I hate writing columns that will run on holidays. No matter what you write, very few people are going to read it. That leaves you with the choice between phoning it in or throwing it away. Neither is particularly appealing to anyone who takes writing seriously.
What to do? How do you reach an audience likely to be in a tryptophan coma vaguely paying attention to football or a relative taking a little too much advantage of the day off tomorrow? You mock liberals, of course. Because if there’s anything I’m thankful for it’s that these little snowflakes are crying on the inside eating the tofurky they had to bring for themselves while they participate in a holiday they view as a racist celebration of genocide.
With that in mind, I want to take a look at what has become an annual tradition for the left around Thanksgiving and Christmas – the “how to talk to someone who thinks differently than you do” advice columns and how they’ve stepped it up this year.
Ever since the Obama administration introduced “Pajama Boy” to the world, the ambiguously male coffee-sipping millennial who was used as a delivery device for progressive propaganda on health care, these columns have been attempting to ruin holiday gatherings and validate leftists who simply can’t leave people alone.
The Obama administration issued talking points to devotees, complete with fake dialogues for what they deemed to be objections to the government running decisions about health that the government has no business being a part of. It was roundly, and rightly, mocked. But that didn’t stop them from continuing to push this sort of pap every year. This one is no different, though there’s not a twist.
In this year’s entrant, the New York Times, naturally, published a piece entitled, “How to Have a Conversation With Your Angry Uncle Over Thanksgiving.” In it, the author, a liberal activist and “former psychiatrist,” writes about the prospect of attending a family event where someone does not subscribe to liberal group-think.
In the hilarious and sad second paragraph, it reads, “Many of us aren’t accustomed to socializing with people who think differently from us, especially about politics. Our political attitudes and beliefs are intertwined with our most basic human needs – needs for safety, belonging, identity, self-esteem and purpose – and when they’re threatened, we’re biologically wired to respond as if we’re in physical peril.”
There is so much to cringe over in this paragraph that it could be a column in and of itself.
It acknowledges what we’ve all known for a long time – liberals live in a bubble of their own making, creating an existence of unchallenging fellow travelers; a row of bobblehead dolls sitting on the dashboard of family truckster as it drives down a dirt road, everyone nodding in agreement. To leave that world is a scary proposition to them.
Hearing contrary opinions is a blow not only to their “self-esteem,” but to their very “identity.” Imagine being a person whose identity, the very core of their existence, is tied up not in family and friends, but politics. So much so that it’s to the point that to hear something with which you disagree is to cause a response as “if we’re in physical peril.” Now you begin to see why they’re such miserable creatures.
“So,” the piece asks, “how can you talk with people who disagree with you without setting off this fight-or-flight response?” Might I suggest that you don’t? Don’t talk to anyone about your politics at Thanksgiving if this describes how you exist. Better yet, don’t go to your family’s gathering. You won’t be missed. No one will ever say, “As I eat these cranberries and enjoy myself the everyone’s company, I have to say that I wish cousin Gideon were hear to shake with anger as he starts crying over the fact that this turkey isn’t free-range and President Trump exists.”
In the added bonus category of liberal’s compulsion to ruin holidays, the Times piece created a “bot” to help these snowflakes rehearse having a conversation with the dreaded “different opinion holder” to prevent little Gideon from locking xieself in the basement until everyone admits they’re racist/sexist/homophobes/xenophobes. It coaches people on what to say when confronted by opinions they don’t share. It’s every bit as liberal as you’d expect, even the so-called “conservative” option. It’s worth playing around with, if only for the laughs.
It leads a fake conversation down the Yellow Brick Road of self-indulgence and liberal fever-dreams that have defined the Democratic Party in the Obama and Trump years. This “Choose Your Own Adventure” into the fragile psyche of progressives is a testament to just how far gone some of our fellow Americans are and what the education system is indoctrinating more into being.
So, as you ready yourself for Thanksgiving dinner, football, and family, we all have at least one thing to be thankful for – not being them. That may be the best gift of all this holiday season.