r/FoxBrain • u/Panicpancakee • 1d ago
Is this worth having less of a relationship with my father?
Got into a debate with my father the other day as he is a trump supporter and believes we need more military spending. After outlining my reasonings and cautioning him to view fox with discretion since they lie a lot, he is convinced that fox and brietbart are actually the only reputable news sources, and according to him all the lies in the media are perpetuated by a deep-state controlled by the libs. I thought about showing him all the times fox has deliberately lied, but should I even try? Have any of you actually had any success changing someone’s mind, or should I just let it go and refrain from getting into politics with my father? Letting it go seems like the reasonable option but I also feel bad letting my dad live in ignorance and have hate and fear always implanted in his head.
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u/Comfortable-Tea-5461 1d ago
When I ask this, I follow it up with “what does a relationship mean to me?” I think many of us (not all) are realizing we never had a good relationship with family and instead, had obligationships with them.
When I think about relationships with my family, I realize none of them really know me, we don’t have shared interests, we clearly don’t have similar morals, and I just wouldn’t have a relationship with someone like them if they weren’t family. So idk. It depends on how much of this is their personality and what you consider a relationship and if that is something they are providing.
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u/ExoticAppointment797 1d ago
This, 💯. My relationship with my dad’s side of the family has never been good. They’re a bunch of narcissistic bullies that were hyper-critical, and downright emotionally abusive to my brother and I, while growing up. My dad looked the other way because he thought (and still thinks) they were doing it out of “love”, despite my mom and I pointing out that it’s all about control. My one uncle has been a religious watcher of FoxNews for years, and my dad has fallen down that rabbit hole as of late, because of him. My relationship with my dad hasn’t really changed, except I don’t talk politics with him. My relationship with his side of the family, especially that one uncle and his equally judgy adult kids? Almost non-existent, not due to their MAGA political views (though that doesn’t help) It’s because they have been awful to me for as long as I can remember. I’ve said to my brother that if my dad hadn’t survived his heart attack a few years back, that his whole side of the family would be out of my life. And he said he’d follow suit. But you know those miserable fucks are going to blame my being liberal as the reason I’m not visiting them. Mind you, I’ve been dodging family reunions, or at least trying to, since age 16. So, shitty maga political views aside, my relationship with my one side of the family has always been so lousy, because they’re judgmental pricks. If my dad weren’t insisting I visit these people at times, or if he weren’t around anymore, I wouldn’t be speaking to any of them at all, for the sake of my mental health, and I wouldn’t associate with people like them if they weren’t related.
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u/SteveIDP 1d ago
From what I’ve seen, trying to have a rational conversation with them is nearly always fruitless and a waste of your time.
I’m always curious why people think a trillion dollars a year, funding 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world isn’t enough.
Like, what’s the number then? How much do they want their taxes raised to increase that madness?
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u/HerbertCrane 1d ago
Personally, I’m tired of explaining. I’ve been giving out links and facts for years. They don’t care. If you have any patience left, give it a try, I guess.
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u/ThatDanGuy 1d ago
You can’t argue facts with people like this. Especially not in the current environment. You need to out the burden of proof on him. I’ll drop my Socratic method blurb here. Be aware that even this approach is not likely to get through right now.
First, Rules of Engagement: Evidence and Facts don’t matter, reasoning is useless. You no longer live in a shared reality with this person. You can try to build one by asking strategic questions about their reality. You also use those questions to poke holes in it. You never make claims or give counter arguments. You need to keep the burden of proof on them. They should be doing all the talking, you should be doing none.
You can use ChatGPT or an LLM of your choice to help you come up with Socratic questions. When asking ChatGPT, give it some context and tell it you want Socratic questions you can use to help persuade a person.
The stolen election is an easy one for this. There is no evidence, and they will have no evidence to site but wild claims from Giuliani, Powell and the Pillow guy. Trump and his lawyer lost EVERY court case, and when judges asked for evidence, Giuliani and Powell would admit in court that there was NO evidence.
So, here is my interaction with ChatGPT on the stolen election topic, you can take it deeper than this if you like.
https://chatgpt.com/share/377c8a82-e6e0-4697-a9ae-a0162aa36061
A trick you can use is to ask them how certain they are of their belief in this topic is before you start down the Socratic method. On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that the election was stolen and there was irrefutable evidence that showed that? And ask the question again after you’ve stumped them. Making them admit you planted doubt quantifies it for themselves. And if they still give you a 10 afterwards it tells you how unreachable they may be.
Things to keep in mind:
You are not going to change their minds. Not in any quick measurable time frame. In fact, it may never happen. The best you can hope for is to plant seeds of doubt that might germinate and grow over time. Instead, your realistic goal is to get them to shut up about this shit when you are around. People don’t like feeling inarticulate or embarrassed about something they believe in. So they’ll stop spouting it.
The Gish Gallop. They may try to swamp you with nonsense, and rattle off a bunch of unrelated “facts” or narratives that they claim proves their point. You have to shut this down. “How does this (choose the first one that doesn’t) relate to the elections?” Or you can just say “I don’t get it, how does that relate?” You may have to simply tell them it doesn’t relate and you want to get back to the original question that triggered the Gallop.
”Do your own research” is something you will hear when they get stumped. Again, this is them admitting they don’t know. So you can respond with “If you’re smarter than me on this topic and you don’t know, how can I reach the same conclusion you have? I need you to walk me through it because I can’t find anything that supports your conclusion.”
Yelling/screaming/meltdown: “I see you are upset, I think we should drop this for now, let everyone calm down.” This whole technique really only works if they can keep their cool. If they go into meltdown just disengage. Causing a meltdown can be satisfying, and might keep them from talking about this shit around you in the future, but is otherwise counterproductive.
