Hello everyone,

im new to the group and i will admit i am not the most eloquent person.
so i suppose i should be blatant in what i have to say, I just royally p****d off my step father.
Now some backstory is that i am a 20 year old college student who recently stepped away from college due to financial aid issues, i am an optimist a pragmatic pacifist (try to appease any aggression unless a fight starts in which case i only defend myself and others), and i try to see the best of humanity instead of the worst of the world.
my step father has been the only solid male role model in my life for 14 years i believe, he is an ex veteran (desert storm) and has seen some messed up things, he is not totally republican but in recent years his distaste with the systems in america and the state of the worlds youth have made him jaded and angry, now he does not drink or do anything illicit, he hates his job and feels like the weight of the world is on him and these all add up to a sarcastically humorous individual who i respect with all my heart and soul, he supports me and my mother and he is the best dad ever.
Tonight however i made a mistake, i will admit i know little of politics and my world view is skewed by a sense of complete equality being necessary, my optimisim for the best of people, and the standard ideas of being a good person and being fair to all no matter what until they give you a reason to not agree or like them, my stepdad and i were talking and i asked him over dinner what he and my mother thought of an event happening where a few people were trying to distract from the events of 9/11 all those years ago, where a few individual youtubers and streamers will be hosting a massive stream, and thats where it all started.
they started out with a major amount of distaste at the idea, fairly stating that you need to feel the full pain in order not to forget it and have it occur again. from there my step father started in on the younger generations flaws in believing something like this was being done from there we went deeper and deeper hitting everything from, separation of religion and state and his belief that our youth will soon be robots due to the un and the ratified declaration of human rights.

To make a long story short we hit religion and he has fought in wars seen the twin towers fall and had a friend die due to a grenade from a enemy during a deployment against a terrorist group, and i ended up claiming something along the lines of no one should be held against due to their beliefs or the actions of a part of their group only what the individual has assisted in or done, and he went ballistic, now this was after probably 20 minutes of me going on about total equality and world co operation, and he says some quite shocking things about his world view and he storms off.
My mother the wonderfull woman she is tried to get us each off topic and back to friendly conversation, and after he stormed off she cooled me down with some... not inspiring words but she reminded me of the hardships dad has gone through, and when i went to apologize he said, "no i dont want to hear it, until you have had your best friend blown away next to you and you had to carry him through a fight i dont want to hear a word you have to say."

Now i do feel like an ass hole for making my family feel this way from what i have said but i strangly dont feel sorry that i got my beliefs off of my chest , i feel regret not for what i have said but for the troubles it has caused. so TL:DR what do you think i should do to make sure my father and my own relationship will not crumble due to this fight.

Signed: Knight

5272542 I've been in similar situations with my mom. I've always said, "I'm sorry that I made you upset, I won't bring it up again" to at least ease the tension, but it always takes a while before she lets me talk to her.
My simple advice is to give him some time to cool down even just a little, and then apologize for not seeing things the way he does. That way, your relationship is mended, but you can keep your ideals.

5272542
First off, I do not have much firsthand experience with situations like this, so if anything I say is inaccurate, I apologize in advance. My advice would be to find some compromise. After all, while your ideals and beliefs may not be identical, you said he has been a major role model to you for a long time, and you have a very valuable relationship with him that (I assume) matters more to both of you than an argument or two. Because of this, my advice is to try and talk it over, and to be sure not to let political discussion get in the way of the relationship.