Holiday PSA: Politics and Family

It's not that simple....

    As the holidays come crashing down around us (Do yours sneak up on you? Wow, lucky you.), I am sharing once again this PSA on dealing with your relatives who are less enlightened or politically astute, and who have an apparently innate need to share their misguided opinions with you (with your best interests and edification in mind, of course).

The phrase that I plan to use and strongly recommend that you keep handy (aside from Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas or Happy Kwanzaa or Happy Hanukkah or whatever works in your family’s culture wars): “I don’t think it’s that simple.” Because, really, nothing is. You get to retain your claim to your beliefs without engaging in a no-win argument. “Agree to disagree” sounds dismissive, but most importantly, doesn’t work very well. At least it doesn’t in my family; that phrase tends only to inspire only additional louder voices and increasingly tedious arguments as the evening gets longer and the wine and beer supplies get shorter. Plus I can only go wash the dishes so many times before my absence becomes obvious.

My father used to tell me about a boss he had who was fond of saying, “When you find the answer it will be simple.” Because we seldom agreed on anything, I was always compelled to add, “… and wrong.” My father was a good man, and intelligent, but incapable of seeing any shades of grey. Like (apparently) many of his fellow citizens, he envisioned a world that conformed to his values and saw a straight path to that destination.

I don’t believe that even his world, back 75 or so years ago, was ever really that simple, but even had it been, I think most people would agree that it has become increasingly complicated and at an ever-accelerating rate. To ignore that fact makes you, well, President-elect Donald Trump. Simple solutions, as attractive as they might seem on the surface, ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences. (Of course, complicated solutions, with so many moving parts, generate their own, as well, perhaps on an even larger scale.)

Although I’m not going to convince my brothers any more than they’re going to convince me, “I don’t think it’s that simple” avoids the discussion becoming angry or personal, with the resultant (potential) hurt feelings. As I’ve noted before, talking about politics and religion is, almost by definition, personal because those topics deal with our most deeply held beliefs and world views.

I’ll let you know it works out. I’m hopeful, if not optimistic. But my solution, too, probably isn’t that simple.