Thanksgiving in Troubled Times

We in the United States are about to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Or are we?

Many people worry about Uncle So-and-so who has the nasty habit of ruining holiday meals by raising tough questions in a way that irritates everyone at the table—at best.

Rude and insensitive guests who make festive gathering anything but festive are nothing new.

But now?

Given the politics and divisions of the twenty-first century’s roaring twenties to the mix, that relative who just doesn’t know how to shut up can really ruin a meal. Especially if they are dead set on convincing us that they are right and we are wrong.

I Used to Be That Relative

I know about the relative-who-ruins-everyone-else’s-holiday because I used to be one.

Maybe just a mild version of one.

I can remember my mother—who hated football with a passion—suggesting that we go watch whatever NFL game was on to shut me up when I insisted that we talk about Vietnam when I was home from college and the war that she supported and I opposed was raging.

Even if I was right (which, of course, I was) and my pro-war mother overreacted (which, of course, she did), I was a pain.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Like That

In the sixty years since then, I’ve changed my ways. I almost never act that way any more.

That includes developing strategies for dealing with the Uncle So-and-so’s or teenage version of Chip Hauss in your life.

That starts with the fact that my in your face dinner party behavior never convinced my mother. She still voted for George Wallace in 1968 and Richard Nixon four years later.

Or anyone else.

However brilliant my logic was or stunning my ability to cite the right statistic.

By changing the way I conduct myself when having difficult conversations, I find that I do a better job of getting today’s equivalents of my late mother to question their values.

While sometimes questioning my own, too.

In fact, I take part in one almost every week when members of my blended family get together for a cookout—or holiday dinner this week.

My wife’s first husband, my son in law, and I often don’t agree. Not over who to vote for but about how best to tackle the crisis our country is facing.

Our discussions are, in fact, so powerful that they helped shape much of what I wrote in Peacebuilding Starts at Home.

That’s not surprising since I’ve been honing those skills for a long time.

It really started almost exactly half a century ago on my first day as a political science professor when I realized that well over half of my students didn’t agree with me. Sure, I wanted them to take my ideas seriously. But, it would have been unethical (at best) for me to try to force my values down their intellectual throats as I did with my mother and, more importantly, too many of my colleagues did with their students.

Even though I would only encounter these terms, per se, in the last few years, I began doing two things.

I started practicing what Emily Kasriel calls Deep Listening. This whole video is worth watching, but Emily asks her viewers to rethink everything we thought we knew about difficult conversations in the first minute before the formal podcast begins.

The same holds for what Amanda Ripley calls looping in which I make certain that I could accurately repeat back at least the gist of what my discussion-mate was saying.

That’s just the beginning.

I’ve also stopped trying to score points or win some non-existent debate with my late mother or anyone else who happens to be sharing the turkey (or tofu in my vegetarian days) with me. Five more things stand out.

• · I (almost) never demonize the person I’m talking to. I treat them with respect.

• · And curiosity. I try to figure out why they think the way they do. Empathy really does matter. But empathy does not imply sympathy or agreement.

• · I am always looking for any hints that we could find common ground especially when we are dealing with social psychologists call superordinate problems that can only be solved cooperatively.

• · I don’t try to “win” when I have a one-off conversation at the dinner table or anywhere else. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone change their minds on an important issue on the basis of a single conversation—even when I was at my most brilliant. I just try to plant seeds so that my interlocutor becomes at least a bit more open to the kinds of things I’m saying so that they might change their minds at some point in the future.

• · On balance, I try to mirror the openness, curiosity, flexibility, and humanity I want that same interlocutor to show

I no longer think of those discussions as the equivalent of the fencing matches that my grandson goes to every weekend in which it is his job to beat the other kid—and at which he keeps getting better.

Instead, I think of them as opportunities in which we can all grow through what the pollster and philosopher referred to as a dialogue that was so intense that it left neither party unchanged.

And I have a lot of fun in those discussion.

Even if I often do leave them more than a bit frustrated.

My Own Lab

None of this is all that easy to live up to in practice as I will discover over the weekend when the legacy of those childhood arguments followed by football games takes its most recent incarnation.

The holiday football habit stuck despite the fact that my sister and I both went to Oberlin which arguably had the country’s worst football team at the time.

Things changed. I went to graduate school at Michigan and got hooked. And, as hard as it is for me to imagine, she married someone who went to Ohio State where all of their children went. Their daughter and her family live in the Columbus suburb that is the epicenter of Ohio State fandom where my sister and her husband will spend the weekend.

In short, we are getting ready for our annual grudge match. Nothing—not even the most contentious political issue—brings out the same emotions as The Game.

To make matters more complicated, it almost always falls on or about our mutual birthday, November 30. So, we have to talk. This year. The day after the game. We will probably also talk before since they are thinking of downsizing like we just did and they haven’t had the Zoom tour of our new condo yet.

We probably won’t speak during the game itself—although we have been known to do so.

When we talk about the game, our discussion will be heated especially if it was close or there wre controversial calls.

However, we treat each other’s (ir)rational passion with respect. We like each other a lot, despite the fact that Leslie roots for “that team” (and vice versa).

Despite her absurd love of the Buckeyes, we like a lot of things in common, ranging from UConn women’s basketball to shared values about teaching and grandparenting.

She gave me the Michigan slippers I always wear during “the game.” I did not scream expletives when her husband brandished his Ohio State t shirt during their daughter’s (and Ohio State grad’s) wedding to a Notre Dame alum.

It is hard to practice what I preach, but I find that I can put the political equivalent of my dislike of Ohio State when I spend time with Trump voters or people who think that the country is overrun with immigrants or that ours should be a Christian country.

And so can you.

Go Blue!

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Alliance for Peacebuilding or its members.