After a campaign like this, how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?

You're assuming those relationships survived the 2020 election. For many, myself included, they didn't.

I was willing to overlook 2016, but after 4 years of horror culminating in a (failed) coup, and those people still supporting him, I just cut them out of my life.

My dad is on his death bed, I haven't spoken to him in years, because he's full on MAGA. It breaks my heart that I lost my dad to that cult and that I'll lose him forever soon, but I will never forgive him for supporting the scum that is proud he stole womens rights.

So to answer your question, being sad and waiting for tomorrow.

you don't. women have lost their federally protect right to an abortion since trump packed the court the last time, there are more than a million less people alive in the United States today from a mismanaged federal global pandemic response because trump was in the big chair the last time. you don't get back to normal when fascism wins.

Short answer: I bite back now.

Long answer: My parents are hard-R Republicans. Every time they start getting all "demoncrats r bad" i just ask them, "Why do you want me dead so fucking bad? I know from being raised by you that you fucking hated me growing up, but to vote for "gays should be executed"? This is exactly why you didn't have grandkids, the thought of putting more of your hate in the world is abhorrent to me..."

I've only had to pull that one out twice, so far, but it hits them hard when they still (I'm a few months away from 40) insist I "give them grandkids".

You can't go back. This isn't just a political difference of opinion, this is a full blown violent cult. We need greater funding for mental health and deprogramming services.

We... don't? Have you not been watching American news for the last... 9 years? I don't speak with my family because me being trans is not fully accepted by them. I don't really want to associate with anyone who is okay with increasing trans suicides via politics. I moved from North Carolina to Oregon to be in a queer friendly state, and I don't regret it one bit. And I have an appointment to get my passport tomorrow... just in case. I don't know if this country can be fixed. People talk about getting along with our neighbors or meeting in the middle, but I don't know how to get along with people who wish I didn't exist.

Oh, that's easy; we don't! Every four years, the fabric of our society frays and tears a little more, while our politicians either exploit our divisions or attempt to repair them without making any changes to the material conditions or systemic problems that create these fractures, because fixing these underlying issues would upset the handful of billionaires that actually control our government! But there's a new Fast & Furious movie every two or three years, so it balances out.

you don't. you believe them when they tell you who they are and remove them from your life.

how could you ever have a normal relationship with your pro-Trump neighbor/father-in-law/Uncle/Barber or what ever again?

...Why would I want to? Seriously, why would I want to have a relationship with people that have shown me that the things they value are antithetical to the things I value? I don't give a fuck if people are nice to me; I want people to be kind across the board.

There hasn't been any normal for 8 years plus now. Somewhere between 30 and 45% of the population are openly trying for fascism.

Realistically it's only a matter of when unless we make some pretty damned sweeping changes which they are going to fight tooth and nail.

We need to unrig the judicial system. We need to unrig the voting system. We need to put guardrails up on media disinformation. And we need to start holding some of these fucking politicians accountable for openly lying in campaign. We need to roll back the dictator privileges they managed to shove in at the last moment for the president. We need to hold some of these oligarchs accountable for crimes.

They should lock Musk up for a month. Go ahead and have him shit himself that he's not above the law.

I don't know who the next Republican president will be. But you can bet money there's going to be plenty of bloodshed once they decide to do whatever they want with complete and total immunity.

You uhh, you don't.

You don’t.

I haven’t talked to parts of my family the same way I used to. We don’t seek each other out anymore, though some people who do still have connections means we will still see each other for big events like thanksgiving or by happenstance.

Some of them probably think i’m an evil satan worshipping communist based on the last time we argued politics, which was either late 2015 or early to mid 2016, and I was your average slightly socialistic leftist who had just learned about Bernie’s policies for the first time.

With the genocide going on, i feel even more isolated, since I have some family who are harris voters who support israel, and aren’t exactly happy about how vocal I am about palestine. Christian liberal zionism hasn’t been something I could talk people out of.

Well, thats the thing. Once the mask is off it can't be put back on. My relations have cooled with the Trump supporters I know. At least they stopped putting signs out in the neighborhood.

Why go back to normal? Conservatives all over the world have revealed themselves to be 5th columns who will take any opportunity at power, even if it means working with foreign powers.

