Thread by @swimmerbr78

Wow!

I know many of us have family members who support trump, and that’s strained our relationships, sometimes to the breaking point.

The following reply was posted by a FB friend of mine in response to his father’s MAGA post.

Power words!

Time to come in off the ledge, Pops. Real talk time. I know you think it’s funny, and that supporting Trump is all sort of a joke for you. You get to be old and eccentric. You get to tweak my nose because you think I’ve gotten above my raisin’ or something. Fine. Maybe I have.

But this rally, these chants, should be the line you don’t cross. This is the exact kind of crowd that would have been standing outside the University of Mississippi during desegregation. And you would NOT have supported those people. Today, Trump’s just got them yelling about

some halfwit Congresslady. But they’re just waiting to be told the next person of color he thinks doesn’t have the right birth certificate or the right ideas about public policy so they can scream for them to be put on a boat and sent back to Africa too.

This is the same kind of stuff people said and thought in South Georgia in the 80s. And you were as against this kind of thing as anyone I knew in South Georgia in the 80s.

This twisted dump of a man doesn’t have ideas and he can’t make arguments.

He has never told the truth in his life. He has a tiny dick and a glass jaw. He has depended on others for everything he has. And so he tries to rally the uneducated and the uninformed and the just plain mean to do his work for him because he is too much of a child and

too much a coward to do that work himself. You have never supported cowards and you are the reason I am not a coward. You taught me the difference between real men and men like Trump and I could cite you specific examples of the (thankfully few) people we both knew and

whom you disparaged then and would disparage now for being fake tough guys. You’re how I know the difference, so seeing you now support one of those same kinds of people- even just to be a cranky contrarian in your old age- is highly disheartening.

The kind of people who go to these rallies and make these chants and wear these hats are the people you always told me were the mob. They’re people who can’t think for themselves.

They’re people who are so weak they can’t face their own mistakes and thus conclude that they must be down and out because somebody else screwed them. They’re the people you raised me not to be (thus ensuring I’d make something of myself).

They’re the people I’m raising my children not to be. They’re the people you were raised not to be- I only get the stories from my uncle, but there is no universe where I see either of your parents looking at Trump in all his race-baiting con-man glory and thinking...

“That’s my guy.” The only reason this guy is President is because the WW2 generation had mostly passed on by the time he showed up on a ballot.

This is not about politics. If you had voted for President Ted Cruz, I’d be out of your way.

Because Cruz is just a politician with fringe beliefs, like Elizabeth Warren is just a politician with fringe beliefs. It took me until I was an adult to absorb the lesson, but you showed me that political party affiliation was a waste of time and to think for myself.

So this isn’t about you having a set of political beliefs. It’s about you publicly ignoring the standards you raised us with to support someone who is little better than a rabid barn animal.

I tell people all the time, “I’m my dad when he was in his 40s, except I talk a lot more.” I usher at my church and teach Sunday School (I’m perhaps a bit of a hypocrite when I teach, because you were always a nicer, better person than I am). I exercise at the Y.

I get grumpy when my sports teams play. I work from home so I can see my kids and take them to activities. I try to help when people ask. And I don’t suffer fools. You need to be you in your 40s. Because eventually the kids are gonna get old enough to ask about Trump.

Especially if he gets term 2. And it’s gonna break my heart to tell them only one of their grandparents, Mama, looked at an obvious festering pile of trash and said, “No damn way.”

You (and lots of horrified others) are probably wondering right now why I’m airing this publicly.

It’s because I want anybody who reads my near-daily refusal to normalize this clown, and who respects that refusal, to understand that I got my standards and any decency I have from my dad. I want them to know my dad taught me the difference between hucksters and honest brokers.

Between limp dick posers and respectable men. Between cowards and actual tough guys. When they see that you support this animal, I want them to know it’s kind of a lark for you, but to the extent that it’s not, that this is a departure from who you have always been.

I still respect you and I’m glad I was raised by you. I think you’re a good Papa to my children. But on this one point, you’re not living up to the example you set, and I think it’s time to put this foolish thing aside and be you again.

I still respect you and I'm glad I was raised by you. I think you're a good Papa to my children. But on this one point, you're not living up to the example you set, and I think it's time to put this foolish thing aside and be you again.