Comments

1
She feels personally offended by this talk

She needs to go fuck herself. She has absolutely no reason to be personally offended that someone holds a different political opinion than she does. That's fucking stupid.

She doesn't have to like it, but no harm is being caused to her.
2
Trump voters obviously give zero shits about the safety, security, and survival of everyone in this country who isn't white, straight, native-born, Christian, able-bodied, and adherents to the correct religion. So why the fuck should we be concerned about their feelings at the dinner table? Voting for Trump was the ultimate gesture of "Fuck You I've Got Mine" — an attitude that is completely antithetical to harmonious bread-breaking.
4
Way back in 9th grade civics lessons, we were lectured that the Electoral College was put in as a stopgap by the Fathers to "ensure that Mickey Mouse or a television celebrity would not be elected to the White House." Interesting Huffer link Dan.
5
Based on the title I was hoping some reader found out about their aging parents still amazingly creative sex life: orgies in the assisted living, 69 while in wheelchairs, and so on.
Dan- I share your pain, frustration, and fears but what love, at least the savage kind, has to do with this seemingly 100% sex-free family dinner?
6
I wouldn't write those parents off as being too dead to vote in four years. My father is 82, my mother 80, and on Election Day (before we learned the horrible news),we spoke about the state of our country, that someone like Donald Trump could have crawled up from the dark underbelly of the earth to a place on the presidential ballot. My dad hadn't been an avid fan of Hillary Clinton, but he made excellent succinct points about her competency and qualifications. He also expressed his inability to understand how his siblings would have voted for Trump, particularly since they are all immigrants.

The following week, he joined me in lamenting the results, and trying to puzzle out what would cause anyone to make that choice. We knew one of my siblings had voted for Trump--hard to miss, since there was a sign on the lawn. We decided we'd rather not know about anyone else in the family.

I have to admit, I'm glad I'll be eating with my in-laws. I know how they voted, and they are just as incredulous as we are.

The Electoral College issue is even more ironic, since it was Alexander Hamilton, in his "Federalist Papers," who detailed the reason for the Electoral College. He didn't mention Mickey Mouse, or television celebrities---simply that it was designed to keep the office of the President being occupied by anyone who was not eminently qualified.

7
I thought Dan's advice was to masturbate surreptitiously under the table.

That's still less fucked up than telling someone their parents will probably die soon, though.
8
Your reply, Dan, epitomizes how the left created Trump supporters -- by not listening to WHY such sweet, generous people voted for such a despicable man. Maybe what the country needs is an all-out discussion over the proverbial dinner table about politics. The LW says her parents "don't fit the mold of Trumpers." Perhaps they ARE the mold of Trumpers. Perhaps the distorted shit-show the media portrayed was just a minority who happened to provide the best ratings. Why not have an open, "liberal" conversation about their choice, understand it, disagree with it, and move on and have a nice holiday dinner?

Instead, you suggest that her friends might be best off retreating into their bubble, and if they choose to attend dinner, that both sides remain in their bubbles. Maybe a good ol' Thanksgiving "exchange of viewpoints" (or arguments, if you will) is just what the country needs -- the type Mike Stivick and Archie Bunker used to have at the dinner table and thrust into our living rooms. It's healthy and necessary.

The fact is, we liberals have elected abhorrent candidates who served our personal interests. A candidate moves toward equal marriage, cheaper health care, and legal pot ... but creates an enormous refugee crisis in another part of the world, along with countless death tolls, and subjected communities to the terror of invisible drones in the sky ready to blow up their families at random. Well, fuck brown people, right? Trump might be racist and anti-Muslim, but one thing Dems and the GOP can agree on is that dark-skinned people far away from America's borders aren't worth a shit. As long as the racism and death and ripping apart of entire cultures is kept overseas and we get equal marriage, yay! So what if one candidate is threatening war with Russia and wants to escalate a military presence around China, and the other candidate is making no particular military threats against any country -- Trump is bad for America and Hillary is good for America. Who gives a shit about WWIII as long as we keep a foul-mouthed vulgarian racist out of the White House. Good for us / Bad for the world, or Bad for us / Good for the world -- that's the choice we're willing to make.

