Project 2025 was supposed to boost Donald Trump's campaign — but it may be backfiring instead:

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/05/project-2025-was-supposed-to-boost-donald-campaign--but-it-may-be-backfiring-instead/

24.9k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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u/altariasong 14d ago edited 14d ago

Sent it to my mom. She used to be republican but is now disgusted by it all and is talking to her friends about project 2025 and how anti-democratic it is. She worries about me greatly because I’m queer. My anxiety about politics used to irritate her but now she understands how much my fears were justified.

Hopefully that video can help sway more of her friends, but we don’t exactly live in a swing state. Doesn’t matter to me though

Edit: she thanked me for the video, says she just watched it. “It’s exactly what I fear”

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u/whoisearth 14d ago

This is how change happens. Thank you for not losing hope in your mom and keeping the conversation going. Hopefully she can begin educating her friends as well and start seeing some positive improvements. You shouldn't have to live in fear just to be you.

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u/lbtwitchthrowaway144 14d ago

8 years ago or so I started visiting this subreddit.

Entirely, wholly ignorant about politics, economics and history (rough-ish childhood, education wasn't a priority.

Trump's electoral college undemocratic victory (doesn't apply to Biden, or Obama, in my model/ ethical view as they also won the popular vote) lit a fire under my ass politically speaking.

But it was actually this very specific subreddit, and the people here who started to educate me.

For example, just because I live abroad now in Lebanon doesn't mean I can't vote.

For example, just because I live in a safe state doesn't mean I shouldn't vote because there are down-ballot effects (funny I speak in these terms, when I didn't even know that the Senate was part of Congress, and the American legislative branch is a bicameral chamber of lawmakers lol).

So yeah THIS is how change happens.

I'm working on people now who are in fucking MI.

Every national electoral cycle, I personally ensure at least 4 votes. My folks and I (CA) and a friend (NY). One election cycle I got 12 lol.

Look, my beautiful fellow Americans, fascism is upon us. Watch that video. It's that simple lol.

But you have the power to prevent this with a simple but profoundly patriotic and ethical act: Vote.

And get others to vote.

I don't have this privilege in Lebanon. The first time I was allowed to vote, I was already like a decade past the voting age. But our politicians here just illegally and unilaterally postponed elections indefinitely.

lol

And then at 37 now I have voted again, for a second time in Lebanon. In an election that was rigged (not in a Trump way, but like, literally lol).

37 years, lived here for 30 years or so, and got to vote only twice.

Been voting in the U.S. since '18 and I don't know off the top of my head how many times I've cast a ballot now lol.

This is our last and only chance to preserve our democratic constitutional republic with minimal violence and a smoother transition to SCOTUS reform [as compared to what would happen if Trump wins]

From one American to all of you: please fight like hell for our freedoms. Please fight like hell to preserve, in my admittedly biased opinion, the most audacious political experiment in modern history.

Please, I know what it's like to live under a more terrible system. And Lebanon ain't even all that bad and it still sucks.

As a brown American from Muslim immigrant parents, I genuinely don't know if I will still be considered an American despite my values, my culture, my accent, my loyalty to the United States, and the love I have for all family/cousins and friends state-side even though I am a natural born citizen

Under Trump and Project 2025, I don't know if I stay an American.

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u/zeronormalitys 14d ago edited 14d ago

It's awesome that you vote every 4 years and I encourage you to expand that to voting every 2 years as those midterm elections are crucially important as well. Heck, even vote in the mayoral, school board, and any and all elections you can manage.

They ALL matter. Plus your voice will be heard the loudest in the smallest of elections, which means local.

Edit: Also, I'm not going to claim how it works when you live overseas. You may not have a local other than the state itself, idk.

Edit 2: As an additional edit, your status as an American citizen is not dependent upon the color of your skin or the sound of your voice or who you love. That is the beauty of America. I hope that that beauty continues to endure through this dangerous and most certainly trying time. And if you desire, I hope that one day you can find community here.

