Have a class-conscious Thanksgiving!
Get your family to think about our common cause as workers without getting into a fight!
Nearly a third of Americans under 30 expect to get in a Thanksgiving argument today, according to a new poll by YouGov / Economist. And if the discourse over the past few years has been any indication, there’s still a big split over whether this is a good thing or not. On one hand, environmentalists and gun fans have been prepping their readers for the big fight; but on the other, centrists and the conflict averse still love to make a big show of how petty and immature disagreeing with your loves ones is.
Like Tolstoy, I believe that every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way; in my experience arguing makes some dinner tables miserable and others lots of fun. So I won’t prejudge how anyone wants to approach politics this Thanksgiving.
What I would like to do, however, is offer some suggestions on how to talk about socialism in a way that isn’t argumentative. This may seem like an impossible task on its face, but as it turns out socialism’s ideas are often wildly popular, or at least inoffensive; present them right and you might actually be able to have some productive and gratifying conversations with the reactionary bourgeois capitalist pig-dog scum in your life!
1) COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW RICH THE RICH ARE. Unless you are dealing with straight-up Ayn Rand fanatic libertarians at your table, this one is always a sure-fire hit. Don’t pick a rich guy that the right will feel defensive about like Trump or Musk. Pick someone like Bezos or Soros and then just talk about how much goddamn cash they’re making every split second. Talk about how many times their wealth could extend to the moon and back if you laid the bills down end to end. Talk about Epstein and how they’re all a bunch of decadent perverts who are probably engaged in unspeakable crimes even as you speak. This stuff is always fascinating to talk about and there is really no better way to plant the first seeds of class consciousness.
2) DO A HOT CONTRARIAN TAKE ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THE DMV. The right loves to characterize going to the DMV as a miserable experience because it helps them to discredit government services, but the bit is so stale and exaggerated that you can easily push back on it. Just bring up your last visit to the DMV and talk about how efficient and painless an experience it was. Did you know that they call numbers now and provide a seating area for you to wait in rather than making you stand in a line? Did you know that you can decide to apply for a custom license plate on the spot with no hassle whatsoever? Did you know that a number of their services can be taken care of online so that you don’t even need to visit the location? Brilliant! I love the DMV.
3) COMPLAIN ABOUT WORK. Don’t focus on the problems that are unique to your job; instead, look for stuff that everyone will be able to relate to. For example, an increasingly common problem for all workers is that employers don’t respect your downtime; they’ll try to contact you off the clock or expect you to perform tasks while you’re at home. Or think of an example of something your boss makes you do that you would do better if you were in charge, and complain “that’s the problem with work these days, ownership just doesn’t understand what we do.”
4) TALK ABOUT HOW LOATHSOME BLACK FRIDAY IS. Bring up stories of people getting trampled in stores or fighting over TVs. Relate it back to how people are desperate to find deals because their wages are so low, or to how in modern society buying products and gadgets is the only way a lot of people can find happiness. Talk about how much happier people would be if they had everything they needed and could just spend the Friday after Thanksgiving with their families.
5) BRING UP THE HOMELESS. People feel especially bad for the homeless during the holidays, particularly during Thanksgiving dinner. You don’t even need to say that the government should provide all of them homes (even though it should); instead, just talk about how trivially cheap it would be for rich people to make sure that every homeless person had a hot meal today.
This is just a starter pack, but you get the idea. Socialism may be a controversial idea today, but the road there begins with class consciousness; and I’ve found that even if you can’t make a revolutionary out of someone, you can usually give them a decent nudge in the right direction.
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