They seem to have a fundamental belief that God is on their side and no matter how bad things get He will protect them because only they are real people.

I cut them out. Don't remember where I heard the quote but there was one that goes something like "Our values are so different that any relationship we could have that doesn't fall to violence cannot be a genuine one." Essentially we care about things that are too different to be able to talk to each other honestly and get along.

We don't. We are in a new era where only one of the major parties is committed to democracy. Until that changes, we will remain just one election from an authoritarian theocracy.

You don't. It wasn't really normal before 2016 and normal left the building since.

Since 2016, its been a constant onslaught of idiots that live on the internet creeping out into the real world with their bullshit and conspiracy theories and half of America taking them seriously

You don't. You accept the fact things are progressively getting worse and move on

Those people have proven themselves to not be worthy of a relationship. Those people should be shunned for being inhumane monsters, not welcomed back into society. They will not change. They hate me and the people I love. I, and I assume many others like me, will never forgive, and never forget. And they will not stop. Even if we win the election, we will not have beaten them. This will only escalate until we beat them back and crush their ideology.

You're looking at the new normal, at least for a while. Trump's 2016 election was a paradigm shift in politics around here. Sure, Republicans were generally grifting ultra-capitalist race-baiting snowflake hypocrites before, but trump really lifted the veil and showed them their true selves. No longer do the need to actually govern or occasionally throw some benefits to their base. All they need to do is keep the hate baiting rage machine running, and their supporters will look the other way as long as they can hate anyone else for any reason rather than just deal with the fact that people exist outside their comforting illusion of "normal".

You think next round is going to be any different? The next round of their presidential primaries are gonna be Desantis, Abbott, and MTG. They are going to keep using those same tactics, because fear and hate are easier for them to live with than hope and acceptance.

For me, I assume the Trump voters in my life have fallen for propaganda. Not every Trump voter realized that Trump isn’t in their interest; they’re simple people who think Trump is funny and down to earth and points out many of the serious problems we genuinely do have.

The issue, of course, is that he’s not going to help fix those problems. He’s going to make the country far worse and is obviously only in it for himself.

Had to cut out both my parents and sibling due to their homophobic remarks and my coming to terms with being gay. The politics just furthered the gap, and the last time I spoke with them in early 2023, "It's all about that woke generation" came out of my dad's mouth and that was the end. I don't expect to hear about their passing, and I'm not sure I'll care, despite them seemingly raising me to be a decent person. These are two humans who canvassed for Obama in '08 & '12, so it was sad to see them devolve.

You don't. Most of us have already either fully cut-off contact with Trump supporting family members or limit our interaction with them heavily. Our country is rotted to the core, and this election won't be the end of it. Even if Harris wins, there will be contestion of the results. There may even be a successful coup by the Republican party. A civil war is not out of the question.

There is no normal. There won't be ever again.

As many others have said, you don't. That may be part of the devisive-ness experienced here currently, but when one side is stating that the military should be used on dissenters, and the other side needs slaughtered, and they're talking about deporting detractors currently in govt, it's addition by subtraction. Should my side win, I don't expect any kind of persecution of people I don't agree with. Should the other side win, they are functionally demanding it.

"You won't have to vote anymore" is an insane statement from a democratic candidate. "We'll fix it so good, you won't have to vote". And people are on the fence. It's disgusting. Choose a fucking side and vote it.

Unless we get a blow-out for either candidate that cannot be challenged, which does not seem likely based on the polls and battle lines, even if we have a Biden-esque victory for Harris, I’m fairly unsure of what will happen next. I personally doubt full on Civil War like in the Garland movie, or the actual civil war, but I would expect all kinds of shitty legal tricks, possible Supreme Court involvement and of course, stochastic and targeted violence, particularly towards immigrants and minorities. In other words, win or lose, I think the US may be in for a bad time. Hopefully I’m working in my assumptions here and it is somewhat more boring.

To better answer your question though, assuming things don’t completely fall apart: the two sides already don’t mix much, which is part of the problem in the first place. We’ll get more govt inaction due to gridlocked congress, probably more defense spending and some states, in the absence of federal legislating, will continue to take a larger role as they have been doing already in the recent era.

