Joy & Austin 33: Pregnant Again

[lumpentheologie]

Nowadays I don’t know anyone socially who owns a gun, but several of my extended family members do, all former military. One cousin is an avid gun collector and shoots regularly at the range. He’s a Trump loving Covid denier but so dedicated to gun safety that he was lamenting not being able to buy any more guns since he didn’t have room for a bigger gun safe. He’s in his fifties, no kids, married to a nurse. But a gun out of a safe was unthinkable to him. 

[Expectopatronus]

@AverageGiraffe I only know one person who owns a gun; my friend’s brother who is a police officer. They aren’t easily accessible in Canada and I hope it stays that way. I support the gun registry because, hey, you have to register your car, your dog, your cat so why not your gun? I’m not opposed to other people hunting (not my thing but if they eat what they kill then go for it) but I don’t think everyone needs a gun. 

[libgirl2]

8 minutes ago, lumpentheologie said:

Nowadays I don’t know anyone socially who owns a gun, but several of my extended family members do, all former military. One cousin is an avid gun collector and shoots regularly at the range. He’s a Trump loving Covid denier but so dedicated to gun safety that he was lamenting not being able to buy any more guns since he didn’t have room for a bigger gun safe. He’s in his fifties, no kids, married to a nurse. But a gun out of a safe was unthinkable to him. 

Well, I guess that is something. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

I think I’ve shot a BB gun. Does that count? 
 

I didn’t shoot my eye out. 

[AnywhereButHere]

A friend of ours owns a gun range. We’re all going the day after Christmas. Family field trip I guess. My father in law was in the French army when he was young, but hasn’t touched a gun since then, husband went to the range once and fired a WWII era thing, and the rest of us have never been near one that I know of. This should be interesting… I mean, most people give me a good 10 foot clearance radius when I go bowling, so I’m not sure any of us want me firing a weapon. 

[patsymae]

On 12/15/2022 at 8:23 AM, Cam said:

Oh yeah.

 

I record local history by photographing headstones at cemeteries in my area and posting them on an Ancestry website. It’s been fascinating to realize how often the graves of extended families are clustered together, altho you can’t always tell until you start connecting the dots. Currently I’m documenting an old Irish section of a cemetery where most headstones are from the 1800s-early 1900s. There’s a perpetuation of same first names over and over. Of course, John and Mary are proliferate and also Patrick, Thomas, Sarah. The name Bridget seems even more common than Mary and I see Agnes a lot. I’ve seen Annabelle several times. It’s almost a relief when I encounter an uncommonly used first name which especially helps if I need to research the family for birth and death dates, etc.

I grew up Catholic. One of my sisters is named Mary. No middle name, but quite often when she was growing up, people (like teachers) tried to add one. It seemed to throw them off that she wasn’t Mary Jo, Mary Beth, Mary Sue, Mary Jane, etc. Another sister and I have uncommon names; my parents “created” my sister’s name forming two family members’ names, so she’s the only one I’ve ever heard with her name; she’s gone by a nickname her whole life. My brothers don’t have unusual names but they’re not overly common, either. Aside from Mary, none of us have names from the Bible.

 

I get what you mean about finding people. I fell down the ancestry rabbit hole over the summer and it didn't help that on both sides of my family there are a zillion people named Francis, Sean/John, Elizabeth and Catherine. A few Moon Units and Pilot Inspektors would have made it a lot easier to keep track of people.

[feministxtian]

Names - On the Cuban side of my family, two names get recycled or variations of them are used. Nearly every female has Maria in their name. My mom was Maria, I have a couple of cousins with Maria in their names. The other one is variations on Carolina. My grandmother was Carola, my aunt was Carolina and I'm Caroline. For the males, Jose is the name that gets used all the time. My grandfather was Jose, my uncle was Jose, a variety of male cousins are Jose. 

Guns - we had handguns for years until I sold them for reasons. I want another one because I love going to the range and shooting. 

[libgirl2]

On 12/17/2022 at 1:13 PM, feministxtian said:

Names - On the Cuban side of my family, two names get recycled or variations of them are used. Nearly every female has Maria in their name. My mom was Maria, I have a couple of cousins with Maria in their names. The other one is variations on Carolina. My grandmother was Carola, my aunt was Carolina and I'm Caroline. For the males, Jose is the name that gets used all the time. My grandfather was Jose, my uncle was Jose, a variety of male cousins are Jose. 

