Being a snowflake never really gets any easier. Sure, crayons and puppies get you through the immediate crises of Ben Shapiro showing up on your campus or finding that the food co-op is out of your favorite artisanal cheese. But life is a vast minefield of micro-aggressions, hidden triggers and unchecked privilege – and never more so than when you have to pack up the Prius and drive to the suburbs for … a family Thanksgiving.
According to a Stanford University study, Thanksgiving Dinner last year was much shorter in duration than ever before, and the reason was politics. (The pithy headline at the website Eater said “Yes, Trump Ruined Thanksgiving in 2016.” Honestly, is there nothing that man can’t do?)
Well brace yourself: according to NBC.com, “If the first Thanksgiving after the election was tense, this year’s holiday will be even worse.” That’s right. Thanksgiving of 2016, we still had Obamacare, and there were still trannies in the military, there was no border wall, and PBS and NPR and Planned Parenthood were all fully funded and … er, well, take if from NBC. This year will be worse.
So NBC is offering yet another version of the perennial Idiot’s Guide to Sitting with People You Know for Two Hours. It contains such counterintuitive stuff as
“don’t talk about politics – just don’t do it.”
“don’t take the bait and get into an argument”
“use humor to deflect”
Thank Gaia for such wisdom! Oh, but there is one way NBC does think you should talk politics: “Do allow a conversation about sexual harassment.” Really. “With so many stories about sexual misconduct coming to light this year,” we should all be ready to talk about icky stuff and make sure everybody feels creepy and uncomfortable. Who knows, “A family member may share a #Metoo story.” And if that doesn’t sound like a fun new Thanksgiving tradition, you just hold on to your drumstick. This is coming from an expert: “Joshua Klapow, a clinical psychologist and associate professor in the School of Public Health at The University of Alabama at Birmingham” says he “would tell every adult coming into Thanksgiving: You’d better be prepared for the topic to come up.”
USA Today offers an article of similar advice. But its expert seems a little more appropriate to the topic: “etiquette expert Lizzie Post, co-president of the Emily Post Institute and great-great-granddaughter of the institute's eponymous founder.”
Etiquette? You mean like, manners?” How quaint.
“People have been dealing with this level of political conversation for almost a year now,” Post said. “The holidays are really a time to focus on what brings us together.”
Actually, people have been dealing with politics since there’ve been people. That they somehow managed to break bread together without the intermediation of clinical psychologists and Stanford studies may mean we’re doing it wrong.
Snowflakes and hard-core lefties will never be content to let a holiday be a holiday. Whether the issue is put-upon feminist rage or historically dubious America hatred, it must be turned into a weapon or theatre for agitprop. If Uncle Mel in the MAGA hat has one too many bourbons and feels he has to engage, them’s the breaks.
But maybe – and yes, this is gonna sound crazy – just maybe we could all stop taking ourselves so seriously that we need to consult newspapers and shrinks just to spend a couple of hours in thanks and companionship. Maybe we should … get over ourselves.
