The witnesses have testified, the pundits have spoken. Now it is up to all of us to adjudicate our partisan cases over Thanksgiving tables throughout the country.
As college students and young professionals return home for the holidays, their generational imperatives will run smack into their older relatives’ cherished convictions.
Conflicting ideas will simmer, pop and splatter in a zesty stew – and occasionally flare up and bubble over. But just maybe, drawing on the range of ideas we all bring to the table, we will create a better recipe for understanding others and arriving at the truth.
Back in the Day
In our family we fought every war, contested every political campaign, and debated every social trend to a standoff right there at the dinner table at weekly family nights convened over many years. The conversations formed a testament to the incremental passage of history that was proceeding every week before our eyes.
The passage of the old ways into the new, and the dawn of tolerance and progress, threatened the security of a world that had been good enough for our fathers and grandfathers. One generation debated another to a draw, then with a flurry of hand shakes and hugs at the door, we agreed to reconvene and do it all over again next Sunday over turkey tetrazzini.
But now…
This year the passions are hotter, the stakes higher. Long-held ideas are becoming both challenged and entrenched as we all choose the news we want to hear, read, and believe.
So maybe this year’s Thanksgiving gatherings of relatives and friends of different generations, from different parts of the country, and of widely disparate political views will offer a small glimpse into the thinking of people we love but fundamentally disagree with.
And maybe we will gain a little understanding of how the other side thinks – beyond our own bubble – while we share our own rationale over turkey and dressing. If we can accomplish that, we can indeed be thankful.
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