I supported Hillary, but I admit I did so out of selfishness and fear of Trump. I'm willing to understand that some guy in the rust belt who lost a $50,000-a-year working class job and is now working two part-time jobs at half the wage doesn't want a tenured college professor telling him "check your privilege." And the hypocrisy of "they go low, we go high," when for the past year we've been legitimizing bullying by saying their candidate looks like an orangutan, making fat jokes about Chris Christie, and calling Ann Coulter a "hatchet-faced bitch" who can "go kill herself" (the Rob Lowe roast we liberal applauded so vigorously). Not to mention the sex advice columnist who called third-party supporters "morons".

9
@6 Are you really going to make go digging in boxes to find my high school notebooks to get the precise quote? Rereading my phrasing, it was probably something closer to "prevent someone like a...", but in any case the point about a TV personality/celebrity has always stuck in my head. I do recall a long-ish discussion of Hamilton and his motives as well.
10
The previous post ends with a question, yet comments are disabled. WTF, Jen Graves?!
11
Both my parents are welcoming my friends and know better than to bring up politics over dinner, but I'm not sure if my friends know that my parents voted for Trump. Should I warn them?

You won't need to warn them. Your friends will figure it out when they see both of your parents in orange hair and narrow black mustaches and your mom serves brats, kraut and beer for Thanksgiving dinner.
12
Xian-Qi: I'm willing to understand that some guy in the rust belt who lost a $50,000-a-year working class job and is now working two part-time jobs at half the wage doesn't want a tenured college professor telling him "check your privilege."

Wasn't it Bill Clinton, or his campaign, that had the saying "It's the economy, stupid."? I think Trump's supporters in the non-Rust Belt part of the country were in two basic camps: they had this fervent belief that Trump was going to somehow, "smash the system!!" or "drain the swamp!!", or they loathed Hillary and Trump was the necessary alternative. But for folks in the crucial-electoral-votes Rust Belt, I think "it was the economy, stupid." Of course, whether or not their economic lives ever improve in Trump's economy is anyone's guess. Personally, I don't think they will.

13
Geezuz, these friends of yours are being invited to your parents' home. Tell them to act like guests and shut the fuck up about politics. It doesn't matter what age you and your friends are (and since your parents are so old, you and friends have to be at least in your 30s) or how old your parents are: be polite to your host and hostess. There's plenty of time to be condescending and patronizing at other times. Speaking of which, Dan's reply is disgustingly patronizing.
14
@13: Sorry if this blemishes you, but I totally agree.
15
@14

Don't worry. Your very presence blemishes everyone anyway.
16
Another great answer. "Let's not talk about politics, religion or sex in situations in which people cannot easily get up and walk away" used to be standard etiquette.

People are allowed to love their parents, their friends, their spouses even if those people did something bad. They're allowed to think that the bad thing is no big deal, even if it affects a whole lot of other people. They're allowed to think it is a big deal and be angry and happy and disappointed and admiring all at the same time.
17
@16, yes, and while they're allowed to think whatever they damn please, any time they damn please, they should keep that to themselves while they're at someone else's home for dinner. Unless it's a dinner of people with similar thinking, which this isn't.

Raindrop, I find all too often that I agree with you. It bothers me intensively.
18
Solk512 @1: Really? You haven't seen anyone on the left making offensive comments about how stupid and racist Trump supporters are, or even that they should meet with violent ends? I am a lefty and I've seen this, quite a bit of it. That's not "someone holding a different political opinion"; that's people venting their spleens in ways that can indeed be quite hurtful. Deserved? Perhaps, but it's not "fucking stupid" to feel offended if someone calls you a Nazi, an idiot, an asshole, etc.

