If you’d told me, back in that horrible year of 2012-13, that in less than five years, I’d be positively GLAD to be shed of my siblings — I’d have said you were nuts.
But, the American political landscape being what it has been since 2016 or so — I really am. I’m super-glad I haven’t had the experiences of many of my friends, who can’t spend time on Facebook any more, or dread going to family events, because they can’t stand to see people they love and care about spouting conservative ugliness, and they know if THEY dare to speak up, it will become a fight (and they will probably be seen as the ones who started it).
It’s something I’ve continually wondered about, why conservatives automatically assume they get to say whatever they feel like saying, while opposing viewpoints are not even suffered to be spoken aloud – as was my experience in that group of siblings and which came blurting out of my mouth in a moment of truth in one of my first therapy sessions (“Oh, I can have [my own opinions], I just can’t say them out loud.”).
For a while I thought it was because they tend to assume they are in the right because they are the historical default, as well as they tend to believe they have God on their side. But that didn’t explain why they have to be so loud, and usually angry, about it.
Now I tend to think it’s not really anger but more that they are afraid: afraid that if they allow another opinion to be heard, it could be a disaster for them and their stolid mindset. It could require a lot of work to overcome the cognitive dissonance that will occur if it turns out that the other guy has a decent, logical argument – which progressives usually do, because that’s how we form our positions – and they can’t form an equally coherent argument back.
Reading this from Bertrand Russell cemented that for me. If you get angry, it’s because you are aware that you don’t have a sound basis for your opinion.
I’m glad I found George Lakoff ‘s book “Don’t Think of an Elephant” when I did, and read down the lists of the “strict father” and “nurturing parent” families — even though it was a shock to see it all laid out so neatly in two short lists, my siblings in the left column and me in the right.
What it boils down to is, I’m glad I got it over with prior to the American political shitshow of the past 2+ years, because if I hadn’t done it then, I would sure as hell have done it sometime after Chump’s election, probably in a fight — and then I would have worried that I was doing it for the wrong reasons.
But the divisiveness in the culture is real, just like the divide in my FOO is real. There are two lists in the book, two ways to look at life, two ways to approach anything new or different: one is with interest and curiosity, one is with fear. You can say either yes or no. It’s that simple (at the same time being as complicated as human beings can be).
I know a lot of conservatives like to say that “Obama divided the country!” Not true: Obama’s ELECTION divided the country. Obama, or more accurately his election to POTUS, was the catalyst, but he didn’t do the dividing. People divided themselves onto one side or the other, all their own choice and doing. People decided they were against Obama, rather than deciding they were Americans. And the crucial point here is, they did it for a NOT GOOD REASON. They did it for the color of his skin.
I choose to divide myself from Chump’s “Great Again” America for a lot of really good reasons. Racism, sexism, nationalism, homophobia, what is in someone else’s pants or what they choose to do with their body — I don’t have the time or energy for that kind of judginess, especially when it’s aimed at me and my gender half the time.
I always want to say to conservatives, Hey, why not just TRY it? Try spending a day NOT being automatically, knee-jerk critical of everyone you see who looks different, or speaks differently. At the end of the day, I guarantee you’ll be a lot less angry and have more energy. Minding your own business is a huge time- and anger-saver.
Caveat: however, you may then have to spend some time figuring out what you are REALLY angry about, and that may take some work. But you should still do it, because otherwise you are just transmitting your pain to others, and that’s not fair or healthy.
In fact, that choice to not be automatically critical was — ha ha — critical in my own awakening: the day in 2008 that I got a link from my FIL to a website that was “funny pictures of cats with captions” was a turning point in my personal growth, and key to my future happiness.
I clicked the link, I spent a little time reading things, and I came very VERY close to turning my nose up, writing some nasty comment about how stupid this all was, and flouncing off in a superior huff.
I am eternally grateful that I did not. Because on that site is where I started to figure out that my so-called family wasn’t really very nice to me — and it was because these people WERE nice to me.
I wrote a lot more about it here, but the short version is, I still remember how I was reluctant to post on there that my husband and I were going to New Zealand. It was his first earned sabbatical from his job, and we had planned a huge 3-week trip. No one in my family cared about it, of course.
And when I did finally post about it — because there were people from NZ that I wanted to meet if I could — I was expecting a fair amount of “Oh, sure, nice for some people” and “It’s dangerous to meet people from the internet!” and so on. Because of course, that’s what I would get from my siblings.
What I got instead – to my delighted surprise – was interest, excitement, encouragement, and exhortations to “post pictures, please!”
In contrast, at the next reunion, we lugged along the laptop which had all our pictures on it from the trip. Not one person expressed any interest in seeing them, nor asked anything about the trip. NOT ONE. We mentioned it ourselves a couple of times, but no one cared. We made bids and got nothing.
And that was how I started to realize that the people who were supposed to “love” me were actually not all that nice to me. Which started me asking why, and led to the horrible 2012 reunion, and so on and so forth.
It’s been a tough road, but I am glad I went down it then, and did the work, and transformed the pain. I’m glad I am where I am today, confident in my opinions and beliefs and values, because they have been built on that work and are a solid foundation.
My Twitter bio says, “Spent 60% of my life to date as an angry conservative and 40% as a happy progressive . It’s so much better on this side of the fence.”
Speaking of speaking: I am certain that some siblings are beside themselves in horror at Beto O’Rourke saying, “I’m so fucking proud of you!” to his campaign people last night, in a moment of overwhelming emotion.
I’m reminded of the time I sent an email to my oldest brother about the Susan Incident. I pointed out the unfairness in how Susan’s thoughtless behavior was excused away because “Susan was very upset at Dad’s death”. Yet my supposedly unseemly behavior was not given the same benefit, and I wrote, “What the fuck was I, do you suppose?”
Said brother’s reply focused almost exclusively on my use of the word “fuck”.
I now realize that was indicative of an inability to deal with the problem — specifically, an inability to deal with emotion, especially strong emotion — and more specifically, a complete inability to deal with strong and appropriate anger coming from a WOMAN who happens to be his “little sister” – and who also happens to be FUCKING RIGHT about what she is angry about.
And I’ll take “fucking proud” over racist, sexist, exclusionary bullshit any day of the fucking year.
Oh, and he also remembered to include us atheists. Love it.