November 25, 2013

How Not to Argue With Your Crazy Relatives at Thanksgiving

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Can I waste some time venting about a teensy little pet peeve of mine? Thanks. Here’s a brief Twitter conversation I just had with Chris Hayes:

Hayes: Devoting our whole show on Wednesday to how to talk about politics, news with conservative family members. Should be fun!

Drum: Will be interesting if it’s real. Usually this stuff isn’t. Needs to be arguments that actually address conservative worldview.

Hayes: Oh, I don’t think it will be useful. No one ever persuades anyone of anything. But will be fun!

I don’t really mean to fire off any cruise missiles at Hayes or anyone else over this, but every year there’s a spate of blog/magazine pieces about how to discuss the political hot potato du jour with your crazy right-wing relatives at Thanksgiving. And every year they’re fake. Mostly they provide stock liberal responses to imaginary conservative talking points, and as Hayes says, they don’t really do any good.

Now, maybe there’s no help for this. Liberals and conservatives have been arguing for centuries, and so far neither side has convinced the other to surrender. Still, wouldn’t it be more interesting to at least try and write something real? That is, come up with the kinds of comments that your Fox-watching aunts and uncles are really likely to drop into the conversation, and then come up with replies that might actually persuade someone who’s a conservative. The downside is that this isn’t as much fun: there will be no killer facts and figures in this list that demolish Uncle Joe’s Obamacare tirade and leave a smoking crater in his place. (In our collective imaginations, anyway.) Instead, we’ll have a collection of items that turn the battleship a few degrees at best. No one’s going to suddenly decide that Paul Krugman has been right all along, but maybe you’ll be able to seed a few doubts about Sean Hannity’s commitment to the straight dope.

This would be hard work. You’d have to actually watch Fox News for a while to make sure you know what’s really on conservatives’ minds these days. Listening to a bit of talk radio and reading some chain emails would help too. And that’s not all. You’d almost certainly have to team up with an actual conservative to help you understand both the worldview at work and the kinds of arguments that might appeal to his ideological comrades-in-arms. And why would a conservative help you with this project? Beats me. Maybe you could trade: you get some arguments that appeal to actual conservatives and he gets some arguments that appeal to actual liberals.

Anyway, somebody ought to do this. I’m a hermit, and my entire family is pretty liberal, so I’m not a very good candidate. But someone out there is. Who wants to do the country a public service?

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate