I know you’ve already gotten a lot of replies, but with my dad the issue is that he has been indoctrinated (self radicalized, if you will) himself with right wing rhetoric for as long as I can remember. He has listened to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News every day of his life for the last 20+ years. The Clintons in general,…

I heard an interview on NPR the other day with a nurse practitioner who is grudgingly voting for trump. When asked what political issues she was most concerned about, she said women’s rights. And she’s voting for trump.

I do that but then one-up the crazy.

Oh my god this. I have ended arguments with, “I’m sorry, I can’t have an argument with someone who lives in an alternate reality.” Like you, I will gladly debate someone about their political views. I think that very often, both sides want the same goal and just disagree with how to get there. I find that interesting…

My best coup of this type was when the old coworker guy on the long car ride with me chose to rant about how disgraceful it was for Parliament to debate gay marriage while there were so many other problems facing the UK at the time. I agreed with him and said, “You’re absolutely right, it’s not even worth debating,…

I was in an argument with someone and it was actually something that I felt was interesting so I was willing to stay in it for awhile, until we reached an impasse. and then that’s what I said - we have reached an impasse.

There’s a sector of the right that has always viewed partisan politics through a narrow scriptural lens.

I literally never heard such venom from my dad until the day Cronkite came up in conversation.

I stopped engaging my father on politics too. Unfortunately, that means I have stopped engaging him at all. It is too painful to know the man I idolized growing up is a racist misogynist.

“You get a D for failing to actually string together a coherent argument but I will give you bonus points for how smoothly you transitioned away from starting to say the n-word.”

They are afraid of Hilary. At least, my mom sure seems to be.

Oh sure, but I figure I’m planting the seeds of socialism in their brains. :)

I did one yesterday on facebook where I got a lady who was complaining about the national debt to agree that we need to raise taxes. This is my new hobby.

You are entitled to you own opinions, but not your own facts.

It is the grudging Trump supporters that I do not get. How do they rationalize it when they must be able to see that he is completely unsuitable? Is it just sexism?

I know, but if you’re clever with it, you can convince people of a concept that they would absolutely not agree to otherwise.

Yes, I should apparently listen to my in-laws because they are older and wiser than me. I’m pushing freaking 50, but I should listen to these right-wing-radio-and-FOX-news folks because they’ve lived a bit longer? Hard pass. But I do have to do the “but they’re generally good people” outside of the political bullshit…

THIIIIIIIIS. My own dad who can talk at length about string theory and does mathematical problems on napkins when he’s bored still says Obama is a Muslim. When pressed he walks back on it, but oh my god. Really? THAT JUST ISNT TRUE! How do you have a rational conversation with someone who rejects reality?

It’s sad that even when I choose not to engage with my father re: politics, he just says that I’m disrespecting him and being a “liberal know-it-all” by not listening to his side. It’s a lose-lose.

As someone who can still remember Walter Cronkite and how family political debates went a generation or two ago, I think a lot of what has changed is that we used to argue about political viewpoints; now we often argue about political “facts.”