I just need to rant here.
My parents are fucking idiots. I mean, I love them and they love me, but goddammit, they're stupid.
They get most/all of their information from fox, and they are misinformed as fuck. But when I try to explain to them that they do not have their facts straight, they just pull a "you're such a know-it-all and no one can tell you different". No matter how I explain it to them, even though they do not refute anything, they just roll their eyes at "everything you think you know about this election is wrong"....which, sure, is an extreme statement, but it's true. There is no subject regarding this election in which they haven't displayed stunning misinformation. Whenever I try to demand statistics or sources, they either go "Well, on the news..." or worse, bring up some anecdote. To them, a personal story of a single mexican skipping paying taxes or committing a crime they personally know is more convincing to them that it's a national problem than the statistics showing it's not.
It's hard to pin down the exact source of this mentality. A lot of it is that they do not look outside their personal bubble. Like, the fact that they are paying a lot for Obamacare and don't benefit from it too much is reason why it should be removed for the entire country. A lot of their questions are framed as "Well, what is Hillary Clinton going to do for you?" As in, me personally. They don't seem to think that gays maintaining their rights would be something I'd care about since I'm not gay. And it's hard not to see this as shitty selfish behavior because...it kind of is.
It's just frustrating because they eagerly want a debate and hate how heated it gets, but you cannot debate ignorance of this magnitude. It's like building a sandcastle on the shoreline, no matter the argument you mount on why they're wrong, it's just washed away and you have to start on a new one.
