Thread by @akurjata

I don't talk about this much and probably won't again, but I have a loved one who has slowly but surely been sucked into the ecosystem of beliefs that fueled today's events. It is a loss already, and I wonder how the loved ones of the person killed today are feeling.

You hope they'll come back from it. You try talking to them. You try engaging with the meda and videos and papers they share. You try refusing to talk to them. You try setting out basic parameters around what you will and won't talk about. You try to agree to disagree.

You try finding areas you agree on. You try finding basic ideas you agree on. You try refusing to talk to them again. You try avoiding the topic altogether and focusing on niceties, the weather and sports.

But eventually — in my case, at least — it always come back to some combination of the underlying ideas that "they" want to control us, the media won't tell the truth and leaders are complicit. And it *always* comes up, somehow.

Mental health issues are present, but you have no idea how much responsibility they bear. And you know there are people who struggle with mental health issues who don't act this way, and people without mental health issues who do.

You don't want to absolve them of all responsibility but you also don't want to believe they are wholly responsible and acting like this

Listening to that leaked presidential phone call was hard, because it was almost exactly like the most recent conversation I had with this loved one. Just idea after idea being thrown at the wall, and always the burden on you to prove this didn't happen. But you know even if...

... you do, they'll just be back with some other version of the idea tomorrow. Or even the same idea again.

I have no solutions. I don't know if I am doing the right thing or the wrong thing by cutting this person off or continuing to support them. I'm not asking anyone for sympathy or to show sympathy to the people in their lives or strangers who have followed this path.

I do know I wish there weren't enough people like this that it's become profitable for them to fuel each other's rage.

And I know that anyone who is aware of reality but decides there is money or clout to be pursued from pretending otherwise should know they are ruining lives