So it’s Thanksgiving and for some that means a day of confinement with a group of people you basically can’t stand attempting to work together under a high pressure deadline.
I’m talking about your family of course.
As you known I’m not a great believer in civility and I think public shaming the very least level of activism-
Ken Cuccinelli walked into a bar. And Martin O’Malley lit into him.
By Laura Vozzella, Washington Post
11/28/19
O’Malley, a former Baltimore mayor who was Maryland governor from 2007 to 2015 and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, said he was at the Dubliner with members of his Gonzaga class.
When he saw Cuccinelli, he unloaded his frustration at the Trump administration’s separation of migrant children from their parents and detention of immigrants in chain-link enclosures at the southern U.S. border.
“We all let him know how we felt about him putting refugee immigrant kids in cages — certainly not what we were taught by the Jesuits at Gonzaga,” O’Malley texted.
In another text, he called Cuccinelli “the son of immigrant grandparents who cages children for a fascist president.”
…
In 2015, Cuccinelli accused President Barack Obama of encouraging “an invasion” of undocumented immigrants. As a state senator, he sponsored a bill to strip U.S.-born children of those immigrants of their citizenship.He eased up on his anti-immigration positions at one point during the governor’s race, removing a statement from his website that he had “voted consistently against in-state tuition for illegal aliens.”
I say that even though I know they have no shame.
Why not just don’t invite the bigot?
Fortunately (or not) my family gatherings are more like this-
How to Survive Thanksgiving With Your Not-Quite-Leftist-Enough Family
by Tom Geiger, McSweeney’s
November 25, 2019
Remember that some family members may express beliefs that make zero sense to you, or anyone using common sense — and that’s okay! Perhaps your sister is open to nuclear as a short-term energy solution, or Cousin Derek thinks partial student loan forgiveness is “good enough for now.” Rather than having to point out that your relatives are corporatist shills, you’re better off playing it safe and broaching less contentious subjects, such as gun control, abortion, or Mayor Pete and how utterly terrible he is.
…
Although she’s revealed herself to be a shitlib, it can’t hurt to investigate how and when a family member became so morally bankrupt, if only from a sociological perspective.Sure, it was inevitable that the wealth tax would come up at some point — this is Thanksgiving, after all — but that doesn’t necessarily have to spoil dinner. Just because Aunt Jolene finds Elizabeth Warren’s tax plan palatable and thinks we can do without the extra two trillion dollars in revenue that Bernie’s model would generate doesn’t change the fact that she loves you. Forget that your aunt is an elitist who is forever tainted by that semester she worked as an adjunct at Dartmouth, and pivot to something everyone can agree on, like how excited you are to grab a slice of her famous Sweet Potato Pie!
After it becomes clear that Aunt Jolene is too goddamn stupid to understand that using the public option as a bridge to Medicare-For-All is EXACTLY what the Republicans want, it’s time to acknowledge that you shouldn’t interact with certain family members altogether. Look, it’s Thanksgiving, and you’re going to hear some opinions that are harder to swallow than Aunt Jolene’s bullshit Sweet Potato Pie. Sometimes the safest option is to ignore your family for the remainder of the day, and to the extent possible, all future gatherings.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, but when you ask Dad if he can name another candidate who endorses a national rent control and he just stands there stuttering and you respond, “I didn’t think so, motherfucker,” and everybody laughs and your dad replies, “I know you didn’t mean it this way, son, but it is awfully humorous that you just called me, your dad, a motherfucker. You gotta admit that’s pretty funny,” there’s basically no other option than to tell your family off and leave in search of a better, less ridiculous one.