My uncle complained about the stimulus payments despite benefiting from them. On potential future pay-outs: "What, are they gonna steal another trillion from us?"
I always want to ask who "they" and "us" are when he says that (the family overall is middle income at best, if not low-middle), but then I remember I don't actually want to engage with the conversation at all.
My Struncle complains about people getting free shit all the time, but then was real mad about there not being bigger bail outs and stimmies the second time around, then went back to THEY'RE STEALING OUR SOCIAL SECURITY shit. These people have no ideology except they don't want others to get anything they think they should get more or first.
This was one of the big reveal’s for me during the last election cycle as well. I have a conservative uncle who talks about immigrants are stealing American jobs, but also illegally accessing public services and welfare. These two concepts are diametrically opposed but he somehow manages to hold both in his mind at the same time. I’ve known about
him for years.
What I didn’t know about was his grandson (my “nephew”) has ingested all of this bad information, and is using it to inform his own decisions about the world. Before the election, he was positing how it was going to be stolen. Now that we are sending money to impoverished nations to help them fight Covid, he’s angry that we are not helping everyone in America first, failing to realize that both these things can be done at once logistically, and a cash outlay for international goodwill and assistance has a different effect on our place in the global community.
He has also used the phrase “plandemic.”
I’ve mentioned in other threads that I approached him about his sources, and how he didn’t respond. It’s easy for me to not engage old people who are no longer thinking. It is difficult for me to not insist that younger people think at least as much as I do.