Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Sophie Scholl]

Ugh.  My mom who has progressively gotten more and more dedicated to the Right and has wholeheartedly hopped aboard the Trump Train had me look up the price of a book on Amazon for her today.  The book?  The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past by Jarrett Stepman.  After reading the description below, I told her I was not thrilled by the book or its "information" and that she should reconsider purchasing it.  She got pissed and said I wasn't her gatekeeper for such things to which I replied I didn't want to be her enabler either.  Things are so magical any time politics comes up in my family these days.

"The War on Our History

Confederate memorials toppled . . . Columbus statues attacked with red paint.

They started with slave-owning Confederate generals, but they're not stopping there.

The vandals are only pretending to care about the character of particular American heroes. In reality, they hate what those heroes represent: the truths asserted in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Constitution. And they are bent on taking America down and replacing our free society with a socialist utopia. All that stands in their way is Americans' reverence for our history of freedom.

Which is why that history simply has to go.

Now, Jarrett Stepman, editor at The Daily Signal and host of Right Side of History, exposes the true aims of the war on our history:
The war on America: World history is full of conquests and suffering indigenous peoples. Why target Christopher Columbus? What they really want to tear down is America.
The war on Thanksgiving: World history is full of colonists. Why target the Pilgrims? What they really want to tear down is American freedom and prosperity.
The war on the Founding: World history is full of slavery. Why target Thomas Jefferson? What they really want to tear down are the rights endowed by our Creator.
The war on the common man: World history is full of victorious generals and populist politicians. Why target Andrew Jackson? What they really want to tear down is democracy.
The war on the South: World history is full of civil strife. Why target Confederate heroes like Robert E. Lee? What they really want to tear down is respect for America's past and the reconciliation that renewed our Union.
The war on patriotism: World history is full of national pride. Why target Teddy Roosevelt? What they really want to tear down is the idea of American greatness.
The war on the American century: World history is full of bloody wars. What they really want to tear down is America's defeat of totalitarianism.

If America is to survive this assault, we must rally to the defense of our illustrious history. The War on History is the battle plan."

[Oexmelin]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

[Sophie Scholl]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Right?  I almost thought it was an Onion level parody type book.  But it isn't.  Which is terrifying in that such a book exists, people buy it, people believe it, and one of those is my own mother.

[Syt]

Sheesh, BA.

[Razgovory]

Yeah, that's pretty bad.

[DGuller]

I can sympathize.  Most of my extended family goes from being nice and helpful people to virulent fascists the moment politics comes up.  It has to be some kind of insanity unleashed on the people.

[Syt]

[Valmy]

Oh yeah that story was completely killed three years ago and we haven't been hearing about it constantly. I mean no victims come forward or no action ever gets taken but it is a social media talking point.

[Berkut]

Its rather amazing how an entirely constructed narrative is born, promulgated, and then pretty much accepted as fact at some point.

The entire pedohilia hysteria as a narrative was created by RT and Putin as a way of portraying the West as decadent, and then morphed into this conspiracy theory about the left enabling pedophiles.

[Malthus]

I can sympathize.  Most of my extended family goes from being nice and helpful people to virulent fascists the moment politics comes up.  It has to be some kind of insanity unleashed on the people.

Makes me at least appreciate my family - I get annoyed because the merest mention of politics sets them all off on a lengthy rant, but at least they aren't ranting for Trump and assorted right wing nutjobs, but rather against.

[HVC]

I can sympathize.  Most of my extended family goes from being nice and helpful people to virulent fascists the moment politics comes up.  It has to be some kind of insanity unleashed on the people.

Makes me at least appreciate my family - I get annoyed because the merest mention of politics sets them all off on a lengthy rant, but at least they aren't ranting for Trump and assorted right wing nutjobs, but rather against.

who are they ranting against if everyone agrees?... are you a secret trumpet?

[The Brain]

I can sympathize.  Most of my extended family goes from being nice and helpful people to virulent fascists the moment politics comes up.  It has to be some kind of insanity unleashed on the people.

Makes me at least appreciate my family - I get annoyed because the merest mention of politics sets them all off on a lengthy rant, but at least they aren't ranting for Trump and assorted right wing nutjobs, but rather against.

who are they ranting against if everyone agrees?... are you a secret trumpet?

Clouds and fungi.

[Maximus]

In my experience, people rarely rant against people who are present.

[Valmy]

The local family who gathers together on holidays (my parents, my sister and her family, my mother's cousin and his wife, my father's sister, and my mother-in-law)  are all Democrats except my Brother-in-Law and he is...some kind of conspiracy theory type I guess. He hated Hillary but now seems interested in UBC. So maybe he would vote for Yang if he somehow won the nomination.

But because the parties are such big tents we still have plenty of things we can viciously disagree about so I try to avoid the subject.

My grandparents (both sets) had this strict ethos that you don't discuss politics so weirdly I never really knew even who they supported. That generation had a code that politics, money, and religion were taboo subjects and that has kind of carried on in my family.

[Malthus]

I can sympathize.  Most of my extended family goes from being nice and helpful people to virulent fascists the moment politics comes up.  It has to be some kind of insanity unleashed on the people.

Makes me at least appreciate my family - I get annoyed because the merest mention of politics sets them all off on a lengthy rant, but at least they aren't ranting for Trump and assorted right wing nutjobs, but rather against.

who are they ranting against if everyone agrees?... are you a secret trumpet?

'Do you know the shame of secret Trumpism ...?'   

But no. They don't need to have anyone there disagreeing to go off on a rant about Trump etc.

That's part of what makes it so tiresome: everyone there agrees he's horrible, so hearing - AGAIN - about how horrible he is just induces boredom. As in, can't we just talk about something else?