No worries, I know what you meant.

I’m more worried about them falling into the online manosphere gamergate pipeline, especially the older one who I swear gets into it with my mom just to feel something. They’re both around 10yo and all they’re interested in doing, at least when I’m around, is playing fortnite and other online games like roblox. When we visit with family they’re glued to their phones. There’s always a fight at bedtime, and probably in the morning before school just like there was with me. They already cuss like sailors in their game chats, repeating misogynist catchphrases and bullshit talking points about immigrants probably fed to them by some nazi chud they were playing with online.

They’re completely fueled by high-octane, short-term bursts of dopamine and the only discipline they have is whatever they’ve learned to cope with my mom’s outbursts; her parenting style is very much “bend and snap”, to the point that they don’t really respond to anything other than the “snap” part of that equation.

They’re good kids and they deserve a better childhood. My mom seems to think that means going on trips and having things, but that’s not at all what it means.

I’m sure that once they’re at an accessible age for it, if the whole LLM salt pillar doesn’t collapse by then, there won’t be many forces resisting their assimilation into the AI hivemind.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical and hyperbolic. To some extent yeah I get it, they’re kids, their frontal lobes aren’t fully developed and one way or another they are gonna find their way under your skin, but there has to be an adult in the situation that can see past a few hours from now and it can’t be them. It can’t be me either, god forbid I try to “mom” my mother’s children.

Idk. Maybe I’ll finally understand when I have kids of my own /s

Not that you asked. Sorry for the rant and thanks for reading.

Yeah… I know I shouldn’t say those things (and of course, full transparency, what I actually said was a bit more specific but I’m not trying to put ALL our business on the Internet). I have my moments of weakness like anyone else. I blow up just like she does, and so do my brothers for that matter. I already have to moderate my tone with her so she can’t dismiss me out of hand for getting “too emotional”, so I don’t always find the nicest way to put things once I’ve lost that barrier (and honestly at that point it really doesn’t matter what I say anyways, she’s not going to hear it except to punch back). That’s not a skill that she ever demonstrated for me to have learned. To be clear, though, I’m not saying that to excuse myself from being the bigger person.

I do think it’s morbidly funny how she insists that you can’t help anyone, but she can help you, and also you can help someone if it’s specifically her.

Yep. It’s like she fully believes in whatever reality is convenient to her and will validate her feelings in the moment. It isn’t rooted in any concrete reasoning and often directly contradicts her previous assertions. If you try to correct the record she’ll just talk over you or accuse you of, again, whatever must be true for her to be feeling what she’s feeling (“I never said that”, “are you saying it’s my fault?”, “you’re so ___”, “you always/never do ___ when I ___”). Not only is it childish but it’s incredibly inconsistent, unpredictable, and impossible to keep up or relate with as a result.

You would think that this behavior would at least be limited to moments like this when tensions are high, but you would be wrong. She masks it when she can but it still comes out. So I’ve learned to let it go by without comment and deal with the feelings privately.

This all seems like it’s absolutely catastrophic for her mental health, but guess you might not have much of an ability or even inclination to intervene, which is fair enough.

You can only help someone that’s willing to admit they have a problem, and she’s explicitly sheltered herself from that reality. I wish there was more I could do, but I’m only one person, and the last person she’s willing to take advice from. If there was some service or a community that I could call on that wouldn’t just make the situation worse I would do it in a hearbeat, but we live within a brutal system that has systematically stripped away and alienated us from anything of that sort.

Would you believe she spent my childhood and adolescence constantly accusing me of getting so defensive, being too sensitive, and having an attitude?

Yeah, as if she’d let me have the satisfaction of knowing something she doesn’t know or relating to the world in a way that causes her to self-reflect. Part of growing up and healing for me has been coming to the understanding that not every misunderstanding is my fault for not having explained or related in the right way. You simply cannot convince those who do not want to be convinced.

Maybe that’s an overly defeatist reply to a silly joking comment but short of professional counseling experience I don’t see how a person, especially a child in a parent-child relationship, would overcome this level of stubborn indignation.

Also, I’m an Aries with strong Virgo influence and she’s a Cancer. Obviously. Get it together, man, you’re clearly out of your depths. I’m supposed to take advice from someone so out of tune with the energy of the world around us?

I realized at one point that I actively dreaded talking to one of my parents. […] I want to talk with them about the ways they’ve hurt me, but even when I manage to put it into words, I either regret it or at best feel like I’ve accomplished nothing.