So basically more of the same, on a not-great trend line. Something has to give at some point, it’s hard to imagine how you could put the genie back in the bottle now, particularly with overall conditions in the world due to late-stage capitalism and climate change constricting each year.

If pro Trump. Your pro fascist. Your activity involved in wanting me and everyone I love to be dead or enslaved.

I cut out all fascists from my life. Always have been. So really nothing really will change for the people I talk too.

Don't worry, there's the insurrection and riots next.

This is the new normal. It’s everyone angry all the time until something snaps or the culture changes. Personally I believe you have to wait until the older part of Gen X is dead before we get relief.

This has been the norm since 2016. Until the GOP unilaterally rejects Trumpism, this will be how it is every four years.

We need the fascists to stop being fascists. That’s it. Literally once they stop we may not like them anymore but we can learn to live together again

Extreme is only coming from one side. The hateful one.

We don't. The hate continues to rise and election season never ends. Well, the never-ending election season might be ending real soon if someone gets their way.

Trump could die tomorrow and fascism would still be a rising problem in the US from citizens hunting FEMA responders, to elected officials like Paxton and DeSantis. Unless you consider actual fascism normal there will be no normalcy for decades in the US. Maybe longer if we don't stamp out the fash.

I don't want a normal relationship with my Trump loving neighbor. He and his racist wife can go fuck themselves. Their signs and banners told me who they are. I'm choosing to listen

It is now easier to identify political whackadoos and disengage.

I moved to the bluest neighborhood in a blue town in a purple county in a bluish purple state. I actually enjoy talking to my neighbors about politics now, I can out out positive messages without getting my house egged.

If Trump wins, you don't

I think it’s fantastic because know it is very clear who I need to exclude from my life.

What you see in the news and on social media doesn't paint a true picture of what daily life is like here for people. Most of Trump's supporters aren't the hateful bigots that the Internet makes them out to be, they're just convinced that he's the lesser of the 2 evils. This is why you see that his rallies are empty and he's still polling at ~47%.

Most of the deepest Trump cult fanatics live in communities where that is more prevalent, like rural Alabama, so if you don't live where they live, you just don't really encounter them. And if you do live in those areas, you're already used to the rampant racism because it's always been there.

So me and my immigrant wife will still go visit my pro-trump uncle for his annual pig roast, because he's not a bad person, he's just a moron. I'll still call my conservative mother every week because she's not threatening to kill me for voting blue, she's just consumed too much anti-Kamala propaganda. My religious sister is still welcome to visit because even though she's an idiot, my nieces are freakin adorable and I love them.

hope my older relatives fucking die or figure out it's time to change. on a more serious note, protest and try to help build coalitions against this but idk it seems quite grim.

Lol.

What's normal?

I wrote off politics media as hyperbolic and manipulative propaganda in 2016 and I actively distance myself from it, so I've only seen the broad strokes of this current election cycle. Unless you honestly believe you are doing important activism work, give yourself permission to just chill out about politics. If your life is full of problems caused by politics such that it's impossible for you to chill out about politics, you have my sympathy.

I'm Canadian and because of QAnon and Trump, I don't have a relationship with my sister anymore and I see my dad once every few years out of obligation, but not a day goes by where he doesn't say something mortifyingly racist or fascistic. He watches Fox News from the US every day. They aren't allowed a Canadian channel because they don't meet our legal standards for truthful reporting. American politics always leak into Canada. I hate it.

Assuming Harris wins, same way we went back to normal after 2020 and Jan 6. Those people that lost will go back to being the same jackass people they were before, but there won’t be any “popular uprisings” this time around. Jan 6 was the best shot they had when Trump was in power and could’ve conceivably tried something, now they have nothing.

Trump will be diminished, his court cases start piling on again and he hopefully dies of natural causes while taking a shit on a golden toilet. How MAGA “moves on” after Trump is the bigger question. Do the moderates take back control of the Republican party, or do they become even more unhinged?

Shit goes to hell if Trump wins and takes the presidency or if he gets Seal Team-Six’d by Biden before he even gets into office, which he apparently has the legal standing to do, but likely won’t because Democrats are dumb and will “take the high road” into fascism.

If Harris wins, ideally I'll do all the things I've been putting off until after the election. I've been meaning to update the address on my driver's license, the registration on my car, and several other things like that.

