my dad is so bafflingly contradictory in his existence sometimes. Rant ahead.
Heās a scientist and statistician at heart, so youād think reasoning and statistics would help. Instead, though, he just forms an opinion and then focuses on things that reinforce that bias over and over again. Thank fucking god heās still like super left wing and shit so Iām not battling like. a trump supporter. but itās smaller shit like his opinion on nuclear power, weed, and nonnutritive sweeteners (all are evil and super dangerous) and he wonāt set it down until he believes heās convinced you.
Heās also like. Rather fucking emotionally volatile when you try to confront his beliefs. I donāt want to imply that emotions have no place in debates or that having no emotions makes you superior, but in situations where I would confront any other member of my family or friend group with, like, research papers and conversations to identify their thinking/reasoning and maybe even confronting those base worries, I just canāt do it with him. Heās incredibly stubborn, and it took him literally like a fucking week for him to be able to put into words why he was so fucking against the idea of painting out house anything but yellow after I asked him for the third time over the course of the year we took to get a painter. The answer was that he just didnāt want the house anything but a warm color, and I had been looking at blues. That was it. Itās incredibly hard to have any kind of a productive conversation when youāre effectively dealing with a slightly spongy wall.
Now, heās been out protesting at every opportunity he can, and heās supportive of Palestine. However, there have been particularly loud protesters at some events heās been at, making a big scene about needing to do something about the situation. Heās been rather frustrated at these people, and the first time it happened, I somewhat understood, because it was a single person causing a big scene and loudly accusing every organizer of not caring about Gaza when it was a sustainability event and march. One of those situations where itās not appropriate since we can care about multiple things at the same time. The second time, though, was at a town hall for our Senator, and people were loudly protesting there, which I fully support! Get your fucking representativesā attention, the town hall isnāt designated for any particular event and this is important! But he just seemed frustrated at them because āyouāre turning people against your cause by acting like thatā and I am. Trying to figure out how to tell him that if people being angry about Gaza at a town hall with our Senator turns people off of supporting Gaza, then they werenāt very good supporters to begin with and donāt have a good grasp of whatās going on. But I feel like if I mention this to him heāll get huffy and defensive and I donāt know if itās worth it because he does still support Palestine so itās not like heās veering off a scary path or anything.
Meanwhile Iām so fucking serious about the nonnutritive sweeteners thing. My dietician wanted me to cut back on sugar, so Iām trying some to sweeten my coffee with instead because while he did fear monger the shit out of them when I was a kid, my sister has been having them just fine and I donāt seem to be allergic to them, plus Iāve heard alternate view with actual sources to back them up. Now he keeps making comments about how bad they are for you and how he read an article they cause dementia (spoiler alert: read the actual study on that, that is a GROSS oversimplification of what the study found) and Iām just trying to eat food, but I canāt even get my sister to back me up on talking to him about this because weāre both just too fucking paralyzed by having to confront him.
If you read all this im sorry itās 1:30 and Iāve just got so many thoughts in my head, and Iām just really tired of living with him. wish i could make a living wage so i didnāt have to. im so tired.