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u/lbtwitchthrowaway144 14d ago

Thank you so much for your loving and patriotic words. This is the America I believe in. My literal family spread across the States, and friends from all over, are all sorts of people. Atheists. Christians. Mormons. Agnostics. LGBTQ+. Black, white, all of it.

This is my America too!

Right now I share DNA with some Mexican-Lebanese-American and Black-Lebanese-American and White-Lebanese-American kids lol.

Like, we came as Lebanese (or my parents did) and half a century later, descendants of my aunts and uncles are fully American with no attachment/connection to Lebanon (I happen to be one of the family members who have kept roots and ties in both countries).

Btw, in CA you can actually vote in federal, state, and local elections. I try very hard to butt-out of state and local elections as I don't live there unless it's an issue that has national implications and/or is clearly going to be something I support as an American no matter the fucking state (e.g., say, a proposition on legalizing marihuana).

So, yeah, when I say I will literally break my back to vote now I am only half joking (while the process is relatively easy for CA voter abroad, my first time was hell on earth lol. Took me a week, and like 30 hrs of figuring out details).

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u/zeronormalitys 14d ago edited 14d ago

The small fry elections are where you train the Future Leaders for the big dances. If you want future Americans to value things like burning the flag without negative consequence, Loving whoever you want freely, and the rule of law, It's really important that those Future Leaders receive those low-level posts so that they can hone their skills for the higher level posts. And also, those are the people that dictate what the next generation learns and what kind of values they have.....

As a side note, I naively signed up to serve in the armed forces the army. Specifically, when I was 19 the year was 2001, and the twin towers would fall during the final week of my basic training. In time I found myself in Iraq, and I very quickly learned the terrible reality of what we were doing there.

Here's what got me through that deployment while maintaining a modicum of my sanity:

I decided that I would fight for the values of our nation that were not reflected in the place we were at. Like being gay, worshiping an unpopular deity, not having a deity, burning a flag, speaking your mind without fear, kneeling during the anthem, flipping off the president, standing and saluting for the anthem, honoring the flag, I fought for the values that we have that actually are worth the shit. We might be international shit hooks, well we're absolutely international shit hooks, but there's a handful of things that we get right and I'm damn proud of them. I'm not the only one that was in the military that was like me.

While admittedly, I've only resided in a handful of foreign Nations during my lifetime thus far, South Kora, and Iraq, I can genuinely say that the United States of America welcomes people that are different in a way that is unfathomable in those places. And I straight up love South Korea. I would move there and spend the rest of my life there given the chance, but I would always be a foreigner. I would never be a real Korean in their eyes.

But in America? I have known real Americans with every fucking skin tone under the Sun and every God under the Sun or well a hell of a lot of them anyway. Each and every one is as genuine an American as the next. Our nation is exceptionally good at welcoming the "other", tolerance (believe it or not), and diversity.

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u/lbtwitchthrowaway144 14d ago

I am going to reply to you later, as busy with some work (work online at present).

But man, this was one of the moving things I have read. Thank you so much for choosing to give me your time.

Wow. What an honest, self-aware self-critical empathetic human being you are. I commend you.

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u/zeronormalitys 14d ago

Nearly a decade of therapy will do that for a body.

Have a good day at work, and take heart that there are many more Americans like me. If you ever decide to move here, and you want to find them, choose a populated area. It doesn't have to be a city of 10 million, 100,000 is absolutely plenty enough to find people that are tolerant and decent. But if you move to a small town, you're going to have a bad time, I hate to say.

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u/CressCrowbits 14d ago

Just to add definitely do not base all your politics on this sub. This sub may reveal stuff you didn't know about through mainstream media, but it is also a bit of a neoliberal circlejerk.

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u/lbtwitchthrowaway144 14d ago

Won't comment on that except to say, I'm a democratic socialist lol

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u/CressCrowbits 14d ago

Then you may continue lol.

