Summary
Recently terminated federal workers face not only unemployment challenges but also hurtful reactions from family members who support the government cuts.
Luke Tobin, fired from the Forest Service, and Kristin Jenn, whose Park Service job was frozen, describe relatives celebrating their job losses as necessary to “make the government great again.”
Former Park Service employee Riley Rackliffe encountered social media comments calling him a “glorified pool boy” despite his Ph.D.
Some workers report family members unfriending them on social media or dismissing their positions as “waste.”
The most incredible trick the GOP has managed to pull is to convince working Americans to hate each other.
A little stress, a little money problems, super easy to manufacture. Give them a common enemy. The people below them, the people that look different. They band together. Education is attacked. Now any propaganda works. Even the most stupid shit gets the conspiracy theorists wet. They evangelise. This is their circle of trust. Family not in the circle will not convert, they are seen as pompous and corrupt. They are promised that the people responsible will be hurt.
It’s not magic or impressive. People are easily programmed. The evolutionary traits that gave us advantages hundreds of generations ago are easy strings to grasp.
To be fair the kgb were the ones pulling the strings
There are a lot of terrible people here in America.
I’m not convinced that is really the issue. I think we have a lot of people who’ve been programmed to be terrible people. Some one I’ve know my entire life was always a joy to be around, but over the last ten years, their news and media consumption changed to Fox then to ONN and down so weird rabbit holes. Now the last time I was around it was all about how this country is going to hell and we need a savior like Trump to bring it back.
People programmed in terrible ways are terrible. Mourn their death and move on.
If you’re that easily manipulated into being terrible, then maybe you were never such a good person to begin with.
Perhaps. But I look at our current media-sphere as something akin to the Stanford prison experiment or the third wave experiment. Only that it is being waged all around you. I live in the heart of the old south, I am soaked in negative media and people who live in a feedback loop. At work, especially during Covid I had to endure some of the stupidest conversations and I had to give up even reasonable conversations about daily life.
What I attribute my ability to disconnect from the local culture I’m surrounded by is the fact that I’m not religious. Religion in the US has taken quite a dark turn.
Republicans have tricked people into embracing a “tough love”, the idea that empathy is toxic and that if you really care about someone you must push them to the breaking point so they’ll “Pick themselves up by their bootstraps”
It’s disgusting
MAGA is going to end up very lonely.
One of the harder things in life to accept is that your family can be scumbags.
I accepted it when I was a teenager. What’s difficult is getting people that grew up in loving families to comprehend that I’m not anti family, and would love to have a family I could talk to, but the one I was born into are unempathtic narracisstic Nazis.
‘Have you tried x? Have you tried y? I don’t think you’re trying z enough’
One close friend recently married into a similar family and it’s been super eye opening for them.
People unfamiliar with narcissistic abusive families really do not know, cannot conceptualize, how bad the trauma is for those who have lived inside them.
Agreed. My parents died last year. All I felt was anger. I’ve had to hand two people to the rear view mirror because they can’t accept they are ignorant of the situation.
The Sunset Tree captures those feelings in a way no one else really has. It’s a concept album about being in the hotel room, the night before your abusive stepdads funeral.
Disown your republican friends & family
However, recognize that grief may result. It’s a loss of the fantasy of people who love you. That hurts.
You’re absolutely right. It’s been 7 years for me. I grieved them and still do occasionally. It’s just not worth it to let them be a part of my life anymore.
Amen. They don’t live in the same reality as normal people anymore. My mother passed away last summer, and though I wasn’t surprised that she’d supported Trump, working through her belongings and mail and email, it was eye opening how disconnected she was from reality. She had a bottle of whatever the dewormer was that Trump was shilling. She has a ton of Iraqi, Venezuelan, Vietnamese and Zimbabwean currency and her email go down rabbit holes I’d never heard of. All while living in genuine squalor. Unable to take care of herself and living in real filth. True diehard Trump supporter.
I don’t talk to those relatives anymore. It’s done wonders for my mental health.
Growing up, I had always heard “brothers fighting on opposite sides of the battlefield” types of stories from the American civil war. I always wondered how people could let it get that bad. Nowadays though…
I wonder what the long-term fallout from this massive fracture is going to be… even if we somehow manage to avert catastrophe…
I don’t think there’s really a way to come back from this whole thing for, like, most people…
We are marching towards another civil war.
The same people celebrating that Obamacare is gone, and being shocked when Affordable Care Act which they depend on suddenly disappears.
Wait until they lose Medicaid… Most of them probably have no fucking idea that their health insurance is even funded by it.
The stupid is coming from inside the house
I lucked out in that all of my relatives that are still living are reasonable. I didn’t need to remove any relatives from my life.
Friends however… yikes! Different story there. I moved from a red state to a blue state in October so I need to meet some people here.
Try parents…
Ah hell… my comment was supposed to be a reply to someone else in this thread but I suppose I messed up. It looks weird out of context like this.
“They can’t separate their ideology and their politics from supporting their own family and their own loved ones,” says Tobin.
I can’t say I’m surprised at that trait from those that hold these politics in the first place.
And this is why I have no faith in the recovery of this country. After everything that’s happened, these people are cheering on the destruction of the country.
And they have been conditioned to think the exact same thing about you (or Democrats in general).
Hes got more Austrian economists/monetarists plans coming. Project 2025 limits the money supply growth dramatically, supposedly in order to prevent asset bubbles in areas like housing.
It is curious how long they will stick to that plan, or how soon they will get bored of it.
They will quickly move to the Austrian artist’s plan.
That implies they know how to read or parse history.
It’s disappointing that these are my countrymen. These people that don’t see the value of conserving our lands, yet call themselves conservatives.
We collectively need to STOP using the term conservative to define the regressive party.
This is just me, but if I was fired by some felon rapist traitor trying to appease a bunch of neckbeard losers, and anyone in my life voted for that felon rapist traitor, after he made it clear he was going to do so, I would probably never speak to them again.
Your family has to earn and maintain your respect, just like anyone else does.
While I agree, that’s not usually how ‘Merican families work.
how disgusting for people to celebrate others misery. makes it really easy to understand who is on your side and who is not though, I’ve decided enough is enough and began the process of cutting these people out of my lives.
short term, it sucks right now. but I know down the line, I will thank myself for doing this now
Trump renamed Denali the mountain but not Denali the park? That seems appropriately half-assed of him.
