I will and do “talk” politics with them but I italicized the talk because I found a much better way to get a message through, I simply couch my argument by asking simple questions without expecting an answer. Eventually the answer comes but it gets to being far different than what you expect at first.
My mother who is now 82 flipped from being a lifelong Roosevelt Democrat to voting Republican for the first time ever this past election. My sister was the same way. Both are union members at Vegas Hotel Casinos. All it took was a few evenings of discussions while I was there on business the week before the election. They eventually began asked me for answers to my questions to check themselves out.
My brother is a union muckity muck at a vary large aircraft engine company. He too voted Republican for the very first time as well and for much of the same reasons, but he came to some conclusions beforehand when he started to realize the Democrat Party was not for the workers but for the takers and he had risen to the position of a maker. It took self reflection without the blinders for him to wake up. In jest, I asked him how his new crutches were getting along with him.
The bottom line is when they want to argue the point of conservatism vs. liberalism I just simply ask the questions that only they can come to answering for themselves and the other thing I do is to express my displeasure for any side of the political establishment because it is they who have us at each others throat.
You’ve done a good job.
I’ll NEVER convert one sister and her husband (a PhD in Sociology) because he is Dutch and they lived in Holland for about 10 years. I believe the difference in Holland is that everyone is expected to contribute and for the most part they haven’t been pitted against each other the way we have - with a large group feeling entitled and another group feeling guilty. Divide and conquer. Both my sister and her husband are the 3rd children in the birth order and I suspect this also has something to do with their view of the world. They actually recorded Keith Olberman and Rachel Madow for later watching. So I had to quit discussing politics for the greater good in the family. This is Washington State anyway - a lost cause at this point.