But I love your choice of music!

The family MAGAt banished here. I refused to have the drama for Thanksgiving this year. Decades of big family dinners here over. Alice's Restaurant and tuna salad sandwich for Thanksgiving will be just fine.

I am going to try to remember K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Sweetie.

We have been able to have conversations as long as we don't get into politics, but he says he wants to be "heard" so that is where I am going to start.

Basically, I want to treat it like a business meeting for his "opinion" that he wants to share. 10 minutes he has the floor and I won't interrupt or judge.

However, I am going to set up a format that allows me to "hear HIS opinion" and all the MAGA crap needs to be in handout form.
So he can send me links to his sources or fact checks and I will print out those items.

THAT way, I can specifically disagree with and debate the veracity of his sources without making it about him as a person.

AND I will do that after I step away and have whatever meltdown I need to in my own space.

He is my son. I have fought for his life and mine on several occasions.

This is the first time I have wound up fighting HIM FOR HIS LIFE.

We have had arguments over things and decided to agree to disagree before, but THIS is different.

Ah, yeah. Proverbs 15:17. A really OLD saying.

What is harsh and disheartening is that those who were our closest friends and family can be sucked away by this tsunami of disinformation and it's such an onslaught that to try and pull them out seems to drown both.

I guess in symbolic terms each of us will have to let some parts of the old relationship die to get past this.

He'll be defending his opinion as a "man" in my eyes instead of as my son, and I will be demanding he act like a man of integrity and not just let him off the hook because of the blood we share.

BUT in fairness with all this MAGA crap sticking to him, he IS NOT recognizable as the person I brought into this world. Like trying to find a person in a truck load of horse dung before they drown in it.

But I do remember who he was and hopefully I can help him do the same.

He found a wonderful girl to marry and is a hospital chaplain now. WIN!! Worth the wait. Hope you have a happy resolution soon.

At least I will know I made the effort.

I am fortunate that my sons are not Trumpers. My older brother is essentially a right-wing asshole, but I find it easy to ignore him. He lives across the country from me, were rarely speak and less often see each other. Although I have recently, as in last year in November, this year in August, gone to where he lives, along with our younger sister, to try to help him and his wife get into assisted living. Politics never came up, fortunately.

It's different with our kids.

Siblings we will try to reason with or just set the subject aside and be family without the noise. We have our own lives and that seems appropriate even when we don't agree or are very different from each other. Our sib's crap IS NOT OUR FAULT. Unless we've done something to owe amends, who they are and what they believe is their choice and we can let it go easier.

But our kids....

WHAT DID I DO WRONG? Parents are supposed to teach kids and raise them to be responsible adults.

I taught him to think for himself.

I thought I taught him HOW to think vs WHAT to think.

But apparently blaming others for his problems is too much of a lure, he took the bait and swallowed it hook, line and sinker.


So I will do my best to redefine our relationship and put the stuff we can't agree on in a box at the door somehow so we can examine it without getting into verbal knock downs.