With Relatives Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

Like anything listenable on public radio, it didn't last.  

I bring it up because of a moment that set up one of the most enervating parts of today's culture war.   The show was doing a "Christmas" broadcast in December 2016, featuring members of the cast and writing staff telling anecdotes about their family's Christmases.  One of the show's writers - a woman, who sounded like she was in her late twenties or early thirties, described a fairly typical, carefree, apparently loving-enough middle-class childhood with parents and family who were, to her telling, more conservative than her.  But it was OK.  Blood was thicker than politics. 

Then she paused and took a deep breath. 

"Oh, good Lord, she's going to make it about Trump, isn't she?"

"And then", the the woman continued, exuding audible revulsion "came last November".   The audience groaned and booed in unison.  And the writer and the audience shared a struggle session, as the youngish woman confessed her struggle about spending holidays with one of the unclean.  

I turned the radio off.  And while I listened a few more times before the show was canceled the following season, the damage was done. 

It was about then that I started hearing stories about political conflict - first of politicians urging people of (let's be charitable) both sides to use holidays as an excuse to proselytize...

 Pajama Boy is about as threatening as Michael Cera and so nerdy he could guest-host on an unwatched MSNBC show. He is probably reading The Bell Jar and looking forward to a hearty Christmas meal of stuffed tofurkey. If he has anything to say about it, Obamacare enrollments will spike in the next few weeks in Williamsburg and Ann Arbor. 

 Perhaps the goal of OFA was to create a readily mockable image to draw attention to its message, in which case Pajama Boy was a brilliantly successful troll. The right immediately Photoshopped him into the Mandela funeral selfie and emblazoned his photo with derisive lines like, “Hey girl, I live with my parents,” and, “How did you know I went to Oberlin?” 

And then, of something more sinister - the complete estrangement of families over politics:

New American Psychiatric Association (APA) polling reveals that about one in three Americans (31%) anticipates having a heated political discussion with their family members this election season. While most (71%) indicate that their family will weather the storm and get along about the same as the holidays come around, 12% expect an improvement in relations, and 6% said family relations will get worse.

The survey was conducted among 2,201 adults Sept. 20-22, 2024, by Morning Consult.

Now I'm trying to be charitable when I say "both sides do it", but I have yet to see a conservative source call for it in the same way pundits on the left promote it.  There is plenty of "both-sides-ism" on the issue:

Another recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute shows that 8 in 10 Republicans believe the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists, while 8 in 10 Democrats believe the Republican Party has been taken over by racists. The report is aptly named titled "Dueling Realities."

Tania Israel, a professor in the counseling, clinical and school psychology department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said she's seeing more of those kinds of distorted views in the workshops she runs on cross-the-aisle conversations. The rancor is rising, she said, as both sides "tend to view the other as being more extreme than they actually are."

It has been observed that women are more prone to cutting people off over politics, and women, especially younger single ones, are one of the major Democrat constituencies.

But apparently word is getting out - family estrangement is bad.  

David Litt is a former speechwriter for Barack Obama.  And I hardly needed him to tell me that, reading his self-exposition in a New York Times op-ed over the weekend:

Not too long ago, I felt a civic duty to be rude to my wife’s younger brother.

I met Matt Kappler in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license. My early memories of Matt are hazy — I was mostly trying to impress his parents. Still we got along, chatting amiably on holidays and at family events.

Litt sounds like a real gem - and he believes he speaks for more:

My frostiness wasn’t personal. It was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways

I wasn’t the only one thinking this. A 2021 essay for USA Today declared, “It’s time to start shunning the ‘vaccine hesitant.’” An L.A. Times piece went further, arguing that to create “teachable moments,” it may be necessary to mock some anti-vaxxers’ deaths

Long story (or at least a story that seems long) short, Litt and his bete noir started talking as humans:

I assumed our surf-buddy experiment would either fail spectacularly or bring Matt over to my side [They always think that - Ed]. Neither of those things occurred. Instead, the connections we found were tiny and unrelated to politics. We agree that “Shrimply Irresistible” is the perfect so-bad-it’s-good name for a seafood restaurant, and that Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” is a classic. Although I still wouldn’t call myself a Rogan fan, we share an appreciation for his interview with the surf legend Kelly Slater. Matt and I remain very different, yet we’ve reached what is, in today’s America, a radical conclusion: We don’t always approve of each other’s choices, but we like each other.

On the one hand - with mea culpas like that who needs tea culpas?

On the other hand - Litt seems to have discovered something that people with, I dunno, healthy perspecrtive have always known.