3d ago

Thrust into unemployment, axed federal workers face relatives who celebrate their firing

apnews.com Thrust into unemployment, axed federal workers face relatives who celebrate their firing

Scrambling to replace their health insurance and to find new work, some fired federal workers are running into another unexpected unpleasantry: Relatives cheering their job loss.

Summary

Recently terminated federal workers face not only unemployment challenges but also hurtful reactions from family members who support the government cuts.

Luke Tobin, fired from the Forest Service, and Kristin Jenn, whose Park Service job was frozen, describe relatives celebrating their job losses as necessary to "make the government great again."

Former Park Service employee Riley Rackliffe encountered social media comments calling him a "glorified pool boy" despite his Ph.D.

Some workers report family members unfriending them on social media or dismissing their positions as "waste."

70 comments

The most incredible trick the GOP has managed to pull is to convince working Americans to hate each other.
- A little stress, a little money problems, super easy to manufacture. Give them a common enemy. The people below them, the people that look different. They band together. Education is attacked. Now any propaganda works. Even the most stupid shit gets the conspiracy theorists wet. They evangelise. This is their circle of trust. Family not in the circle will not convert, they are seen as pompous and corrupt. They are promised that the people responsible will be hurt.
  It's not magic or impressive. People are easily programmed. The evolutionary traits that gave us advantages hundreds of generations ago are easy strings to grasp.
- To be fair the kgb were the ones pulling the strings

There are a lot of terrible people here in America.
- I’m not convinced that is really the issue. I think we have a lot of people who’ve been programmed to be terrible people. Some one I’ve know my entire life was always a joy to be around, but over the last ten years, their news and media consumption changed to Fox then to ONN and down so weird rabbit holes. Now the last time I was around it was all about how this country is going to hell and we need a savior like Trump to bring it back.
  
  People programmed in terrible ways are terrible. Mourn their death and move on.
  
  If you're that easily manipulated into being terrible, then maybe you were never such a good person to begin with.
  
  Republicans have tricked people into embracing a "tough love", the idea that empathy is toxic and that if you really care about someone you must push them to the breaking point so they'll "Pick themselves up by their bootstraps"
  It's disgusting

MAGA is going to end up very lonely.

One of the harder things in life to accept is that your family can be scumbags.
- I accepted it when I was a teenager. What's difficult is getting people that grew up in loving families to comprehend that I'm not anti family, and would love to have a family I could talk to, but the one I was born into are unempathtic narracisstic Nazis.
  'Have you tried x? Have you tried y? I don't think you're trying z enough'
  One close friend recently married into a similar family and it's been super eye opening for them.
  
  People unfamiliar with narcissistic abusive families really do not know, cannot conceptualize, how bad the trauma is for those who have lived inside them.

I don’t talk to those relatives anymore. It’s done wonders for my mental health.
- Growing up, I had always heard “brothers fighting on opposite sides of the battlefield” types of stories from the American civil war. I always wondered how people could let it get that bad. Nowadays though…
- I wonder what the long-term fallout from this massive fracture is going to be.. even if we somehow manage to avert catastrophe..
  I don’t think there’s really a way to come back from this whole thing for, like, most people..
  
  We are marching towards another civil war.

Disown your republican friends & family
- However, recognize that grief may result. It's a loss of the fantasy of people who love you. That hurts.
  
  You’re absolutely right. It’s been 7 years for me. I grieved them and still do occasionally. It’s just not worth it to let them be a part of my life anymore.
- Amen. They don’t live in the same reality as normal people anymore. My mother passed away last summer, and though I wasn’t surprised that she’d supported Trump, working through her belongings and mail and email, it was eye opening how disconnected she was from reality. She had a bottle of whatever the dewormer was that Trump was shilling. She has a ton of Iraqi, Venezuelan, Vietnamese and Zimbabwean currency and her email go down rabbit holes I’d never heard of. All while living in genuine squalor. Unable to take care of herself and living in real filth. True diehard Trump supporter.

The same people celebrating that Obamacare is gone, and being shocked when Affordable Care Act which they depend on suddenly disappears.
- The stupid is coming from inside the house
- Wait until they lose Medicaid... Most of them probably have no fucking idea that their health insurance is even funded by it.

“It’s really hurtful for the president to insinuate that you don’t exist or that your job consisted of sitting at home doing nothing and cashing the paycheck,” he says. “I’d like to see him sifting through spiny naiad in 120-degree weather looking for parasitic snails. He’s the one that goes golfing on the government dime. I don’t even know how to golf.”
Although I don't think much will get through to MAGA people, the hypocrisy is what gives me the most hope. Trump's mind is so unlike his voters' that he doesn't deserve to represent them.
Like, I wake up earlier than my wife. She has back problems, but I like to keep the kitchen nice for her and not remind her of it. So every day I unload the entire dishwasher, carefully putting away every plate, knife, glass without making noise. I don't mean it as a virtue-signal, we all probably do little things like this. I just mean, can you even imagine Trump doing something like that? Imagine him caring about someone other than him that much? Imagine having to live so intentionally and carefully for any reason at all?
That should get through to them, right?
- The problem is that’s not the Trump they see. They see a hero story told through YouTube, podcasts, angry Facebook/Twitter posts, MSM, Discords and such. It’s immersive. It’s engrossing/triggering enough to turn on family.
  I can’t stop saying it. The root problem is the information environment, and no amount of policy or studying or empathy or signaling or even hardship is going to change squat until that is turned on its head.
  And I’m more militant about that now. Big Tech is beyond fixing, it needs to be fucked up.
  
  You are 1000% correct, half the continent lives in an entirely different reality. That's why very visibly and loudly protesting and demonstrating at key. It FORCES the dissent into public view where it would otherwise be hidden.
  Anything we can do to fight with their control of the narrative is deeply important.
  