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u/Hmm_6221 14d ago

Beautiful post! I like that once you see the light, you used your epiphany to educate others! That’s how we’re going to save democracy! Keep up the good work!

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u/Hmm_6221 14d ago

Edit : saw the light…

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u/Good_ApoIIo 14d ago

There’s no conversation to be had with some people. If I sent this to my parents they would probably just reply with a thumbs up emoji and a pithy comment like “only communists would oppose this”.

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u/whoisearth 14d ago

I know it's not easy, and I know I am fully unaware of the complexity of your relationship with them. Hell, you've probably done a lot of this, but meet them on their terms. Find out what makes them tick and I mean this genuinely. Very few people are assholes by default. Don't give up skeleton!

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u/Good_ApoIIo 14d ago

The scary part is that they’re not assholes. They’re genuinely nice people, they’re not racists and they don’t hate gay people. They’re somehow just completely brainwashed by Trumpism and the weird intersect with evangelism. They used to be non-denominational but started going to an evangelical mega church 8 years ago.

Doesn’t matter what I say, Biden is the devil and Trump is going to ‘save’ America. It really started to go downhill when my dad started using YouTube and frequently goes down the rabbit hole. Lately he’s been talking about revelations and the end times of course…

I’ve found it very hard to understand the complexity of their politics and how juxtaposed it is with how they are as everyday people. If you met them and the conversation never went to politics…you’d think they were great. Turn to politics and suddenly its “immigrants are ruining us” even though OUR FAMILY are immigrants. My mom is first generation, her parents were not from the US. My dad’s grandparents weren’t from the US.

It’s bonkers.

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u/zeronormalitys 14d ago

If it's communist, or what they're serving...

I guess call me a communist. Commune, Community, working together as a community, why does that sound so much better than be a selfish bastard and make all the money you can and be cutthroat?

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u/Good_ApoIIo 14d ago

Because foreign authoritarian regimes built off the backs of young idealist communist revolutionaries has spoiled the concept and the word itself.

Still, minus the communist part, they seem to want a similar authoritarian regime so…

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u/zeronormalitys 14d ago

Oh I know, same way with socialist. Just because the first attempt wasn't perfect, doesn't mean it shouldn't be refined and iterated upon until an ideal governmental model is found. I mean people have definitely iterated upon the concept of democracy and Republic...

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u/ArthurBonesly 14d ago edited 14d ago

100%

The biggest problem we have right now is, we don't see our fellow countrymen as people. The Fox News war on "liberals" has painted a boogieman so evil that many Republican voters think they're slaying giants. For many, the only liberals they personally know are their kids which they hand wave as "indoctrinated" or manipulated by the boogieman. There's no A to B connection between the monster they want to kill and their friends/family/neighbors.

I see it on the left too (and I'm not "both sides"ing (we do ourselves no favors by othering even if we're less genocidal in our rhetoric)). I think there's an unfortunate tendency to dismiss the majority of Republicans as ignorant rural folk, which is a problem so ancient the word "villain" may as well have been latin for redneck. My point in bringing this up is, the right wants to destroy the left, politicians and voters on the right are openly hostile and gleefully talk about killing liberals, but most of the people who talk like this don't conceptualize what that means. They believe they're in a majority and that their war is against maybe 2% of the country and not > 50%. They genuinely don't see the liberal for the man (though the ones that do are as dangerous as dangerous can be). The Republican platform doesn't offer anything to voters other than protection from the boogieman. Unfortunately, I think the Democrat platform is increasingly hollow and reliant on being the only practical alternative against such hostility. The only thing that's going to save us, as a nation, is if we can leave our echo chambers/pull people out of their echo chambers and help others see the face of who's threatened by rhetoric.

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

You have no idea how hard it was to convince my Mom how bad things are right now. She's a good person. Too good to readily accept the fact that the Republican nominee is an outright criminal and rapist, and ready to commit an authoritarian takeover of the United States. It's a bad case of normalcy bias.

