I’m recovering from unintentionally drinking way too much of this last night with a friend.
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Is it as revolting as it sounds?
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I’ve just returned from a family birthday. One of my brothers has gone mental. USA has never been on the moon and 9/11 was a setup. What to do?
ignore him. 
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Can’t do that, that’s worse than having odd opinions 
I think I’m going to bring my secret weapon in position: humour. I’m going to prepare for battle. But not on a birthday though.
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In case he does not know yet, explain to him the Earth is flat.
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He’s really off. In the end of the discussion he started to legitimize his thoughts because of the deeds of others.
I’m considering a long term strategy to get him back but the difficulty is that he’s one friend and a wife who are beyond help and probably have a bigger influence on him. What I’ll do is that I’m going tho plant seeds to increase his awareness. E.g. by dropping some critical considerations like the one in the first line of this post. People should not legitimize their thoughts based on others but based on own considerations.
The world is flat is a good point, he’ll get to that point soon if he continues.
Oh, it’s all americas fault and Russia and China are good. sigh.
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Ardbeg, enjoy your brother and don’t let this to make you sad and get in between the two of you.
Humor is a good path as music is too. Or a beer or a walk. It could have happened to you, it could have happened to me.
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I’d never heard of it before (I wished I still hadn’t 
) it was surprisingly easy to drink and nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.
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There’s not a lot you can do. We all know someone who’s on the fringe and everything you say will more than likely just make in dig in. I read an article during lockdown about how to approach friends/family who thought covid was all a hoax and the vaccine was connected to G5 mobile towers. Apparently the last thing you should do is tell them they’re wrong, it might be worth googling to see if you could find that article or someone else’s. Good luck.
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Nothing. It’s okay for people to have differing views on things.
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The differing views is ok(ish). It is that each birthday I get the full load of bollocks. I do not want to ignore him.
I think I go with Rafael’s suggestion to go for a beer / walk and agree to keep the birthdays clean of unwanted talk.
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Yes, the joys of family. My brother is an extreme socialist, I just avoid all discussions of politics.
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Congrats (belated). 
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Ouch
My sympathy
I see you have Nick Mason saucerful of secrets in Sydney next week, you going?
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I missed they were heading down this way, but not New Zealand it seems.
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No I didn’t realise they were here till last Friday when they were on tv. Shame would have liked to but I’ve been so busy pretending to be a project manager.
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My sister in law and I got into an argument in a restaurant at a big family lunch six months before the 2016 Brexit referendum because we discovered by chance that she strongly supported Brexit (and she quoted meaningless slogans from the Daily Telegraph to justify her position) and I was very strongly opposed. It all fell apart when I told her that my opinion was that both she and I would be dead before the UK economy recovered. She was incredulous and went off in a huff.
We didn’t speak to each other for more than two years. I still refer to her as “that stupid woman” when talking to my wife (who basically agrees with me and harbours some younger sister grudges against her from their childhood anyway), although we are civil with each other now in a superficial way.
I like her husband who is older and cleverer than her, but because it came out over another strained lunch that he thought the then President was the greatest US President ever, while I think he was and is a demented fool, I determined not to discuss Brexit with him ever. So we discuss music, books, art, cars, his recollections of things that happened in his life, whatever - just not politics.
So I think you are right. Discretion is the better part of valour in avoiding discussions with relatives that are bound to end in disaster. You can’t reason with people who are beyond considering things logically and rationally. And anyway it wouldn’t change anything. So smile weakly and change the subject…
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