I live in a deep red state; I've been paranoid about getting them done, for fear of my voter registration "happening" to get lost in the process. And then I'd finally have an excuse to never visit my hardcore right-wing parents ever again, because my mail won't be showing up at their house anymore.

If Trump wins, I'm not going to update anything. I plan to flee. I don't have the means to leave the country, but I've got friends in blue states who are happy to take me in. That's better than nothing, I guess.

You don't.

Trump is not the problem. Trump didn’t make Duterte happen, or Orban, or Meloni, or Brexit, or Putin, or Bibi, or le Pen or any of the others. He’s a symptom of a dying world

For me, it's super easy. My "normal" relationship with Trumpers is one of intense scorn and derision because they're terrible people that I want nothing to do with. So nothing's going to change for me.

It's pretty simple: they willingly sacrificed every last ounce of humanity for a grifter / bully. They're not coming back. Chasing after the relationship you used to have with them before they decided to embrace virulent hatred is a losing proposition. Sure, you can mourn that lost relationship, but hoping that they're going to magically see the light and stop being the human equivalent of anal warts is only going to cause you further disappointment and pain.

That's the funnest part of all: we don't

I've cut out all Trumpers after Jan 6 2021 basically except for maybe my wife's parents. I'm afraid to ask them. All of us have a spoken agreement to not bring up politics because we all have to see each other and don't want to fight. A major caveat to that is that we see them as little as we can though.

Yes, things tend to calm down. If you read history books about US history, there were times in the 1800s where brothers were killing each other over slavery and where people were killing themselves in the 1950s over their children's sexuality. Time heals wounds, and people tend to swing in a pendulum from progressive to conservative and back again (the 50s, the 90s, the 10s).

I recommend The Lavender Scare by David K. Johnson. It's a fascinating book back when the US government shared a frightening similarity to the CCP. It shows how a community develops in the postwar period, how a moral panic gets set off, how people are affected, and how a social movement starts and heals the country over time. It is almost a word for word copy of what is happening in the US right now, and how people in the past defused a situation that was even more loaded in some ways than today's world. If you are looking for reassurance, it's a great read. Many of the landmarks in the book are still standing, by the way :)

Normal departed permanently after we a stolen election in the year 2000.

I usually just go to Donald Rumsfelds grave and shit on it. It brings such piece of mind to know he’s dead.

The short tl;dr answer is, we don't. For me, it's something I contended with around 2003-2004 when my father stood with most staunch Republicans in advocating for extrajudicial torture of POWs and eventually of civilians including Americans who were mistaken for terrorist agents.

On the other hand, the same event drove me to study moral philosophy so I could explain at length why torture was wrong; he didn't care, which was the gaze into the abyss moment. I saw who my dad was in the dark.

Cut to 2024, and even if Harris wins (and any coup d'etat attempts are put down) we are a long, long way from the scare being over. This has been reviewed at length by CIA and we've heard from experts on civil wars, how they erupt and historically what must happen to prevent social unrest from turning violent to the degree that it overwhelms responders.

The universal panacea is the restoration of power to the people. So that's not to say we can merely preserve elections in the US. Our election system is corrupt and relies on FPTP voting models (one person, one vote) which means third parties cannot be competitive. It also means the two principal parties don't have to be very public-serving to stay in power.

This means Harris not only needs a cooperative Congress (and cooperative state populations) but also the impetus to operate against the interests of her party for the good of the public, and we all struggle to discard the One Ring. She'll also have pressure from establishment politicians, as well as progressives who are not progressive enough to go the distance and let power be diffused to a wider body of persons and interests.

What we can expect are some shorter-term measures, maybe some social safety nets, some relief for people caught in the debt crisis or homeless crisis, even some labor reform so that most of us aren't one crisis away from homelessness and a ruined life. But this will kick the can down the line, and allow the Republican party (whose only trick now is election subversion and procedural coup d'etat when not violent coup d'etat) to persist as it is (and has been at least since Reagan).

Election reform would force the Republican party to reconsider its far-right-wing position and actually offer a platform worth voting for. But so long as we don't get that, they still have viable pathways to seizing power.

