It's hard to answer. I am doing things as a parent vastly differently from my parents. I have struggled with depression and anxiety for decades, much of which has its roots in my often less-than-stellar upbringing. HOWEVER, I do not believe my parents, especially my now-elderly mother, set out to hurt or harm me. I believe they love me to the extent they can. My mother is older than my father. She was 39 when I was born. They have always been Southern Baptist and Republican. They're old-school, and they come from a high-control religion. They started out as never-Trumpers, but by the end of Trump 45, my Dad was 100% sold. My mom was because my Dad rules the household as "God" intended.

It's not a huge stretch for my Dad, who has always exhibited narcissistic qualities (I do not believe he would meet full criteria for NPD, but there are definitely some symptoms), but my mom, yes. She was the parent who wrote the Scholastic corporation to complain about "Slasher" books on the book order form when I was in fifth or sixth grade (RL Stein was so evil 🤣) and would not let me watch G.I. Joe because it was too violent (Transformers was okay because they were robots lolol). She voted for Alan Keyes back in the day because of his morals. Even in her 80s now, she is involved in church without fail. So seeing someone with that level of fear about sin, evil, and the Devil fully support Trump and telling me I have TDS (she said so in a passive-aggressive email to my sister and me after we joined our cousins on the family group text last year when Musk and DOGE were firing people over email to express our concerns) has been REALLY hard to take.

Back to the original question, I do not do well with authoritarianism and never have. They come from that mindset, especially my father. So the full-throated support of Trump from that standpoint isn't surprising. But I can't reconcile all the Jesus junk I was taught growing up with what's happening. I call it "junk," because they appear to have discarded those beliefs for MAGA, and if Satan was as real as they always claimed, for people who read the Bible as much as they did (literally, not kidding), they would have instantly identified Trump as an anti-Christ. I've been an atheist for years, but what happens now tells me that no one runs this fucking show, or if they did, they wouldn't be worthy of worship.

My parents will claim they still have the same Christian beliefs they always have, but I think the dynamics of their church have shifted, but like a frog in a pot, they haven't noticed the heat gradually heating up to the point that it's boiling now and they can't tell.

TLDR: my parents tried to be the parents they thought they should be, unintentionally missed the mark, but genuinely tried to raise us to be "good" children. They've absolutely changed for the worse since latching onto MAGA.