Guns - we had handguns for years until I sold them for reasons. I want another one because I love going to the range and shooting. 

Domincan side, all three of  my female cousins have Maria in their names, the three males (and one who died as an infant) have Manuel. 

Edited December 19, 2022 by libgirl2

[Smee]

I don’t know anyone in my area who has a gun. I know 3 people in total who have guns, 1 is a cop so hers stays locked up at her workplace when she’s not on duty, the other 2 live in a country town (5hrs drive from where I am now) and use their guns for shooting rabbits and kangaroos. Registered, in a safe, ammo locked up separately, because thems the rules in Aus. Then again plenty of US republicans seem to think I live in an oppressive dictatorship where all citizens were locked up for 2 years during covid, and we couldn’t protect ourselves from being pinned down and forcibly vaccinated because we don’t have any guns at all, so our comparably tiny rate of gun deaths probably doesn’t mean much.

[GuineaPigCourtship]

@Smee so you're telling me an entire country was held down and forcibly vaccinated?  By kangaroos?  I'll tell my republican coworkers they were right. /s

[Smee]

Well it depends how deep you think the conspiracy goes. MAYBE that’s just a story to make people believe vaccination is safe, because MAYBE the earth is flat and Australia isn’t real at all but the whole country was made up by the CIA. Maybe kangaroos are a result of experimental government breeding programs. You can’t trust anything they tell you.

[Keys]

8 hours ago, Smee said:

Well it depends how deep you think the conspiracy goes. MAYBE that’s just a story to make people believe vaccination is safe, because MAYBE the earth is flat and Australia isn’t real at all but the whole country was made up by the CIA. Maybe kangaroos are a result of experimental government breeding programs. You can’t trust anything they tell you.

I know this is sarcasm and it gave me a good chuckle! But the scary/sad thing is some people really DO think this way. I’ve watched family members spiral into these dark conspiracy theory rabbit holes, and the stuff they’d post on social media got progressively more and more crazy. I eventually unfriended them, mostly because of their Covid conspiracies and I couldn’t stomach that while working on the frontlines of it myself. It’s a slippery slope!

[Giraffe]

30 minutes ago, Keys said:

I know this is sarcasm and it gave me a good chuckle! But the scary/sad thing is some people really DO think this way. I’ve watched family members spiral into these dark conspiracy theory rabbit holes, and the stuff they’d post on social media got progressively more and more crazy. I eventually unfriended them, mostly because of their Covid conspiracies and I couldn’t stomach that while working on the frontlines of it myself. It’s a slippery slope!

I’ve experienced similar. It’s been shocking to watch. My Q parent has become a flat earther and will occasionally send me bizarre texts about needing to store up resources (food, withdraw large amounts of cash) because of dire emergencies that are right around the corner. I found The Q-dropped podcast and it’s stories like ours. It’s heartbreaking. 

[noseybutt]

Similar experience here. It makes me sad. I can interact with certain family members but it’s a lot like interacting with people with psychosis—-strong boundaries and plenty of empathy but no engagement on the conspiracies. Their extreme anxiety is exhausting. So much determination not to be at peace over anything or with anyone.

[Giraffe]

56 minutes ago, noseybutt said:

Their extreme anxiety is exhausting.

It is! I’ve never been close to my Q parent but now it’s impossible to have any conversation more than social niceties. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

Luckily I don’t have any Q parents. But I do have parents who are what you could call Q adjacent. They believe everything Fox News spews and that means some of the milder conspiracies leak into those beliefs. So maybe not flat earth. But that there was corruption in the 2020 election. 

[mango_fandango]

Don’t some people also believe that Finland isn’t real?? People are just batshit.

[KWLand]

6 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

Don’t some people also believe that Finland isn’t real?? People are just batshit.

In my experience. Conspiracy theorists are under educated so they would not be able to tell you Finland was a country. 

[noseybutt]

9 minutes ago, KWLand said:

In my experience. Conspiracy theorists are under educated so they would not be able to tell you Finland was a country. 

Unfortunately that’s not my experience. My family members down the rabbit hole have undergraduate and graduate degrees. It’s not lack of education or intelligence.

