Joy & Austin 33: Pregnant Again

[Giraffe]

Thanks, @Keys, I'm sorry you're experiencing it too. The flip-flopping is confusing to me, too. A couple of these same family members were so careful initially that when they were allowed to visit their dying* loved one during the first few months of the pandemic they chose not to in order to avoid covid!

 

*Not covid related. 

[KWLand]

I don’t know if I would be able to have a relationship with an educated Q/conspiracy theorist.  My brother is one, as well as a few other family/friends and I’m able to because I tell myself they aren’t educated enough to look into it themselves.  It’s more for my comfort and I see them so rarely, that it’s not much of an issue. 
 

I watched Fox News while in the hospital and once on a hotel.  Once it was during/right after a presidential speech so I flipped between the news, Fox and another news station (can’t remember which one) and it was eye opening to see the difference between the reporting.  One station stuck to facts of what was said/happening and the other inserted opinions.  The station that gave opinions sounded much like a fundie sermon.

Re the gun discussion:  I assume we know more people than we think that own guns, I just have no need to know they own guns.  I know our military and hunting family members do, but other than that have no clue.  

[shesinsane]

11 hours ago, Keys said:

[snip]

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. 

That and since 1997, there has been a news channel on US television screaming "Don't trust anyone but us!" and their viewers took it to heart. After more than 2 decades of exposure to this "We will tell you what reality is," the source is aware that it can broadcast half truths and full lies and their viewers will accept all the lies as fact. The viewers have been conditioned and it works; you can show a Fox News viewer footage of a Trump support stabbing a police officer with a sharpened flag pole and they'll reply "the crowd was unarmed and peaceful." Because that's what Fox News told them happened, and one video can't undo almost 25 years of brain washing.

Note: I typed all of the above before reading @KWLand's post, and yeah, that's another things Fox News is great at: presenting opinion as fact and to an audience that wants to believe.

My friend's mother bought the house next door to be closer to her grand baby (my friend's kid). The mother gets all her info for Fox News, so in addition to minorities and Democrats, she's also terrified of crime and home invasions. Her daughter, who has lived in that neighborhood for over a decade, has repeatedly told her mother that the only time the police have been around was due to noise complaints. Instead of believing her own child/neighbor/longtime resident, who insists the neighborhood is saying its safe, the mother keeps watching Fox News and fretting that any minute someone will break into her house. Even her cherished granddaughter telling her the neighborhood is safe doesn't have an impact.

[noseybutt]

It’s easier to make sense of this if you think of radicalization more broadly. 

IMO there are healthy forms of radicalization. Think of the abolitionists and suffragettes who were far out of step with their time. Their way of thinking recognized injustice towards others and sought to correct that in a self-sacrificing way. 

There are other forms of radicalization that are deeply problematic because it’s horrifically self centered and dehumanizing to other people. As @Keys was saying, the Q movement attracts insecure and anxious  and angry people who are fearful of a changing world. They want secret inside knowledge to feel less powerless. During the pandemic, many of these people seem to have connected virtually and that made them feel less lonely. And developing relationships inside echo chambers means there is no reality testing and no check as the beliefs get stranger and stranger.

 I try hard not to cut off connections with people down the hole but dang. I pass no judgement on others who simply can’t take it and draw tighter boundaries. Because it’s awful. It’s especially awful when you’ve been on the front lines and then have loved ones trash on the sacrifices and the stress.

The fact that educated people fall prey to the conspiracies doesn’t bother me as much as the fact that some of the most angry people I know have little to be angry about. They have jobs, health, access to education, maybe not rich but also light years from poverty. We are living in an era that has challenges but also hecka comforts and some are determined to dwell on the anxiety instead of enjoying life.

[Cam]

Such great posts and well thought-out comments, shesinsane and noseybutt. Yes, to the Jan 6 footage showing a police officer being stabbed and Fox viewers saying it was a peaceful gathering. It’s quite sickening. Poses the other question, how do Fox infotainment hosts sleep at night? They suck so effing bad. 

Regarding those who have so little to complain about, at a garden club get together I attended, one of the women said she couldn’t believe she was so excited to find celery for 99 cents at the store. I could tell she wanted the conversation to veer off about inflation but I wasn’t having it. We were at her relatively new house with riverfront property, prime real estate in this town. I didn’t realize when I joined the club the members leaned conservative, so my membership will be short lived.

 

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Cam

[noseybutt]

8 minutes ago, Cam said:

Such great posts and well thought-out comments, shesinsane and noseybutt. Yes, to the Jan 6 footage showing a police officer being stabbed and Fox viewers saying it was a peaceful gathering. It’s quite sickening. Poses the other question, how do Fox infotainment hosts sleep at night? They suck so effing bad. 