Sadly I don't think either side will be the first to lay down their swords and offer a handshake.
19
I can't stand Donald Trump and felt disgusted when he was elected. But this type of response to it (calling people pitiable wrecks and essentially wishing them dead before the next election) is part of the problem in this country, in my opinion. People are no longer allowed to disagree or able to have any sort of actual discussion (no, I'm not saying that I think people should have voted for Donald Trump, but pretending like they're all racist monsters who are better off dead is myopic at best). If I were the person who wrote in, I'd ask the friends who are coming to avoid talking about politics because it's been nasty the past few weeks, and I want to just relax and be thankful for a day. If they can't honor that, that says something about them.
20
I'm with @19.
21
the left created Trump supporters


This remains bullshit ever time I see it. Dan Savage's fucking rudeness didn't drive middle class white Christians into Trumps arms. They were there already. 60 million people agreed with Stormfront. Accept it and stop peddling that lie already.
22
Are people just so used to only being around people that agree with them on everything that they do not even know how to operate outside of an echo chamber?

Grow up. I guarantee you that your parents just want to have nice dinner and are not even thinking about who voted for who. Only you and your guests are going to care. So tell them to shut the fuck up if they can't handle people different from them. Or to just stay home.
23
Elections as well as votes have consequences. There is no reason to go to this event. They've made their bed let them dine and die alone.
24
"I know my parents to be fiscally conservative but over the years, with all of the Fox News watching, they bought into Hillary Hate. I don't think they like Trump they just hated Hilary."

And that, folks, is why Trump won. Hillary was the perfect candidate to mobilize the Republican base.
25
@21

Not quite.

Here's the deal. When you get upwards of 60 million people you are dealing with a very large data set. When you are dealing with a large data set it is EXTREMELY unwise to generalize across the entire set.

For example. It is most likely not true that 100% of Trump voters agreed with Stormfront. I'd be amazed if more than 5% of Trump voters even know what Stormfront is(for those playing the home game, Stormfront is an insanely racist web site that caters to neo-Nazis and similar types of people).

That said, it is not only possible, but likely, that a significant portion of Trump voters are ardent racists. It's also likely that another significant portion of Trump supports would be "Yellow Dog Republicans", meaning they would vote for a yellow dog if the Republicans put one up as a candidate. I don't think we will get through to those people.

The Trump voters that really interest me are the ones in the midwest that voted for Obama in past elections and switched to Trump. They were the ones that lost Clinton the election and they are the ones that we need to get back. I think that we can get them back if we acknowledge globalization and automation are mixed blessings whose downsides disproportionately fall on areas that depend on a single factory or industry and try to figure out ways that people can continue to live a rural life like they have for generations.

Now, you might say that those people should just suck it up and move to cities.

This is the part where I'm going to have to say some super unpopular stuff.

Not everyone likes living in cities and of those people, not all of them are backward/racist/sexist/homophobic/awful. Everyone on Slog seems to gloss over the fact that cities are expensive, crowded, and move at a very fast pace.

You can be a good person and not want to spend $1,000/month on a postage stamp sized studio.

You can be agoraphobic but not homophobic.

You can be socially progressive and not want to move at a speed such that it feels like you blink twice and you're 50.

Just like rural life isn't good for everyone, neither is urban life.

26
@ 19,

This isn't some polite difference of opinion about marginal tax rates. Trump ran on a platform of hatred, racism, sexism, xenophobia, religious and ethnic cleansing. This is morally wrong and contrary to every value for which this cruel and hypocritical country claims to stand. He's fundamentally unfit and unqualified for office by any measure.

Since becoming president-elect, he's appointed a neo-fascist white supremacist as his chief strategist, and will nominate other avowed racists to key cabinet posts. He's also continued to Twitter troll and mock protesters angry about these issues. There will be no attempt whatsoever to reach out to the majority of voters who voted against him, as he installs a far-right government after losing the popular vote. People should be mad as hell about this.
28
2020? You should be more concerned about the 2018 mid-term elections. Remember 2010 and 2012? Come on, Dan.
29
@8
Very impressive insights.
30
This is why The Left will fail,
why it will consume itself with its hatred.