  Very few of them are indoctrinated that way. It's far more Sinister than that. The majority of them I would say get their indoctrination through their local broadcast evening news. The same local broadcast evening news that their parents and grandparents trusted, watched, and relied upon. It's never been fully trustworthy. But even back then it wasn't fully owned by Sinclair as it is many places today.
  Attacking them for swallowing the Fox News or whatever online Source hook line and sinker. Only pushes them away. Because that's not what a lot of them are doing. They aren't seeking the radicalization out. It's being permeated throughout their environment without them even trying. Go to some of these places where all local Outlets are owned by sinclair. It's like stepping into an alternate reality. Where Up Is Down left is Right black is white. And you are the crazy one. Because you don't believe what they've been told. Trump is lionized in daily mandatory propaganda segments. All failings or setbacks are because Democrats, DEI, trans, minorities, or any other groups they don't have regular contact with.
  It's easy and a cop out to think these people are stupid. They aren't. Or are ignoring the information we've seen. They haven't. Through no intent or effort of their own. Their local controlled media has indoctrinated them into a fascist death cult.
- MAGA people are not capable of empathy.
  They are a delusional death cult.
  Maybe its possible to convince one of the few remaining Trump critical Republicans, but MAGA people are gone.
  I no longer talk to my family because of this.
  They only understand pain that personally affects them, and even then, they're quite likely to delusionally invent a new element to their conspiracy theory cluster fuck that consitutes their worldview/religion.
  Maybe they'll wake up when they, personally, are now homeless and the entire economy around them has collapsed... but maybe not.
  
  MAGA are inconvenienced ~~millionaires~~ grifters.
- I suspect a lot of them wouldn't even be able to understand what you're doing or why. And that might make them slightly uncomfortable, so they'd judge you just in order not to have to think about it.
  
  I’d like to see him sifting through spiny naiad in 120-degree weather looking for parasitic snails.
  "Those are made-up words!"
- Like people have been saying for nearly a decade now: "I don't know how to explain to you why you should care about other people."
  
  I remember when I was a teenager and starting to question religion I talked to my sister about it a little. She was certain that if we didn't have Christianity that everyone would just be going around raping and killing each other. I was super confused at the time (cause I was a child) but a little later realized oh, she has no empathy or morals, no internal sense of right and wrong....and she doesn't know that other people actually do. The convo was confusing because at the time I didn't understand her at all when she asked things like 'without hell what would stop you from killing people?'. A little later I started thinking about how many people thought this way and if it was possibly enough to f up a democracy. Anyway here we are
- Lol

“They can’t separate their ideology and their politics from supporting their own family and their own loved ones,” says Tobin.
I can't say I'm surprised at that trait from those that hold these politics in the first place.

And this is why I have no faith in the recovery of this country. After everything that’s happened, these people are cheering on the destruction of the country.
- And they have been conditioned to think the exact same thing about you (or Democrats in general).

I lucked out in that all of my relatives that are still living are reasonable. I didn’t need to remove any relatives from my life.
Friends however… yikes! Different story there. I moved from a red state to a blue state in October so I need to meet some people here.
- Try parents...
  
  Ah hell… my comment was supposed to be a reply to someone else in this thread but I suppose I messed up. It looks weird out of context like this.

Hes got more Austrian economists/monetarists plans coming. Project 2025 limits the money supply growth dramatically, supposedly in order to prevent asset bubbles in areas like housing.
- It is curious how long they will stick to that plan, or how soon they will get bored of it.
  
  They will quickly move to the Austrian artist's plan.

It’s disappointing that these are my countrymen. These people that don’t see the value of conserving our lands, yet call themselves conservatives.
- We collectively need to STOP using the term conservative to define the regressive party.

This is just me, but if I was fired by some felon rapist traitor trying to appease a bunch of neckbeard losers, and anyone in my life voted for that felon rapist traitor, after he made it clear he was going to do so, I would probably never speak to them again.
Your family has to earn and maintain your respect, just like anyone else does.
- While I agree, that’s not usually how ‘Merican families work.

how disgusting for people to celebrate others misery. makes it really easy to understand who is on your side and who is not though, I've decided enough is enough and began the process of cutting these people out of my lives.
short term, it sucks right now. but I know down the line, I will thank myself for doing this now
- I don't blame anyone for cutting MAGA folks off at this point, but it depresses me that it will just make the problem worse. Even if minimal, your contact with them impedes propaganda by, even a little, preventing their reality from going unopposed.
  It's not your responsibility, but disconnecting is a natural vicious cycle, a radicalization accelerant.
  
  man, I get it. but it just brings me down when I try to talk to these people. I'll reconnect after awhile, but now? idk...

Trump renamed Denali the mountain but not Denali the park? That seems appropriately half-assed of him.

Make the government great again?? Why sshould normal people have an interest in that? The government should serve the people and not its own „greatness“...

well at least now they know who they shouldn't give their new phone number and address to

Is anyone keeping track of how many Americans Musk and Trump have directly made unemployed, even before the effects of economic slowdown kick in?
- Employment numbers just came out but of course they're behind the times already.
  
  I just saw a CBS report that says 200,000 government employees have been fired already.

We need to take the same approach with family that the country should be taking with red states: ignore their existence and make them pay for their stupidity and mismanagement. Make them admit wrongdoing, be accountable, and prove they're progressing in the proper direction(s). Perpetuating their mental health and disinformation campaigns or engaging them to provide their petty platform is a similar enabling of addicts. Make them live what they've constructed and ignore their perceived issues. Once these people turn inward, on a large scale, then perhaps healing can begin but the country can't heal with a bunch of mental issues baked into a large amount of US lives
- I think that's the opposite of what's needed.