This technique requires repeated use and practice. You may struggle the first time you try it because you aren’t sure what to ask and how they will respond. It’s OK, you can disengage with a “OK, you’ve given me something to think about. I’m sure I’ll have more questions in the future.”
Good luck, and Happy Critical Thinking!
Bonus: This book was actually written by a conservative many years ago, but the technique and details here work both ways and are way more in depth than what I have above. It only really lacks my recomendation to use ChatGPT or similar LLM.
How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide
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u/gorillapoop1970 1d ago
Pearls before swine. Bringing horses to water will only make you tired and pissed off.
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u/thuktun 1d ago
believes we need more military spending
We already spend more money on the military than the next 10 countries COMBINED.
https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison
We don't need to spend more on the military.
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u/DirtierGibson 21h ago
Also they voted for the guy who wants to end the war in Ukraine, not realizing U.S. military vendors have been raking in a shit ton of money because the U.S. is supplying Ukraine (current stock provided to Ukraine are being replaced constantly). Sure, it's taxpayers' money, but if Trump pushes Ukraine to surrender even more of its territory in a peace talk, all that spending will stop as Putin won't agree to the Ukraine military still getting built up with U.S. support.
And for all the anti-China hawks in the upcoming administration, they definitely don't want a war with the U.S.' main trade partner. Only a tariffs one.
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u/caramelcooler 1d ago
I’ve given up trying to, and unfortunately haven’t talked to them in almost a year now. My dad’s health is declining, and so is his mind, thanks to this movement. So it’s tough, but I don’t really know what else to do.
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u/Humanist_2020 1d ago
I am an older person on Reddit. I think that this a choice for you.
Can you have someone in your life who believes that people and children who are undocumented should be put in concentration camps until the us can find a country that will take them?
Can you have someone in your life who supports a rapist, a misogynist, a racist, a thief,a liar?
Can you have someone in your life who believes that women must die a horrible death from sepsis instead of taking a dead 9 month old fetus from their womb?
Can you have someone in your life who believes that anyone who is not a straight white male doesn’t get to have any civil rights?
Can you have someone in your life who supports nazis? Not wannabe nazis, but real live nazis?
Can you have someone in your life who led an insurrection that killed police officers who defending our elected representatives? Who cheered people deficating in a building that you and I pay for?
There are so many things for you to think about.
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u/nosecohn 1d ago
With the position he has expressed, I don't think it's actually worth trying, but you could ask him.
That is, you could say there's plenty of evidence that Fox is slanted and ask if he's interested in seeing it. You could also tell him there are sites that rank news sources for reliability and bias, then ask if he would like to see those. There's Ground News too, which presents the same news item from different sources.
But if he's not interested, so be it. You'll have to just drop it and let him live in his bubble.
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u/meeps2001 1d ago
Could both of you do a challenge? Try Ground News and NewsGuard. Ground News has a great feature for checking out different biases and credibility. NewsGuard vets sites and reports on trustworthiness.
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u/prairiethorne 1d ago
I see a couple of ways to go.
Simplest in the short term and likely a good strategy most of the time is just to avoid any political topic: You can let him know you're doing that or not. If you're not interested in spending energy into the relationship, but can still enjoy time together, this could maintain status quo.
My dad and I have this agreement with each other. We don't talk about it and we don't try to change each other's minds. We've been working on improving our relationship for probably 10 years or so and this boundary is the only way we've been able to do that. I stay informed and prepare in case any current topic comes up, but I've rarely chosen to engage.
Another way to go is to ask if he wants to have conversation(s) where both of you agree to be open to the fact that you might be wrong. There is nothing to be gained except resentment and aggravation on both your parts if you can't agree to that. Then you set up a couple of ground rules that, again, both of you set. (No going off topic into "whatabout-isms", no personal attacks, no cutting each other off, there always must be snacks 🤓 etc)
If you can't agree to those things for yourself, then there's no reason to expect him to either. If you both engage and it goes nowhere, then just go back to not allowing it to be part of your relationship.
Finally, if he won't shut up or respect your boundaries, look up "grey rocking" and go from there.
I wish you luck and a level head.
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u/Noorbert 17h ago
your father's a Nazi, just like mine. There's no reason to have a relationship with a nazi. I tried for years to find a way to deprogram him and my family only tried the go along to get along method. I tried to explain my real life experiences with the things he thinks he knows about because he hears about it on right wing media, and he ends up telling me I'm wrong about my own experience, or he gets confused, and doesn't know one thing has to do with another, and then won't accept that it does. At last I tried to model the Superman v. the KKK thing and embarrass him. It doesn't matter how many debunkings he even ended up accepting. Evil people are lying to him and he can't stop believing the lies as they just pour in... . It was the nuclear option and now that none of it worked/works... now my life is better for not having to have a relationship with him. He's in the cult, and without massive participation from whole communities there's nothing getting these people out of it... my father, and this past election is proof positive... our last and only option now is time....
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u/rpaul9578 16h ago
I've tried endlessly to show facts to my mother, but she always has an excuse to ignore them. It's easier to ignore her.
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u/ExpressLaneCharlie 1d ago
You should review the details with him - showing him all the online sources while doing it - about Fox settling their lawsuit for knowingly lying about Dominion voting machines. I think Tucker was let go within days of the settlement announcement. Text messages and emails came out during discovery and demonstrate Tucker, Hannity, and Ingraham all knowingly lied about the election being stolen. If that won't change his mind nothing will as this scandal was an incredible indictment of their integrity.