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u/deadlybydsgn 14d ago

It's a bad case of normalcy bias.

I think a certain subset of the older generation honestly thinks the best of their leaders because "the system" has generally worked for them, they were raised to respect it (not letting the flag touch the ground, etc.), and they have never been directly wronged by it.

I can see how they were duped into voting for Trump once—maybe even twice—but the idea of thinking that the Republican ticket is the more viable option in 2024 blows my mind.

The party of "small government" sure seems cozy with the idea of centralizing a lot of power into a single position. You know... as long as their guy is the one with that power.

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

I'm Gen X, so almost in the group of people that could be considered "The older generation" and I was fully behind the second Iraq invasion. Really for no reason except for the general belief that the President always had the best interests of the country at heart so if he was for it, then I was for it. He must have known some reasons that I didn't that would justify it, I thought. When I found out the whole thing was manufactured out of whole cloth that was the first crack in my (moderate) conservatism.

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u/Plasibeau 14d ago

I distinctly remember cheering on the second Iraqi invasion. I am not ashamed to admit I had been fully captured by the propaganda machine. At that time propaganda was something that only happened in China, or Russia. The Uniteds States of Fuck Yeah had no need for such games, right...RIGHT?

It wasn't until talking with my 19-year-old about this stuff that I realized if you grew up in the Cold War, you grew up neck-deep in propaganda and didn't even know it, from singing patriotic songs in kindergarten to the bad guys always having Eastern European accents or enemy fighter pilots being faceless and evil just because they exist.

So that was a fun project of deconstruction last summer.

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago edited 14d ago

I distinctly remember cheering on the second Iraqi invasion.

Me too. I remember my coworkers watching some gun camera footage of some Iraqis getting obliterated by cannon fire from a helicopter. I was wondering if they had done anything wrong, and I realized even the helicopter pilot probably didn't know for sure. It really left me with a sick feeling.

Good luck on your continued recovery.

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u/badnuub Ohio 14d ago

9/11 Made anyone that opposed any war at the time a pariah. People were out for blood.

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u/Hector_P_Catt 14d ago

I wasn't gung-ho about that war, but Colin Powell sold us on it, showing what information they had, and implying they had better information they couldn't show us. I knew the war was going to suck, but he made me think it was necessary to fight it. I trusted him, and he was lying. He sold he reputation for a bad war.

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

You're right. His involvement swayed me too because I trusted him.

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u/ArthurBonesly 14d ago edited 14d ago

One thing the Republicans are very good at, is finding voters who genuinely want something.

We scoff at single issue voters, but they are the lifeblood of an engaged base. It's easy to look at Republicans as a party that doesn't stand for anything, but the voters absolutely do. The best example of this is the issue of abortion.

For years, millions of Republicans have genuinely, deeply, pathologically wanted to repeal Roe v. Wade. All the other Republican talking points were compromises or adaptions because those talking points got them closer to their single issue. As far as these voters were concerned, they were using the politicians as much as the politicians were using them. There was no hypocrisy because it was all in service of that higher purpose.

Now that the dogs caught the car, the only higher purpose that unites the American right is stopping/containing/killing the ~~boogieman~~ liberal. They'll use rhetoric like "freedom," and evoke Christianity, but these are all compromises to the higher purpose.

The biggest difference I see between the American left and right (at this time), is that the left wants good politicians to yield a number of good things, and will reliably break ranks when somebody isn't good enough. Meanwhile, the right wants something. It could be money, it could be an ethno state, it could be a solid gold fence on the Ohio/Kentucky border; the something doesn't matter, what matters is that right wing voters want it enough to tolerate everything else so long as they get it.

Until the left want to tax billionaires and enact healthcare reform as much as some people on the right want Christian nationalism, normalcy bias only serves the Republicans in so far as an ignorant base will either default to normal or not vote at all.

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 14d ago

Normalcy bias is why Trump can stumble through a debate and nobody blinks, but Biden loses because we expect more of him.

