Goddam this one was heartbreaking
Comment on [deleted]
weeeeum@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I’m in a very similar spot. My mom is starting to slip mentally and the further she slides, the more hateful she becomes. Before she knew and were friends with many diverse people. Now she hates their kind. Gays, trans, immigrants, blacks, etc.
I theorize the more you decline mentally, and lose your ability to critically think, the most convincing arguments are most repeated ones. I’ve noticed that the strength of her opinions are usually based on the frequency that she hears it. I can predict how often she’s gonna start ranting about black people, trans pedophiles, electric vehicles by the amount of content she’s watching. The more she watches, the more she argues.
I can’t seem to break her out of this cycle. The right has thoroughly brainwashed her that Democrats and leftists are scum and should only exist to be shamed and exiled. If an opinion or fact is even slightly related to democratic values, she just shuts off and rejects it.
She had a PhD and was extremely successful but now she has difficulty just using the oven. There are days when she is lucid and relatively straight thinking but other days she is entirely unintelligible and relies heavily on hand gestures.
Sometimes I wish she would pass. She causes so much pain for everyone around her (my sisters went no contact) and she is in pain herself. She is so extremely stressed and fears that antifa is going to burn down all of the great American cities, the homeless and blacks are going to ravage and loot everything and the left will be complicit since it’s their “ultimate goal” to destroy america.
It makes me extremely sad.
CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 3 months ago
The irony being they are actually correct in some cases. Lots of leftists want to destroy the state, and national borders in favour of a unified world. You also have tankies that want death to America specifically, and honestly I can understand the feeling.
Facebones@reddthat.com 3 months ago
I don’t think wanting to end America is “tankie,” you’re just using dramatic phrasing. We have a corporate right wing government that has cut off all roads to influencing politics to the left that pretends to fight between two sides which are actually unified in fighting off anything left of the mid right wing.
Feeling that there’s no pulling back seems perfectly reasonable to me. Institutions aren’t infallible eternal entities and their time sometimes comes. We’d all love a peaceful transition that doesn’t ruin anyone’s day to day, but how much systemic violence does it take before responding with violence is the only tangible response?
Machinist@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It hurts a whole lot. I can’t find a cure for their sick and I’ve tried.
Bless her heart, I don’t think she can help it. I don’t think you can fix it.
We can’t fix or help them. They’re sick in a bad way and we have to move on and take care of the ones that will let us.