Regarding those who have so little to complain about, at a garden club get together I attended, one of the women said she couldn’t believe she was so excited to find celery for 99 cents at the store. I could tell she wanted the conversation to veer off about inflation but I wasn’t having it. We were at her relatively new house with riverfront property, prime real estate in this town. I didn’t realize when I joined the club the members leaned conservative, so my membership will be short lived.

 

 

Srsly. Complaining about the inflated price of celery about sums it up. 😂

[neuroticcat]

Saw this floating around twitter today. QAnon people indoctrinating their kids. Distressing new cult fundamentalism: 

 

[CaptainFunderpants]

On 12/22/2022 at 12:26 PM, 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. 

Mine too! All of it. Including the flat earth thing. And like some of the others chiming in... She's really well educated. MD + PhD and has fallen down the Q rabbit hole.

Never got vaccinated; now works out of a clinic that doesn't require them. Everything is a conspiracy. It's to the point that if she tells me the weather, I check my phone just to be sure. There is no safe conversation. Clouds are a conspiracy and she refers to them as "fake clouds." The cold snap is a conspiracy. Sunscreen is a conspiracy. A food item being on sale one week and not the next? CONSPIRACY.

And because she has that damn PhD, none of our opinions matter because we "don't know how to do research," despite our immediate family consisting of an MD, JD, and two MScs.

I finally called my dad when I knew he was at work and was like "What are we gonna do?" and he was like "I don't know. I honestly really don't know." They're cruising toward a divorce and I don't even know if my mom'll care -social pressures she's cared about her whole life are starting to not matter because in addition to being mad at Dad and the rest of us for getting vaccinated, she's pissed at the LDS Church for supporting vaccinations.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

[JDuggs]

I feel really badly for everyone experiencing parents getting deeper into conservative politics, conspiracy theories, etc. My dad was politically conservative, but he died over 25 years ago and it just wasn’t as contentious then or I was burying my head in the sand. If he had been a Trumper, I think it would have ruined our family relationships which would have been so depressing. I honestly don’t know if he would have supported Trump or not.

[Cam]

I really don’t understand the flat earthers. 
Captainfunderpants, I have no advice. Like JDuggs, both my parents passed away years ago. I would say that you aren’t responsible for your mother’s choices, so if she finds herself getting divorced from your dad due to her conspiratorial mentality, it’s just something that you have to step aside and let happen. I don’t know that her beliefs are something that you could change or get her to sort of snap out of and see reality. I’m sorry.

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by Cam

[WatchingTheTireFireBurn]

One of my (formally "normal" conservative) relatives went from getting the vaccine at first to now stating that she won't get boosted because "obviously" people who get boosted die more frequently. I don't believe any of our near relatives have died of covid before or after vaccines. So the source of this info? Tv? Conspiracy friends? Hard to tell.

I've also had an uptick in people telling me how horrible crime is now and how we need to "be protected" despite overall actual crime stats going down for decades prior to covid. The crime that worries me most is shootings. Both mass shootings and all the individual ones too. USA has lost it over guns. Safety training is nothing, and there's a whole culture of shoot first ask questions later.

[JermajestyDuggar]

41 minutes ago, WatchingTheTireFireBurn said:

One of my (formally "normal" conservative) relatives went from getting the vaccine at first to now stating that she won't get boosted because "obviously" people who get boosted die more frequently. I don't believe any of our near relatives have died of covid before or after vaccines. So the source of this info? Tv? Conspiracy friends? Hard to tell.

I've also had an uptick in people telling me how horrible crime is now and how we need to "be protected" despite overall actual crime stats going down for decades prior to covid. The crime that worries me most is shootings. Both mass shootings and all the individual ones too. USA has lost it over guns. Safety training is nothing, and there's a whole culture of shoot first ask questions later.

I’ve actually explained to my mom that violent crime and stranger kidnappings are down compared to when I was growing up (80s and 90s). But she still seems to think the world is just so bad. But I will say, she’s always been like this. She was pretty protective in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up. She always thought there were many weirdos just around the corner ready to kidnap kids. Random stranger kidnappings were higher back then, but still pretty rare. 

Edited December 25, 2022 by JermajestyDuggar

[WatchingTheTireFireBurn]

3 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I’ve actually explained to my mom that violent crime and stranger kidnappings are down compared to when I was growing up (80s and 90s). But she still seems to think the world is just so bad. But I will say, she’s always been like this. She was pretty protective in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up. She always thought there were many weirdos just around the corner ready to kidnap kids. Random stranger kidnappings were higher back then, but still pretty rare. 