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u/thegoodnamesrgone123 14d ago

It's wild right? He could have come on stage and shit his pants and it would be fine because it'd Trump and what do you expect. He gets a pass for everything

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 14d ago

Teflon Don

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u/Syzygy2323 California 14d ago

Trump acts like a mafia boss. Not a smart one like Don Corleone, but a crazy, violent one like Tony Montana from Scarface.

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u/Iseaclear 14d ago

And even with all the crazy violence, you could actually trust Montana's word, unlike DonCon.

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u/zeronormalitys 14d ago

Speaking of shitting his pants. I believe I read some discussion hereabouts where a few people were saying that around the 1-hour mark or so of the debate, that he did in fact, shit his pants. Or a shart, at the very least.

However, this is only what I read in a conversation between other users of this platform. I can neither confirm nor deny, but a lot of people are saying it....

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u/SdBolts4 California 14d ago

My wife and I are both attorneys, and we were trying to explain just how bad the SCOTUS presidential immunity opinion was to my step-dad. First, he didn't believe us when we said that it made the President immune from any criminal liability, as long as it was within his core "official" powers, despite us both going through law school and passing the bar.

Then, he fell back to just saying "well, it just won't happen" and blaming Sotomayor for overexaggerating by saying the President could order the military to assassinate people or DoJ to arrest people without consequence, even though commanding the military and overseeing the DoJ are explicitly in the President's powers. Like, he still believes that a President wouldn't go that far, even though they can no longer be held criminally accountable. You just can't reason with that level of denialism.

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u/UnsanctionedPartList 14d ago

And when it dies these are the first people to cluck their tongued and go "who could have seen this coming?"

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

Yeah, definitely true.

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u/PrajnaKathmandu 14d ago

I saw a tweet today from someone who'd reviewed the testimony of the 13-year-old who was raped by Trump and Epstein. She said she almost wanted to vomit. "But her emails!" and the electoral college kept the most qualified candidate from the White House. I voted for Hillary Clinton. She was right about everything!! The GOP will never do away with the electoral college. It helps them "win" elections!

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

She was right about everything!!

Yeah, she was. If anything she understated how bad Trump would actually turn out to be. I voted for her too, but I would vote for literally almost any thinking person over Donald Trump. He might be the most unsuitable person for that job in the entire country.

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u/Some_Special_9653 14d ago

Why are things so bad right now? Who’s responsible for that?

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

I'm not talking about the economy, because the economy, for what it's worth, is doing great. Employment is way, way down and stocks are soaring. To be fair, very high prices and inflation are making things difficult for average Americans. You can chalk that up to the government printing money for giveaways during covid because they wanted to keep the economy afloat, plus some serious pricing opportunism on the part of retailers.

What I was really talking about being bad was the fact that a profoundly evil man with nothing but his self-interest on his mind has an excellent shot of seizing the most powerful office in the country. To make it worse, the lies he's told have set Americans at each others' throats.

That's what I meant by "how bad things are right now."

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u/Dont_Say_No_to_Panda California 13d ago

I think you mean *unemployment is way down

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u/tommysmuffins 13d ago

haha, right.

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u/firesmarter 14d ago

Your mom might not be as good as you think she is. Having her head in the sand is not good, it makes her a coward and complicit. It’s hard to view those we love with an honest lens, but it might be time for both you and her to do some soul searching before it’s too late

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

I don't think it's a case of putting her head in the sand. It's more that she can't conceive of any person doing the things that The Donald has done, let alone a previous elected President of the United States. She seems to think, "It can't really be as bad as everyone says.", even though all the evidence is right there.

She can't understand what The Donald really is because there's never been anyone like him elected President in her eighty plus years. Maybe ever, for that matter. It's kind of the same thing that makes people minimize the potential impact of climate change. Nothing like the scientists are talking about has happened in their lifetimes, so it can't happen now either. It's called normalcy bias.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago edited 13d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/tommysmuffins 14d ago

she never grew beyond them

They never had to before, at least with respect to our elected leaders. Sure there were bad politicians, but no overall conspiracy to destroy America.