[EmiSue]

1 hour ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

Luckily I don’t have any Q parents. But I do have parents who are what you could call Q adjacent. They believe everything Fox News spews and that means some of the milder conspiracies leak into those beliefs. So maybe not flat earth. But that there was corruption in the 2020 election. 

This describes my mom and stepdad and most of my aunts and uncles. Fox broke all their brains.

[Giraffe]

3 hours ago, noseybutt said:

Unfortunately that’s not my experience. My family members down the rabbit hole have undergraduate and graduate degrees. It’s not lack of education or intelligence.

Same here. No one has a phd but only one has “only” a bachelors degree. The others have Masters. 

[Cam]

5 hours ago, noseybutt said:

I can interact with certain family members but it’s a lot like interacting with people with psychosis—-strong boundaries and plenty of empathy but no engagement on the conspiracies. 

Strong boundaries, most definitely. I have different tips and lists pinned to a Pinterest board on boundaries and skim over them from time to time to remind myself to keep them in place. I used to suck so incredibly badly when it came to having boundaries. Now I see them as my sanity savers.

How is it that even the well educated fall down rabbit holes of conspiracy? And how did they all seem to so recently appear in the past few years? Are some people’s brains not grounded in reality to begin with?

[HeartsAFundie]

In the last few years of her life, my mother became a big Fox News fan and Trump supporter and was so excited when he won the election in 2016.   She used to tell me that Fox News-which was on constantly in my parents' home-was the only station that told the truth about what was going on.   My dad, who was always more liberal than she was, simply kept silent.  I suspect it was because my mother had numerous medical issues that decreased her mobility and forced her on oxygen, so he didn't want to make waves.  

She passed in 2017, right before Christmas and I shudder to think what could have transpired if my mom had lived through the entire Trump presidency up to and including the insurrection as well as the pandemic. Would she have gone down the Q-Anon rabbit hole?  Would she have insisted my dad fly a "Let's Go Brandon" flag in front of the house?  Would she have gone anti-vax and subsequently attempted to force that mindset on my more liberal, pro-vax dad (whom we would have promptly snuck off to CVS for his shots)?  Would she have ended up contracting COVID with her compromised immune system and earned her Herman Cain Award?  My dad and I have actually discussed this matter and he felt that her pro-vaccine stance and respect for science would have won out in the end, but honestly, after reading about intelligent, educated people getting sucked into this craziness, who really knows?   

Not surprisingly, since my dad has been widowed, Fox News has NEVER shown its face on his television and likely never will.  

Edited December 23, 2022 by HeartsAFundie

[marmalade]

My 90 year old MIL just told my SIL that Trump was sent from God. We have told her on a weekly basis not to discuss religion or politics with us, yet she pulls bullshit like this. 

Speaking of bullshit, are the Forsyths still involved with that redneck think tank, the Freedomists? I remember them mocking hand sanitizer at the beginning of the pandemic. 

[Keys]

8 hours ago, Giraffe said:

I’ve experienced similar. It’s been shocking to watch. My Q parent has become a flat earther and will occasionally send me bizarre texts about needing to store up resources (food, withdraw large amounts of cash) because of dire emergencies that are right around the corner. I found The Q-dropped podcast and it’s stories like ours. It’s heartbreaking. 

Hugs - that would be really hard if it’s a parent. 😞 Mine are all distant cousins. Although, my brothers have done somewhat of a 180 with Covid stuff too. They were initially very cautious, and one brother was even coordinating efforts to help people get vaccines that were leftover at the end of the day back when eligibility was limited as they were first coming out. For about the last year, they both have suddenly switched to anti-Covid vax, anti-masks, no testing or isolating while sick, etc. They’re both also politically very conservative. As a new mom who’s a healthcare worker and more liberal politically, it’s definitely caused some tension because I’m trying to protect my baby, have seen firsthand the devastation of Covid and still take it very seriously, and idk, I am comfortable with my political values. So it’s hard when your family thinks less of you for that. 😞

I remember reading an article about why some people fall prey and spiral into such deep conspiracy theories. It talked about how there’s actually no correlation with intelligence or level of education. It is apparently mostly related to feelings of deep insecurity in the world as an attempt to make sense of the situation, often during a time of uncertainty (like a pandemic), and that people with certain personality traits like eccentric or paranoid thinking are more prone. So likely there were a lot of those prone people who were tipped over the edge when Covid started. 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Keys