When I was growing up my mom would lock the door to go get the mail. Because she was convinced a murderer/rapist would suddenly sneak in the house while she was at the mailbox.

 

We did get cars stolen and broken into a fair amt in the 80s/90s. I can't think of when I've heard of a known to me person having that happen in recent years (decades?). Living in pretty much the same area as then.

[anjulibai]

I think crime is down because people are more vigilent than they once were. I'm not sure the world is safer, per se, or that people are better behaved, we just don't allow as many opportunities for crime as once existed. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

I think the cameras everywhere and people with cameras on their phone means someone is always watching. If you kidnap a random kid off the street in broad daylight, I bet a camera will catch at least your car or even your license plate for the world to see. Same for stealing from stores. There are cameras all over stores. It’s harder to get away with crimes now because of the technology. So either people get craftier with their crimes, or they just don’t risk it. 

[Keys]

On 12/23/2022 at 12:01 AM, Giraffe said:

Thanks, @Keys, I'm sorry you're experiencing it too. The flip-flopping is confusing to me, too. A couple of these same family members were so careful initially that when they were allowed to visit their dying* loved one during the first few months of the pandemic they chose not to in order to avoid covid!

 

*Not covid related. 

Thanks 💜 and wow, that’s quite a flip! One of my brothers would get so upset at any family member who did anything that he didn’t feel was 100% safe at the beginning. So it makes no sense to me either. 
 

Re: crime. My parents live in a very good/safe/nice neighbourhood, but if they leave their vehicles unlocked at night, they will get broken into. They don’t leave anything of value in them, but they will steal any change they have in the cup holders. When I lived there, I couldn’t lock my car because the lock was jammed (old car so didn’t bother fixing), and one night someone broke in and burned a cigarette into the seat then left the butt on the floor. Super lovely. They’ve also had their shed broken into twice with bikes stolen. My in-laws live in a slightly less nice neighbourhood and have had the same issues. Someone once ripped a stop sign out of the ground and used it to break the car windows (FIL had a pair of runners stolen from his car when this happened). It’s super unfortunate and just seems like it happens regardless of which neighbourhood you live in. 

[Hazelbunny]

I think it might just seem like there is more Crime, because you hear about every little thing that has happened on Social Media ect. People used to have TV/Radio and a newspaper once a day. Nowadays you get News on your phone 24/7, so obviously you "hear" about more crime happening. 

[SassyPants]

Over the years we have lived in all kinds of settings and communities., from our first home fixer upper to our current beach house. The only time we ever had a break in was when we lived in a gated community. Go figure, right… Middle of the day on a Saturday. We were away and had set our alarm. The thieves took sports memorabilia off the wall-

[JermajestyDuggar]

We live in a neighborhood with lots of police presence and is considered fairly safe. Sure there aren’t drive by shootings or murders. But there are lots of car break ins. Plus we have a lot of detached garages because it’s an old neighborhood. So people will steal from detached garages all the time. Even though lots of people have cameras on their porches, you still get people stealing packages off of porches. These are smaller crimes. I admit that. But there is still crime. So I guess there is always crime. I guess it’s just the types of crime that may be different from place to place. 

[GuineaPigCourtship]

People stealing cars from small towns is a big issue in CT.  There is some organization at work since the thieves will hit an an area for a while and then move on, but the cars tend to be found stripped in bad areas of New Haven or Hartford.  We always lock our cars since they seem to go for cars that are unlocked primarily, ideally ones where people leave the keys in them.  Why would anyone do that?  Good question at this point, but some do.  The argument on my town page is always that we live in a small town and shouldn't have to lock our cars!

I imagine this issue isn't isolated to my state, it's just the only place I'm familiar with.

[Cam]

My very small city has a couple of Facebook pages, run by average citizens, not city run, and if there is a crime, it’s almost always posted about immediately. It’s extremely helpful because everyone in town becomes vigilant and you can find out what’s being targeted, if anything, or what area of town is getting hit, which is often not reported by the area newspaper or tv station located in another city. There’s very little crime to speak of here, but once in a blue moon, something might go down. Still, we lock our doors at night.

The only time in over 30 years we had an issue was about five years ago on Halloween night, our locked garage was broken into and two cars unlocked inside were ransacked and a minor amount of small change taken. It appeared the burglar used something like a screwdriver to pry open the garage door. Seems like a lot of work to steal $12.50 in quarters and dimes; no tools or anything stolen. We immediately bought and installed a deadbolt and upgraded the motion detector light to something brighter with farther reaching detection radar; no problems since. A rash of break-ins occurred that night but it was before the FB pages were created so no one was ever nabbed for the crime. 