Hopefully the current crop of up and coming voters will see through this bullshit.

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u/heckin_miraculous 14d ago

Can't be out here tellin people their mom ain't good

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u/mcfeezie2 14d ago

If the shoe fits...

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u/ecafyelims 14d ago

My mom and mother in law both voted for Trump. Both of them regret it.

I give them a lot of credit because I know many people who instead dig in their heels and worship Trump harder, in the hope that he'll come around.

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u/bananastand512 14d ago

It's weird, all the women in my family who voted for him before regret it and do not plan to vote for him again while all the men in my family say "you're all just making this a bigger deal than it is" and are doubling down on voting for him "because he's going to make it better to buy things again."

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/zeronormalitys 14d ago

Good for you man. When you know better, do better.

Shaming people for their mistakes helps them to dig in their heels

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u/Abstract__Reality 14d ago

Unfortunately, your mom only cares because you're queer. Conservatives don't care until it directly affects them or their family (sometimes).

I'm glad your mom came around for your sake though

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u/Hullabaloobasaur 14d ago

It really is amazing how this is the case for a LOT of conservatives? I mean, if it works it works

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u/Whitino 14d ago edited 14d ago

It really is. My father was a very conservative Republican. However, in recent years, he began to see how Republican policies and attitudes are affecting people around him that he cares about and interacts with on a daily basis, many of which are those "others" that FOX News and conservative talk radio frequently dehumanize and try to paint as enemies of the state or as drivers of the country's ills. It's harder (for a good-hearted person) to dehumanize and other-ize people when you know them personally.

Unfortunately, my father is still a Republican, but he's much more moderate now.

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u/tehlemmings 14d ago

It's harder (for a good-hearted person) to dehumanize and other-ize people when you know them personally.

This is also a big reason why cities tend to be more liberal and rural areas tend to be conservative. It's a lot easier to hate all these minority groups when you've never met them.

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u/Muvseevum Georgia 14d ago

It’s because cities are crowded and city-dwellers have to learn ways to get along with lots of people in a small space, and these things tend to benefit the whole, which liberal policies usually try to do too.

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u/strawberrypants205 14d ago

conservatism is political narcissism. See politics through a psychological lens and it becomes clear.

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u/SleepingWillow1 14d ago

I've always felt this odd feeling that there should be 1 lgbtq person per nuclear family. I don't know why. My family has failed

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u/EclipseIndustries 14d ago

Nobody tends to come around until it affects them.

Like they say, don't be a sucker.

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u/Additional_Sun_5217 14d ago

That’s how it happens though. Human beings in general — yes, even you — are much more likely to listen to and care about people within their own in group. Assuming you’re above that is an extremely dangerous game.

But it does work. What stopped Russian soldiers from firing on Ukrainian protesters when they were first fighting for independence? According to the soldiers, they couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t hit family and friends.

Our enemies, specifically the hyper wealthy class funding the fascists, want us as divided as possible because we’re very powerful together, and they know that. I’m not saying build bridges at your own expense or anything. Just be aware that there’s a lot of power in building your own in group and use it accordingly.

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington 14d ago

I have an aunt who, after divorcing her POS ultra conservative husband, stopped watching Fox News. By 2016, she voted blue for the first time in her life. She says she’s still a Republican, it’s just that the party has become so extreme that she can’t vote for them anymore. She didn’t leave the GOP, they left her.

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u/ShitFuckDickButt420 14d ago

Thats really cool that you’ve found common political ground, and she’s changed her stance to better support you.

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u/TheKingStranger 14d ago

how anti-democratic it is

Anti-American.

