great movie!

Incredibly insightful and informative. And useful about what to do.

[violetpastille]

9. +1

I watched it last night on Amazon Prime.

You have to get through the framing device of the "Dad" in question, but the center of the film has a lot of great interviews. The filmmaker had access to a lot of major players and authors. I wished there was more of for instance, Frank Luntz demonstrating the Fox news hand gestures - and less of "Dad" on the big comfy chair saying "I agree with everything Rush Limbaugh ever said."

The end is pat, but I agree this a solution that will work for the very elderly:

1. Let the radio die and don't buy a replacement.
2. Buy a new television and don't teach dad how to use it.
3. Unsubscribe to his hate emails. Subscribe to emails of your liking. He'll read anything.
4. Enjoy!

For someone who is working and driving and is independent, the deprogramming will need to be a lot more sophisticated.

[Johnny2X2X]

4. One at a time

It’s worth flipping people one at a time. Not all can be reached, but enough can.

I have a work friend, he’s a good person who still supports Trump. He’s the rarest of them, but they still exist. You have to understand, FOX News is extremely powerful, if you watch FOX Trump is the greatest. Everything is seen through that Prism. To FOX viewers Trump is rough around the edges, but is doing a great job.

You have to plant some seeds with people. This guy asked me what I thought about the caravan. I mentioned how there was a bigger caravan in May, but no one cares about it because there wasn’t an election. He has never heard about previous caravans. He’s the type of guy who will probably look into it and ask me about it again later. Plant little seeds of doubt, some of them will germinate.

[Hortensis]

8. I agree. There's nothing to be gained by abusing and rejecting

people who realize they've made a mistake, and a very great deal still in danger of being lost. To do so would be to indulge in the same sort of dysfunctional hyperpartisanism that powered their behaviors in the first place.

Of course, anyone whose real wish is to destroy the democracy we all grew up with and struggle on under whatever kind of authoritarian government replaced it should do his or her best to maintain the current poisonous divisions. But no sensible person is recommending that.

[violetpastille]

10. I agree.

Anyone who can be flipped is flippable.

I know I have at times fallen for xenophobic propaganda when it was promulgated by sources I trusted at the time, NYT in particular.

I don't think the trick is to swap out Fox for MSNBC. I think the trick is to get people out their homes and into the world.

And if that is not physically possible seek out books, films and television that portray other ways of living, being and believing.

Anything we can do to break out of our tribal identities and to think of ourselves as members of a world family will protects us against propaganda and fear mongers.

[Hortensis]

12. "I think the trick is to get people ... into the world."

Yes. Exposure to different people does wonders overall. We have a whole world, in a matter of speaking, right here in one nation.

It might work best to use these huge social forces to encourage rebuilding of a national tribal unity, not nationalism but the kind of imperfect but comparative unity we had when the right saw the great existential enemy they always know exists as external and focused their hostility outward. Russia, of course.

I remember what happened immediately after the cold war was cancelled. With help from right-wing manipulators like Gingrich and company, the right identified the new huge, existential enemy they must destroy before it destroys them as now being internal -- in the Democrats and liberalism, epitomized by the Clintons and big cultural changes. Their fears and hostility were refocused against us, and here we are.

They're not going to become less fearful in this era of great uncertainty and must know who their great enemy is so they can protect themselves. That fear is unfortunately not resolvable any time soon, but it could be used to help pull us together, in the process lessening those internal divisions. Similar to how POC unite in a mostly monolithic front against external threats.

Not quite the direction you were thinking of, of course, but similar pragmatic approach as Hillary's recommendation that the first priority is to restore internal stability and confidence that European governments serve their peoples' wishes.

[Jarqui]

11. "It's worth flipping people one at a time. Not all can be reached, but enough can. "

That's how I've gone about it.
Had some success.
And I've had some failure.

I do not run into a lot of them because the folks I typically hang with wouldn't care for Trump and don't.

[Soph0571]

6. nonsense

[Nitram]

13. I'll take them back if they admit they were wrong.

[chwaliszewski]

14. It's kind of like this, to me...

The MAGAts (kids) trashed the house and now the Democrats (parents) are coming home in January to put a foot in their ass.

[ffr]

15. No, it must be talked about with these folks. Only through humiliation will it sink in

They need to know that they've done damage, decades worth of damage, to the country and to their fellow Americans. This must not happen again, ever! And that point has to be driven home so that the next time they're taking the GOP propaganda word for word, you can remind them of that humiliation you put them through.

Never again.

[brush]

16. I attended a reunion late last month of some college buddies from back in the day.

The discussion turned to politics and one friend said he liked trump.

Of course we questioned him. I said, you know he's a racist, right (we're AAs)?

He said he liked the economy and how it's helping his investments. Well, this happened right after that big 1300-some drop in the DOW which is what I came back with. I told him your whole gain for the year was just wiped out.

He couldn't really respond and started walking away. I probably pissed him off but I yelled after him I was disappointed in him. If I lost a friend, that's ok. I hope I planted a seed. It's probably sprouted by now, what with the latest big drops in the market.

[ck4829]

17. Let's just make sure trumpgrets needs to be "Trump was wrong", not "Trump wasn't Trump enough"