She gets upset that we don’t talk more; we don’t have anything in common to talk about. I humor her when she goes on about her spirituality stuff, mostly for the sake of avoiding friction, but she is actively disinterested in anything going on in my life that’s not financial or romantic (and trust me, there’s not much going on there). I haven’t bothered telling her about my stuff for so long (if ever, honestly), be it political or otherwise, that the recent events of my life don’t even come to mind when I’m talking to her. She really doesn’t know a thing about the ideas and passions that drive me, yet she doesn’t hesitate to make assumptions and assertions about me, my friends, and who I am as a person. More and more I’m realizing that’s just entirely been projection on her part.

and then they suddenly moved far enough away and that wasn’t really as much of a problem.

Funnily enough, she was actually trying to move to Florida for a while. “I just need to be by the ocean” is how she put it. It hasn’t worked out so far and I don’t think it will help her anyways. “Wherever you go, there you are” as they say.

From their words and actions, I find it hard to take them at their word when they say things like this

Oh, it’s absolutely just that thing people do. “If I say the good thing enough times and don’t acknowledge the bad thing then only the good thing will be true”. Whatever you want to call it… “mindset”, “bootstraps”, “psychosis”… seems like “manifesting” is the popular term for it right now. Essentially it’s just regressing into whatever version of reality you find to be most soothing, which really only works if you refuse to engage with anyone that disagrees with that alternative reality. It completely avoids dealing with the root of the thing that’s making her unhappy and causes her to lash out.

She is clearly miserable, she always has been. I’m sympathetic to her struggle, and I wish there was more I could do for her and for my brothers and my relationship with all of them, but I’m just not equipped to deal with her. I have my own life to live and it’s never been fruitful for me to cater to her. Here’s to “caring less about other people” I guess.

thick as thieves

Let me re-apply my analysis for you

Liberalism essentially encompasses the entirety of what is broadly considered acceptable within western politics, which is why you’ll sometimes hear the term ‘western liberal democracies’, but for our purposes we are usually referring to the less immediately fascist genocidal end of the spectrum that like to consider themselves progressive pro-Palestine because they engage positively with identity politics denounce the genocide of Palestinians.

They aren’t truly progressive unsupportive of Israel because they don’t fundamentally challenge the systems and power structures that enable these kinds of political developments Israel’s settler-colonialist project and the proliferation of the “culture war” Zionism in the first place, and are very often minimizing and hostile towards those who do take a principled stance against these systems. The extent of their political understanding is largely bound by establishment liberal media that has a clear stake in the continuation of that very same system Israel’s statehood which is threatened by any real material social progress the existence of Palestinians on their own land. This contradiction often leads liberals into defending those systems and power structures even at the expense of the marginalized groups that a liberal would purport to defend the Palestinian cause, and lashing out against those to the left of them for not “Knowing Their Place” considering the feelings and safety of the Israeli settlers in a system that has for a very long time been ratcheting starving, removed, beating, generally dispossessing, and apartheid-ing itself towards fascism all-out genocide.

It’s easy to denounce genocide and say you don’t support Israel but if you aren’t challenging the systems that led to this point; which even still in the face of this genocide are working overtime to normalize it in whatever angles they can; and confronting the relationship you have with settler-colonialism by default as a person born in the west, you aren’t anti-genocide in any meaningful way that could actually end the genocide or prevent another from occuring. You are only reacting to the aesthetics of genocide; exclusive of the mechanisms that produce it; which makes you an unwitting, vibes-based cog in the genocide machine.

I have news for you

In Europe and Latin America, liberalism means a moderate form of classical liberalism and includes both conservative liberalism (centre-right liberalism) and social liberalism (centre-left liberalism).[26]

Yes they are.

Liberalism essentially encompasses the entirety of what is broadly considered acceptable within western politics, which is why you’ll sometimes hear the term ‘western liberal democracies’, but for our purposes we are usually referring to the less immediately fascist end of the spectrum (liberalism always eventually decays into fascism due to the utter disempowerment of any force with material interests in resisting the pull of fascism, but nevermind that for now) that like to consider themselves progressive because they engage positively with identity politics.

They aren’t truly progressive because they don’t fundamentally challenge the systems and power structures that enable these kinds of political developments (loss of bodily autonomy, marriage equality, affirmative gender care, etc) and the proliferation of the “culture war” in the first place, and are very often minimizing and hostile towards those who do take a principled stance against these systems. The extent of their political understanding is largely bound by establishment liberal media which has a clear stake in the continuation of that very same system that is threatened by any real material social progress. This contradiction often leads liberals into defending those systems and power structures even at the expense of the marginalized groups that a liberal would purport to defend, and lashing out against those to the left of them for not “knowing their place” in a system that has for a very long time been ratcheting itself towards fascism.

god this shit is beyond parody. america is such a fucking joke scam country.