Don’t Bother Arguing With Your Conservative Relatives
This Thanksgiving, invest time into mobilizing your like-minded family members instead
Each year, Beltway nerds like me write extremely earnest essays about how to talk to your relatives who disagree with you about politics over Thanksgiving. In fact, I’ve written guides like this for climate change. But our political and media environment has changed a lot over the past several years, so my advice has changed, too.
Don’t waste time trying to convert your conservative Uncle Bill
Let’s be real: You’re probably not going to change Uncle Bill’s mind. Even if you can get him to see your point in the moment, he’s going back to Fox News and his conservative Facebook groups. Even if you change his mind about an issue, there’s probably not much that he’s going to do about it. Is he politically active enough to donate, knock doors, and lobby his legislators? Probably not. Let him enjoy his turkey in peace and just shrug if he tries to start a political argument. Unless, of course, he’s being super bigoted. (See more on that below.)
Meanwhile, you might have liberal relatives who agree with you on politics but don’t know what else they can do to have an impact. Or you might have younger…
