No. It Isn't

Inside Hook reprints an item from a couple of years ago by Reuben Brody about the dreaded "discussions" that might happen with less enlightened family members during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Brody's list of ways to have these conversations seems pretty thoughtful and would, if adopted, probably go a long way towards defusing full-scale family brawls about this or that issue. His opening paragraphs, though, unfold the idea from the headline "It’s Your Civic Responsibility to Talk Politics at the Dinner Table This Thanksgiving" and need to be flat-out disobeyed or at the very least ignored as though they were never written.

Because it's not my "civic responsibility" to wreck everyone's dinner by putting my own political hobby horses onto everyone's menu. It never has been. That doesn't mean we reflexively shy away from the subject whenever someone brings up a political opinion, unless we want to. We can engage or not, and at whatever depth we wish. But it is not our responsibility to talk politics -- and even if it were, I would like the heads-up to come from someone other than J. Random Writer.

The kicker, though, comes in Brody's reason that this talk is our responsibility. It's because in the era of President Trump, we have large groups of people who talk past each other if they actually find themselves in the presence of someone who thinks differently. Thus, Brody says, we need to re-learn how to actually converse with another person, even about subjects on which we disagree. That's almost certainly true, but we won't do it by spending a couple of uncomfortable hours annually in the presence of family members or friends with different ideas in their heads and sharp metal objects on the tables before them.

It's our civic responsibility to be...well, civil to each other. It was so, long before the idea of living in the White House entered the president's proud, arrogant and myopically narcissistic head. It will be so, long after he has left the White House and the Democrats have rediscovered the part of the country they've been dismissing as knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers for the last four years.

Besides, far too much of my time is already taken up by the President and the troop of of Martin Van Buren wannabes who want to tell him he's fired. I'd rather not lose a holiday to it as well.