All this said, some people will come to their senses as the precarity lets up. Some people will realize they can afford to be less afraid, and that a public-serving society is something worth fighting for. But that is a long, and personal process for each of them, and usually they're pretty repentant when they realize what they had become.

Maybe this is the reason why American election campaigns never really end.

That's been a growing issue for the last 15 years. The answer is community groups but they haven't been very successful.

ask again in a week and then again in three months

I don't think that they do recover anymore. Not since Bush Jr.

In previous elections, I'd have been able to give you an answer.

For this election, the crazy will absolutely not be over once all votes are counted. This is a pivotal moment in American History and either result will cause a lot of distress for our collective psyche.

I'll share a comment I left on another post a few weeks ago because I think the message is important. It's my own story of how people can change, and also comments from someone more directly in the eyes of current extremist supporters. I got a few downvotes for being naive or overly sympathetic in some opinions, but I still stand by my opinions.

Will I be skeptical of conservatives after this election? Of course, since I was well before the MAGA era. Will there be some people I never associate with again? Of course, since some really revealed themselves to be bad people. But most really just seem ill informed or unable to relate to things beyond their own spheres of influence. But just as people were mutable to become this way, they can get out of being this way. It's up to each person though to determine what level of effort they're willing to put into it though.

If things get worse after the election, I may harden my stance, but I'm still hopeful for now. Most of my loved ones though are liberals and gay people though, and when push comes to shove, they will always win out with me. I won't condone hateful behavior and people can get lost as long as they're going to do things to spread that crap, but if they decide to be receptive and compassionate again, they need people that will be there to receive them back to normalcy.

Margaret Killjoy was recently talking on one podcast about mutual aid during the recent hurricanes. She was talking about how her neighbors probably have starkly opposite views as she does as a trans anarchist, but she believed that in a situation like this where it could mean life or death, that they would be able to set differences aside and work together for their mutual benefit.

She also went on to say that she didn’t hate them and wish them any harm, she just wished that they would stop holding on to hateful and hurtful beliefs.

Most of my family and my girlfriend’s families support just about all of this MAGA crap, but I don’t know if I could call a single one of them a bad person. Some of them treat me differently in what I feel are very obvious ways, but I don’t believe any of them would let me suffer on purpose. They all seem to not have problems sympathizing with people or situations they are personally familiar with, but with concepts that they are unfamiliar with, they can find them unimportant, and develop bad takes on those things.

As my family is almost all conservative, I was raised that way, and until my later 20s, I had a lot of the same beliefs. As I met more people, learned more things, and developed opinions of my own, I am now mostly the opposite person I was. I can see how wrong I was about just about everything.

I feel it’s ok to hate the beliefs, and dissociate with people while they hold those beliefs, and especially while they act on those beliefs, which includes giving power to those pushing those values on others. I don’t think we should turn our backs totally to them as people though, if that makes sense. If they were hurt, I would still help them. If they needed something, I would help them to get it. If they want me to meet them somewhere in the middle ideologically, most likely not. But it’s part of my humanity to not leave someone to suffer just because they’ve got some dumbass beliefs.

You have every right to associate or not with whomever you wish. You can believe the opposite of people and think they are wrong for what they believe. But I think most people are inherently good. Some make it much harder to keep that belief, but I don’t think many are lost causes or irredeemable.

Honestly I'm as agoraphobic as they come so, since I hardly ever leave my residence, I find it quite easy to forget that it's an election year, aside from many of the news outlets and media posts dictating it. My life outside of the internet has hardly any political interference.

Yes I still vote, but I keep my political beliefs to myself, but As Marcus Aurelius said, "You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control"

I take a lot of solace in that. I know certain things and have certain opinions but I am absolutely not a politician and it's not something I'll wreck my soul over. Life is short enough as it is.

Considering I usually don't spend a lot of time focusing on the election, just enough to know roughly what's going on, I just do business as usual. I also am not in any groups where I deal with major politics during election past my parents watching the news and such.

Boomer generation will be dead soon. And Gen X isn’t too far behind. This bullshit is already time-limited.

I think Americans need to address the flaws in their 2 party political system and start working on a change, but it'll never happen because neither party would give up power like that.

Two party system is inherently divisive especially with so much foreign and domestic propaganda. More options would not only reduce the total surface area of conflicts, but it would make propaganda much harder and represent people more closely.

