Don't Talk to Your Family About Politics at Thanksgiving, No One Cares!

[KoKo]

A FUNNY/WISE ARTICLE...but, since many of us here on DU have BEEN AND DEALT with THIS Before...it's just a reminder and for the NEWBIES....some Advice. ===============


On Wednesday, MSNBC's Chris Hayes will devote his show to a topic that should ruin a few family dinners: How to argue with your conservative relatives about politics. It mirrors a for-some-reason resurrected Slate post from last year at this time, in which John Cook describes how to pick a fight on politics. (Mediaite's Noah Rothman, 369 days later, suspects that the piece is "quite satirical.&quot But, honest to God, if you bring up politics over Thanksgiving dinner — particularly with an aim toward convincing someone of something — you're a bad family member or friend and should never be invited back.
In Cook's defense, politics was a little less avoidable last year at this time, coming close on the heels of President Obama's reelection.

Presidential campaigns are fun, demanding that self-respecting adults draw an opinion on one candidate or another and, in theory therefore, on certain policy positions. Unless you are a complete political junkie and / or are paid to pay attention to politics, however, the year after a presidential race is meant to offer normal people a chance to ignore politics for a while. We do not all need to have an opinion on everything all the time; we do not all spend a lot of time formulating opinions or doing the research that would be useful in doing so. So insisting that people who've decided to get together to eat turkey care or opine about the minutiae of politics — a wormhole of deep tedium and incessant contrarianism — is obnoxious. Deeply, deeply obnoxious.

What happens when you demand an opinion of someone on something that they do not care about? One of two things. Either they, one, will become immediately annoyed and hate you and probably yell at you or, two, they will make up an opinion that fits loosely in line with their political beliefs. In neither instance are you making any progress. In the former, you will get in an actual fight in a venue where most people have knives at their immediate disposal. In the latter, you will not convince someone to adopt your point of view, because their opposition will be based on emotion, not rationality. This will not work.

But apparently people need guides on these things. So, with no more ado, our List of Thanksgiving Tips™ for how to avoid and, further, curtail any tedious discussion about politics.

Tip 1: Do not mention obvious political topics. This is pretty straightforward. Do not mention: Healthcare.gov, Obamacare, immigration, Ronald Reagan, the NSA, the Arctic, hanging chads, the Lend-Lease Act, any of it. It seems prohibitive, to be sure, this lengthy list of things for which there exist political overtones. But it's really not! Talk about your family. How they're doing. Their friends. Their jobs. Sports. The weather. The neighborhood. Your city (but not its leaders). Pets. We are not Fox News or CNN; we do not need to fill hours with we're-keeping-an-eye-on-this breaking news alerts about issues that keep Obama up at night. We are normal people who actually have lives that do not revolve around matters of universal importance. Embrace that.

Tip 2: Do not try to trick people into talking about politics. You think you are clever, perhaps, as do we all, and you may try and trick your hated uncle into weighing in on Obamacare so that you may explain to him the issues related to the website and/or what you think it means for 2014. You get to talk about politics; you do not get the blame for bringing it up.


MORE TIPS at:
Don't Talk to Your Family About Politics at Thanksgiving, No One Cares
Philip Bump
http://www.thewire.com/politics/2013/11/dont-talk-your-family-about-politics-thanksgiving-no-one-cares/355511/

[Capt. Obvious]

1. Politics last year was awesome

I was taunting my in-laws that Obama was now going to take their guns.

[Tx4obama]

2. Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings are a great time to talk to all female family members about...

... how the Republicans are trying to take away women's' rights!

It is too important of an issue to be silent on

[aristocles]

3. A long-standing tradition at our family's Thanksgiving celebration

Stemming from 1963, when my father and I argued politics (Nixon and Kennedy) and religion (Catholicism and atheism), the rule for the last 50 years has been no talk of politics or religion. Science, literature, and money, OK.

[KoKo]

4. What the problem is...is WHAT DO you Talk About?

Any suggestions? I find it hard to find something that isn't Politics that invades every avenue of our lives these days. Our Relatives with Kids who have huge college debts but no jobs after graduation, the downsized members of our family who are looking for jobs or who gave up after years hanging on until they can get Medicare and SS..and others..too afraid to try hoping they can get back the income they used to have so they don't have to take SS early to survive.

Lots of hardship stories of our Younger one's who are College Educated Parents whose kids are in turmoil over States forcing them to do "Teach to Test" and that their kids are trying to fight to get into the New/Latest "Charter School" where all the best kids (1%) go...and they feel left behind struggling if they should try to get them into Private Schools and the cost of that.

We've got family members from all age groups affected these days by Struggle, Hardship and it's not the "American Dream" but reality that the top 1-5% don't have to worry like the rest of us do. And our parents struggled to get all of us into College and give us the best they could to give us a Leg Up to compete. We did good....but, not good enough when the Bankster Criminal Community and the rest manage to take over.

We are the Middle Class Workers of America who are Educated and Educated our Young. And...we are being Left Behind.