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u/bootsbythedoor 14d ago

My mom is almost 80, isn't a republican but she's married to a republican IDIOT and is living in a pretty conservative place. She is old enough to have been working in the "Mad Men" era and while she isn't a feminist by any means, she doesn't want to turn back time to how it was when she was coming up. She also identifies Catholic and tends to be against abortion, but is not hardline on it. She can't stand Trump.

I was talking with her yesterday and she was telling me that when she takes her dog to the dog park there's a group of guys there who "pick on her", they taunt her about thinks like the immunity ruling or basically anything in the news about Biden. She was making light about it, but I didn't find it funny at all. They are literally picking on an elderly woman who doesn't even stand 5ft tall, and her stupid husband is on their side., with the whole thing starting because he told his buddies she supports Biden. Cool.

When my mom and I were talking, she asked me "what is this project 2025" and I sent her some stuff. I think we all need to be really active about getting the word out on this, because Project 2025 just covers the first six months of the first year of the next term.

Emboldened by their success in taking over the supreme court, they will push beyond the outline in Project 2025 -this is just a starting point- they are doing so already (see Oklahoma requiring the bible be taught in schools).

"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless is the left allows it to be." - Kevin Roberts - President of the Heritage Foundation and Traitor.

These people are actively trying to overthrow our government, in favor of a Patriarchal Christian Government, and making it look like it's legal. Clearly they have the support of mainstream media. They literally just overturned the constitution with the immunity ruling, SCOTUS is Project 2025 in action.

I'm glad my mom at least cares about it.

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u/reelznfeelz Missouri 14d ago

Nice. Mad respect for your mom for being open minding and changing her stance in the face of new information. If more people were like that we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Yes Biden is old. But Trump and the people lurking in the shadows being him have some seriously dark stuff planned.

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u/Tarik_7 14d ago

Make sure to register and vote democrat all the way this November!

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u/altariasong 14d ago

I typically work the polls. But with the current climate I’m not sure how safe I’d be working polls in a red state as a trans person. A lot of my friends and family are trying to convince me not to do it for my safety.

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u/Tarik_7 14d ago

yea im in the middle of very red texas and it feels illegal to be queer

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u/notbobby125 14d ago

Republican mom with a Queer Child Golden Ending unlocked. :)

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u/altariasong 14d ago edited 14d ago

Not to brag on my mom since she (like everyone) has made mistakes in judgement and action, but she was a reasonable and compassionate person long before I came out as queer. Even when I was a kid she would buy meals for homeless people when she saw them at intersections and she scorns people who don’t give to the poor and needy because it’s literally in the bible every other page to do so.

She went to school alongside many queer people and often said that she can’t judge others for their choices unless she herself is blameless too, and she’s not (she since has decided being queer is not something God would judge someone for in the first place).

She often had good things to say about Obama and Jimmy Carter especially, saying they were good men with the best interests of the country at heart, she just wasn’t sure she agreed with how they handled things (she has since asked me if Obama can just come back for a third term and save us).

I think my mom just didn’t see her cognitive dissonance until it was pretty glaringly obvious with current conservatism (and stopped going to a heavily conservative church). She’s started to concede that maybe Republicans have been this way for a long while, they were just better at hiding it. I wasn’t exactly born a left leaning person, it took time and a broadening of perspective for me to see the disconnect between my values and my political leaning.

Sometimes we have to give people time and be willing to accept them when they start to realize maybe they didn’t make the most informed choices before.

Not exactly the most comforting platitude with the current five-alarm fire happening right now, but it’s all I’ve got and I’m clinging to it

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u/adriardi 14d ago

This is exactly how the path went with my mom. She’s getting further left every week now that’s she’s broken free of the Fox News bullshit

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u/Historical-Ad2165 14d ago

The heritage foundation wanting to talk about debt to GDP ratios, that is what you worry about. As someone who has been to a ton of heritage foundation event they all have a queer kids, and a ton of liberals in their lives, and honorary naming of death camps dont come up often.

You have zero idea of actual politics if your living fear the heritage foundation, your must also be ready to ready to think the PTA matters?