Having arguments with family members for having radical views

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My dad is a hardcore neocon. Yes. A lot.

I feel your pain, comrade.

What are you, FARC? Shining Path?

Not really, mostly because I don't take myself too seriously, and neither do the conservatives or the liberals in my family. It also helps having a crypto Syndicalist grandma so we can both vent to each other.

Ignore him, he's been shitting up multiple threads with his bullshit, but never sticks around to actually back up any of his points when called out. I'm pretty sure he's just a Holla Forumsyp troll.

she still has strange ideas but i'll accept that as quirks of someone too close to be mad over

i started to do this too, just at "opportune times" such as having news on TV, radio or paper, a discussion i overhear or whatever. usually people just shut up and look at me stunned that someone on the left would actually say shit like "if you have an issue with immigrants then why have you not driven out american troops off german soil you disgusting bootlicking traitors?"
it's fun, really.

My mom is pretty much a socialist because of me, and my step-father is at least sympathetic. These were pro-life conservatives, mind you. I find the best way to convince people is to take things they care about, and show how capitalism makes it worse.

Your mother sounds like the perfect Posadist, lol.

If I would wager a guess, I would assume that your father is probably somewhere between late baby-boomer and early Gen-X in age.

Americans born in this time period have pretty much only experienced (or believe they have experienced) things getting roughly better than they were when they were younger. From the crazy increase in technology/internet to the expansion of western military hegemony to the roughly stable world-state post-MAD that sees America as the dominant world-power - they remember hearing stories about the great depression from their parents and grandparents but they didn't have to live through it themselves. Of course they have seen economic events like 2008, but they might point to that and say it was a terrible crash but the economy recovered, look where we are now, things will be alright, they've always been alright, etc.

Older Americans, in my experience, believe that things will always keep getting better and better, even if they perceive that change as something that is happening slowly, somewhere (and there's no shortage of futurists telling them we'll be colonizing mars by the end of the century or some such nonsense). These are people who are often unable to hold the idea that their society or way of life could be utterly changed or outright collapse - for them it is outside the realm of possibility. I think it is this mindset, that things will always get better, that there will always be more, that makes radical thoughts hard for them to hold or be around. Being radical means acknowledging how bad things are, how bad they can be, how bad they are going to be, etc. It is counter to the American exceptionalism that a lot of people grew up with and have had pounded into their heads for their entire lives.