Finding normalcy isn't hard at all. It's fanning the fire of discontent to effect real change that's the difficult part.

Well, the way we "went back to normal" after an intense election campaign in 2015-2016 was just...not. Not letting it end for the last nine years. This is essentially still the same campaign that started with the stupid escalator ride. I hope it actually does go back to some semblance of normal in a few months, and we can see how that works then.

I don't think there is a "normal" anymore? The 2028 campaigns will start on November 6.

there is only forward. no reverse.

According to my American gf: being a decent human being

Was America ever "normal"?

Ignore it all in the first place.

It won't be over when it's over. If Trump loses we'll never hear the end of how he was cheated and maga people will get extra weird, maybe violent.

If Trump wins, we'll have trump for president, which from experience is also not normal.

Most my friends are republicans so we shit talk a lot back and forth. After the election we will just shit talk about something else. Yes we are over 40 and still act like teenagers.

My main concern right now is that my two oldest kids are asking me why I’m voting for Harris lol.

Help them to understand what happened, why it happened, and what will happen. After 2016, I had to explain to my lib family members that no, black people didn't cause Hillary to lose, the dems gave us trump by failing to even promise to improve people's material conditions, and to my conservative acquaintances "no, trump is not draining the swamp, he is a billionaire, he IS the swamp."

In 2020, it was "no, Biden isn't going to stop covid, empty the migrant camps, or abolish the police, he's going to continue 95% of Trump's policies, we've seen this all before under Clinton and Obama."

We simply don't talk politics. My wife is the peacemaker. When someone brings up something political she shuts that shit down quickly.

It's when people don't know what to talk about other than politics that I think they are truly lost. Watch some fucking football and hate on each others' team. I think some people need that sort of idle animosity.

Anyway, there are more to people than politics.

Nothing to get back to when you don't pay attention in the first place

It is like any other election for me. I don't want either of them. I'm guaranteed to be disappointed.

Once you block the unholy trifecta of tankie-subs, suddenly the world isn't so shit.

The simple answer, if they wrap their entire personality up into red or blue I don't associate with em anyway. The fools who believe either side cares for them is hilarious. Frankly until there is a third option to split the vote it's one giant dumpster fire regardless of which rich fuck wins.

I curse and shout whenever I see a political ad. I cut relations with all Trump supporters back in 2016 and now I am cutting off all Harris supporters.

They are just politicians and it is really not that serious. The race is tight and whomever wins is fine. There will be another election in two years and another two years after that for as long as you live.

Don't assume that the majority of people who vote for Trump, are MAGA.

Many, if not most, are the same as many Biden/Harris voters in that they hate both candidates, and are voting for who they view as the lesser of two evils.

As I'm a Lemmy user, you can safely assume I'm not one of them, but the point stands.

But, if you're talking about people who have gone full on MAGA insanity, well they probably got there somewhere between 2016 and 2020, so there's not a a ton of new converts to deal with.

And even with then, they're the minority of a minority.

Of course, if someone is of the opinion that anyone who votes for Trump, no matter the reason, must be excised from their life, well that's their choice, but I kind of pity them.

Trump is not Hitler. He's too lazy and stupid to be Hitler. Let's not pretend that voting for Trump is the same as supporting Hitler, it's not.

He's a piece of shit authoritarian, but on the scale of American Presidents, the areas where he deviates the most from the norm, is how stupid and crass his corruption and racism is, not that he was corrupt and racist.

I still can't look you people (Americans) in the face from the last dozen horrible things you've collectively done.

How can you ever let your guard down around this maniac society, let alone go back to normal?

Living in the interior of the stolen lands, what normal do you even think there is to offer? Endless towns build on nothing but walmarts and jails, having displaced any culture of value generations ago.

Idk maybe I'm getting older, but I've been through enough elections in my life to step back and see that this happens every time. The Internet turns to shit and everyone flings shit for a few days and then it's back to normal.

I feel like I'm past my prime in caring as much this year. My battles were fought in the past and now I'm disinterested in politics because I've been disappointed every time.

To the many people here saying (apparently with pride), "I just cut them all out": You are making the problem worse.

Honestly, if this is really your attitude to your fellow citizens, you deserve what you get. They have a vote.