[Expectopatronus]

My garage has been broken into twice in the last six months as was a neighbour’s. It was around the same time that signs along the walking trails were tagged so some activity was happening. The violent crime rate though is pretty close to zero so I would still call it a safe area. Theft in my province is up since the start of the pandemic. 

[noseybutt]

On 12/23/2022 at 11:39 PM, CaptainFunderpants said:

Mine too! All of it. Including the flat earth thing. And like some of the others chiming in... She's really well educated. MD + PhD and has fallen down the Q rabbit hole.

Never got vaccinated; now works out of a clinic that doesn't require them. Everything is a conspiracy. It's to the point that if she tells me the weather, I check my phone just to be sure. There is no safe conversation. Clouds are a conspiracy and she refers to them as "fake clouds." The cold snap is a conspiracy. Sunscreen is a conspiracy. A food item being on sale one week and not the next? CONSPIRACY.

And because she has that damn PhD, none of our opinions matter because we "don't know how to do research," despite our immediate family consisting of an MD, JD, and two MScs.

I finally called my dad when I knew he was at work and was like "What are we gonna do?" and he was like "I don't know. I honestly really don't know." They're cruising toward a divorce and I don't even know if my mom'll care -social pressures she's cared about her whole life are starting to not matter because in addition to being mad at Dad and the rest of us for getting vaccinated, she's pissed at the LDS Church for supporting vaccinations.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

Not advice per se but I just finished reading Think Again by Adam Grant and he talks about how people think flexibly when in scientific mode and not so much when in preacher or politician mode (his terms). He covers some of the research on how people change their ideas and how to have conversations on polarized issues. 

Most of it is pretty intuitive: argue/discuss less and listen more, find common ground, treat person with respect, ask questions such as “what would change your mind?” He shares the story of Daryl Davis, a black man who has befriended a number of KKK members over the years to convince them to leave.

Of course, the chapter missing from his book is how to handle radicalization of close family members. Because that IME is 100x more difficult than dealing with acquaintances. I think @Cam is correct that it helps to emotionally divest from any particular outcome such as whether parents stay married or not. 

I have one family member in particular that I get really sad thinking about where they are at. I miss them.

 

 

 

 

[Cam]

It’s often not easy to “emotionally divest” from a particular outcome (as noseybutt calls it) when it comes to loved ones. My parents were decent people yet plagued with high dysfunction. In my younger years, boy did I try to get them to look at things differently. After many years of seeing how that did not work, I finally accepted them as they were but not without a lot of guilt because part of me thought I gave up on them and a good daughter would continue to try to save them and wasn’t I being selfish to move forward with my life when they were stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over? Honestly, they’ve both been gone over 20 years and that guilt still tries to rise up in me. The problem was that at a young age, I became the adult and they were like children to me. I have to remind myself that they were both 30+ years older than me and I was too young to understand and take on and solve their problems.

Sometimes when left alone, people work things out on their own. Not sure how relatable this is, but my husband tried for several years to get his 80 year old mother, widowed for over 20 years, to downsize and move from out on a country road into our small town. She was always resistant. Imo, she enjoyed how the friction made her the center of attention. I finally told him stop approaching the subject with her, so he never mentioned it again. A little over a year later, she changed her tune and moved across the street from us. 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2022 by Cam

[noseybutt]

8 minutes ago, Cam said:

It’s often not easy to “emotionally divest” from a particular outcome (as noseybutt calls it) when it comes to loved ones. My parents were decent people yet plagued with high dysfunction. In my younger years, boy did I try to get them to look at things differently. After many years of seeing how that did not work, I finally accepted them as they were but not without a lot of guilt because part of me thought I gave up on them and a good daughter would continue to try to save them and wasn’t I being selfish to move forward with my life when they were stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over? Honestly, they’ve both been gone over 20 years and that guilt still tries to rise up in me. The problem was that at a young age, I became the adult and they were like children to me. I have to remind myself that they were both 30+ years older than me and I was too young to understand and take on and solve their problems.

Sometimes when left alone, people work things out on their own. Not sure how relatable this is, but my husband tried for several years to get his 80 year old mother, widowed for over 20 years, to downsize and move from out on a country road into our small town. She was always resistant. Imo, she enjoyed how the friction made her the center of attention. I finally told him stop approaching the subject with her, so he never mentioned it again. A little over a year later, she changed her tune and moved across the street from us. 

 

 

 

Relatable. Some years ago I got tired of the voice in my head being mean or laying in the guilt in a way that I would never talk to my own children or close friends. That became my own internal standard. It’s very much a work in progress but I am getting a lot better at tuning out the guilt or negative talk if it’s not something I would say to some else I love.