Pass The Gravy, Pass On The Partisanship

Michael Brendan Dougherty recommends we avoid political squabbling over Thanksgiving:

These advice columns are becoming a genre unto themselves. The stock villain: crazy right-wing uncle, the jokes about stuffing. But I recognize them by what they unwittingly emulate: guides for religious evangelism. The gentle, righteous self-regard, the slightly orthogonal response guides, the implied urgency to cure your loved ones of their ignorance. Your raging uncle will know the truth, and the truth will set him free.

That’s a problem. Our politics are taking on a religious shape. Increasingly we allow politics to form our moral identity and self-conception. We surround ourselves with an invisible community of the “elect” who share our convictions, and convince ourselves that even our closest and beloved relatives are not only wrong, but enemies of goodness itself. And so one of the best, least religious holidays in the calendar becomes a chance to deliver your uncle up as a sinner in the hands of an angry niece.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone.

As a conservative raised in an argumentative and left-leaning Irish-American family, Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners did more than any professional media training to prepare me for MSNBC panels. But arguments like these, particularly when we allow politics to dominate our notions of ourselves, can leave lasting scars. And precisely because our familial relationships are so personal, the likely responses to our creamed and beaten talking points will be defensive, anxious, off-subject, or overly aggressive.

Lizzie Crocker presents one scenario you might relate to:

You are in a steady, long-term relationship with someone whom you adore despite her fringe politics (you are even starting to come around on her anti-vax opinions). Alas your family cannot stand her, not just because they disagree with her political views, but because they find her to be preachy and self-righteous, and because she refuses to put on “nice” clothes when they see her. (Your mother telephoned to ask if she would be wearing yoga pants to Thanksgiving dinner again this year.) But for some unfathomable reason, you really love this woman who lives in her Lululemon everything and who is forcing you to do a five-day juice cleanse with her after the holiday.

Can’t everyone open their narrow minds and try to get along? [Marriage and family therapist Jenn] Berman suggests “setting up boundaries” and warning family members who are prone to starting fights that you’ll “give them one warning if they do so and then leave if things escalate.”

Stephen L. Carter is much more sweeping:

We’re a divided nation in so many ways. In our responses to everything from the Affordable Care Act to Ferguson to climate change, we’re constantly at one another’s throats, treating those who disagree as enemies to be derided rather than fellow citizens who are part of a common project. College students are being taught to ban speakers whose messages discomfit them. Political parties, egged on by talk show hosts, are raising money through raising fears of diabolical conspiracies.

Even Lincoln, in the midst of so desperate a war, conceded that the enemy was “of our own household.” This was an enemy actually being fought on the battlefield. The very day before Lincoln’s proclamation of Thanksgiving, the Union had won its costly victory at the Battle of Cedar Creek, suffering more than 5,600 casualties, including some 3,400 dead. Yet Lincoln evidenced a belief that those who fought against the Union were not monsters, but wayward brothers.

We’re an imperfect country, and always will be. The “distinguished favors” and “precious advantages” of which Madison spoke may not always be equally distributed, but they are what mark the nation as distinctive. We can do no greater honor to our forebears than adopting an attitude of respect and humility across our differences, as we give thanks for the remarkable project that is America.