Extreme, but caring, family members

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Not sure if I am looking for advice or venting or both...

I have some relatives that are very extreme on many viewpoints .. almost like it seems paranoid. They are really very caring and loving people so even though it may appear to some depending on their political viewpoints or your values - you may associate this sort of thinking of the opposite.

For example, they are adamantly against the covid vaccine to the point that they feel the government is doing this to control every day people. It has grown to the point that one of these members (it is a cousin to my daughter) told my daughter she should not go to her college because they are requiring the vaccine to attend. My daughter had already decided to get the vaccine before the college communicated it would be required, but told me she would not tell them she was getting it because she basically did not want to here it.

They are concerned about our country's future to the point they have purchased things like those emergency rations, but their money in
cryptocurrency and extreme things like that. They send emails on things like I forget what it exactly was but something dangerous that was in the vaccine that is deadly that worried my husband until I asked him what/where did that information come from?

These family members range in age from 30s to early 60s and they are educated intelligent people - just paranoid and someone are to the point they do not believe the government at all so there is no reasoning with them and it is like you just accept what they send and just sort of kindly ignore it.

It was one time so bad an aunt of my daughter while she was in college was so worked up that she wanted my daughter to travel to stay with her. This is the first time I got mad - my daughter was so worried she was about to fly out and stay with her for a couple of weeks while my daughter 30+ years younger should be focusing on her studies and (at the time) her team. I was able to get my husband and her husband (who was away) calm her down enough so as not to disrupt my daughter's life.

They are very kind loving and caring people that would help anyone out (and have opened their home to help others). But their extreme viewpoints are a bit for lack of a better term --- crazy.

And to add to this - they are very close with my daughters and may be closest family members to my husband.

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@Linkat,

That's a tough one and one I share to a lesser extent. My bother and his family are very evangelical right (to the point that he was going around trying to start religious debates at my uncle's wake.) They are all into the culture wars (but are for the vaccine even after all of them contracting the virus at church). I was reading something about the radicalization of the teenagers and young men who traveled to Syria to fight for ISIS. It said the first step was to convince them that all the sources of information in their lives are lying to them. Once you have them isolated from information to the contrary, you can eventually convince them of your position. That is what our communication landscape has effectively done to everyone. You can now listen to only voices that support your position and many people distrust all voices that disagree with them.

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@Linkat,

Quote:

Not sure if I am looking for advice or venting or both...

Yes, both might be useful.

I've heard of accounts like this with depressing frequency. We talk about the cultural divide in the country but when it "hits home" you no longer have the comfort of abstraction — or putting people on "ignore" the way we can on A2K.

I don't know how or when it started — there have always been fractious sentiments in the US, urban/rural being one of the oldest — but it's only been recently that this seething, but subterranean, divisiveness has really been cultivated, brought to the surface, and cynically exploited by politicians, aided by social media. Although it didn't start with Reagan I think he really made distrust of government respectable — and he did, after all, do away with the "Fairness Doctrine".

I think your daughter's tactic of limiting the extent of her response is probably the safest tactic. But from what I've read, concerned non-critical questioning can sometimes help a bit. "Where did you hear this? How certain are you of this claim? What have you seen that confirms this?" But in many cases it may be easier to simply build a wall — a semi-permeable one.

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I think most of us are in the same situation. I am the only true progressive in my circle of peers and family.

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@hightor,

Yeah I think I would normally agree with questioning - but it seems they are so distrustful that questioning would not work. It is blind trust in certain social media or whatever connections they have vs the government.

In some ways you can understand it - in that our government does often times (doesn't matter the party to me) seem so out of touch with ordinary people and come across many times as arrogant and as if they know more - personally I do not trust the government 100% but do feel we have enough checks and balances that they cannot run away with complete control. I am more skeptical of our government (as well as these other parties - which I am not even sure who they all are) rather than 100% distrustful.

When my husband gets paranoid about something they send because he is so close to them, I just say I wonder where they got that information - what the source is? And leave it at that - he is smart enough to realize their source may be just as tainted as anything coming from someone in the government he does not trust.

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

I think most of us are in the same situation. I am the only true progressive in my circle of peers and family.

I consider myself more an independent - I do distrust many in government - realize it is a necessary evil - prefer limited government as I feel I am intelligent enough to make my own decisions in many things - but on the flip side - I do make my own decisions and do not listen or follow another group simply because of issues with the government or certain individuals within the government.

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@Linkat,

Not the point I was making, but I get it.

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Family is family. You can't change them. You have to appreciate them for who they are. It is a good thing for your daughter to be exposed to differenr (although in this case rather crazy) ideas. Maybe you can learn tp enjoy them.

My grandmother and I had a great relationship through my twenties. She was very much into thinly veiled anti-semitic conspiracy theories that centered around the Bilderbugers. Every time I went to visit her she would arrange political pamplhets on her coffee table. I would comment that I didn't like anti-semitism (which insulted her). She would respond that I was ignorant (which insulted me).

Then with that ritual out of the way we would have a wonderful time. She was a fascinating woman with travel stories and an encyclopededic understanding of plants and folklore.

Your family needs to accept you for who you are and enjoy the uniqueness of their relationship with you. Then the fact they think your ideas are crazy wont matter.

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