There’s only one question this Thanksgiving: to fight or not to fight?
In 2023, I argued it was your “patriotic duty” to start a fight with your lib family members. The idea was that you’re obligated to not just meekly submit, that as painful as confrontation may be on a holiday, you needed to claw back the liberal claim to truth and moral high ground. After all, it might be the one day a year your non-binary nephew from Brooklyn or your self-righteous sister ever gets walloped with an opposing view. Every other day, the powers that be affirm them.
As I wrote at the time,
Freed from their repressive hometowns, millions of young cosmopolitan liberals will soon return home, proudly wearing a distinct set of morals on their sleeves, feeling it is beneath them to share an annual meal with their once-beloved family. It would be wrong for conservatives to indulge their delusions. This Thanksgiving, flip the social shame system. If you know from past experience that your liberal family member is coming ready to fight, launch a preemptive strike. Put them on the defensive. Make them feel ashamed to believe what they do. Find the confidence to impugn their morality with the same sense of entitlement they feel towards you. Talk casually of their worst views as the freakish perversions that they are — as if no one of sound mind and good conscience could possibly disagree. Be crass, be arrogant, be wholly unrestrained.
Breaking through the “social shame system” was critical in an election year. More so than any policies, ideas or even Donald Trump’s personal behavior, it was the biggest obstacle to MAGA ascendance: Respectable Normal People implicitly took it as a mark of shame to be on the Wrong Side, even if they weren’t political. Poking holes in this narrative became a priority, even at a scale as small as our own dinner tables. We might not change our liberal family members’ minds, but we could plant a seed of doubt — and signal to all the normies that maybe the narrative isn’t so cut and dry. (RELATED: America Needs More Drunk MAGA Uncles Who Fire Off Racy Jokes)
Joy Reid Says It’s Okay To Be Afraid Of Your Trump-Supporting Family Members
Joy Reid: Stay away from pro Trump family members since they ENDED democracy, may turn you in 😂 pic.twitter.com/6Sa9LkDkNr
— PapaJ (@JeffnClownWorld) November 23, 2024
This year, however, I think we can give our family members a respite. The prison of social shame has collapsed in on itself, so we can afford to be a bit magnanimous.
Trump won handily, no doubt by breaking through the cultural taboos meant to hem him in. By the time he survived an assassination attempt, he was no longer radioactive. From Elon Musk to a variety of influential podcast bros, he had broken through with major cultural figures. Celebrities, athletes, porn stars and even American icons like Buzz Aldrin felt comfortable endorsing him without fear of losing their careers or legacy. Maxim gave its sexy seal of approval, turbo-lib Mark Zuckerberg had to admit Trump was “badass” and a generation of self-confident young men rallied to his side. Trump isn’t just not-toxic, he’s downright cool.
This makes his policy agenda all the more potent. People hate the Biden Economy, a majority are in favor of mass deportations and are sick of all the gender insanity shoved down their throats. Questioning the dominant narrative on these issues was enough to get you banned from polite society only a few years ago. Now, they’re just about water-cooler talk. The social shame system is broken.
Being a sore loser is bad, but there’s nothing worse than being a sore winner. Our Pugilist-in-Chief is perfectly capable of landing his own blows when it matters. But the people are largely on his side on the issues, and for those who still need to be convinced: It’s up to you to be the living embodiment of what Trump means when he says “My retribution will be success.”
Besides, it’s not worth the fight. We have so much to be thankful for this year.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
