By FaethS • Score: 1 • April 22, 2025 12:58 AM
So I live in a mostly left leaning household. Me, my siblings, and my mother are very much people who don't agree with the GOP and especially Trump. My father, however, has been a Fox News watcher for as long as I can remember. When they got married, my parents agreed that they wouldn't agree on politics and they wouldn't try to infringe on each other's opinions. My siblings have also taken this stance when it comes to it, and for most of my life it's never been a problem.
Then the 2016 election happened, and with it the conservative side of America began to show more of its ugly side as time went by. Again, at first, when it came to my dad it wasn't ever that big a problem. I figured that we could still go by our "agree to disagree" policy and live comfortably. Then he started watching OAN, I heard him repeatedly say that facemasks were a scam during the pandemic, and the week that Biden won in 2020 was probably the most tense the atmosphere in my house had been in a long time.
While I've been trying to stay respective of my dad's views, it's been getting harder and harder to be okay with the rest of my family not saying anything to him. And while I could talk with my siblings about my worries, they've always said that I shouldn't feel the need to change my dad, that even if we don't see eye to eye that we could still peacefully coexist. However my worries about what he was becoming didn't get any better. In fact in some ways it got worse, and you can imagine that Trump's re-election hasn't done me any favors. With all the news that I kept hearing about how much damage his second term has been causing and the word of many former supporters turning against him, I had hope that my father would eventually wake up and realize how deep he's gotten.
Then last night my sister came over for dinner for Easter. It was supposed to be a nice day where we could enjoy the holiday and catch up together. After she set her things on the coffee table, including a water bottle with stickers on it, my dad suddenly got angry and said "How dare you bring this into my house," and put the bottle away in the kitchen. From there my mom and sister just got uncomfortably quiet and my dad just quietly fumed in his seat, so I left the room and texted my sister asking what happened, and she explained that one of the stickers on her water bottle was an anti-Trump sticker, and that dad got offended by it. At that point, I just couldn't hold it back and burst into tears. My sister and mom tried to calm me down but they refused to say anything against dad. I even texted my brother and he didn't say anything either. They said what they usually did that my dad had the right to believe what he did, but at this point it felt so toxic and I couldn't stand my family choosing to just do nothing. My dad remained quiet and mad for the rest of the evening and dinner was just me, my sister, and my mom. Things calmed down and I talked with my mom about it when she got home this afternoon, and she said that if someone finds something offensive they have the right to say they don't want it in their house.
It took everything in me to not crumble in front of her hearing that. Ever since I just can't look at my family the same, knowing that even in the face of something objectively wrong and evil they wouldn't budge. They say that my dad loves me and would do anything to protect me but it's getting so hard to believe that. It doesn't help that I'm on the autism spectrum and my sister is physically disabled herself, meaning if something were to happen we'd be easy targets. My biggest fear is that something will happen to one of us and my family will just do nothing about it because they'd rather not rock the boat. My brother says that I'm being ridiculous and that nothing was going to happen to me or my sister, but with how things are going I don't even know how much I believe that.
Am I in the wrong for thinking this?
Please wait...
Fetching data...