In one corner TheParents:
"amazing and generous people and all my friends really love them"
who are "welcoming my friends and know better than to bring up politics over dinner".
(welcoming friends who they know have been posting their disgust toward people like them, whose crime is voting for someone different than they did…)
they seem like really nice upstanding folks.

In the other corner we have The Left (played today by Mr Savage):
who writes the parents off as pitiable wrecks who are totally brainwashed/braindead.

We see here The Left utterly failing Democracy 101.
Revealing themselves to be foul narrow-minded intolerant hate spewing bigots.

The sad thing is that Hate is not a precision weapon.
It is more of a Weapon of Mass Social Destruction.
Like a dirty bomb.
or a hydrogen bomb.
very messing.
lots of collateral damage.

All the Hate the Left is cultivating post election
(which is a follow up to all the Hate they spewed pre-election,
Hate that turned off the open-minded moderate Middle…);
all that Hate and intolerance actually does not harm those The Left hates.
They go on living their lives,
loving their families,
working hard;
they even have an extra little spring in their step from the unexpected POTUS victory…
(be assured,
this will be an amazing Thanksgiving all across Flyover America)

No.
The Hate hurts those that feed it,
spew it,
invent and nurse it.

Think of Wiley Coyote,
lighting up a stack of TNT,
Road Runner zipping by happy and unaware,
the TNT going off and blowing Wiley's head off,
leaving a smoking nub….

That is The Left.
Angry.
Bitter.
Unhappy.
Hating.
Smoldering from wounds that will not heal.

Sadly,
porn and pot and protest;
noisy showy empty protest;
will not give meaning to this bitter miserable existence.

The Truth will set you free.
But only if you embrace it.

Denial is a wide river,
and the journey to Healing and Enlightenment will only begin
when The Left decides to make the crossing.

Come on Over.
It is Sunny and Bright over here….
31
Throw in the fact that since they live in California, their vote didn't make even the tiniest bit of difference in electing Trump. They are surrounded by blue and they won't be alive that much longer. So tell your friends and your parents to STFU.
32
Jesus this is getting rediculous.

"Other than that my parents are amazing and generous people and all my friends really love them—they don't fit the mold of Trumpers at all."

A little less than half the country voted for Trump and they did so for a variety of reasons. We're only doing harm to ourselves to belive most of them are like the blowhards who show up wearing a MAGA hat and yelling "build the wall".

Fuck, these people are eighty. I'm sure their perspective on the world is a bit less immediate as they've lived through many periods of doom and gloom: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Kennedy & MLK assassinations...

Hey guys, my "amazing and generous" parents are offering up their home for Thanksgiving so let's pay them back by sniggering behind their backs about what chicken-shit "pitiable wrecks" they are...LOL, we're so morally superior, amiright?

Usually I agree with you Dan but today you can go stuff yourself for Thanksgiving.

It suuucks that Trump won so why let him win again and again by lowering ourselves?

If your friends don't know how to have polite conversation in a stranger's home then they aren't really friends worth having, are they?

"And since your parents will probably be too dead four years from now..."

Jesus Christ, Dan. Jesus Fucking Christ.
33
you too will be old someday dan savage. will you be content to be regarded as "a pitiable wreck" who ought to die before the next election? frankly, you sound more like a vacuous adolescent rather than a presumably mature middle aged man. the path to success for the democratic party must include a chunk of the white middle class. any other approach will guarantee failure and irrelevance. stop insulting those whose votes the democrats will need.
34
This is a non-issue. Actual grown-ups know that talking divisive politics at dinner is no better than giving the graphic details of your butt boils being lanced.

If people can't accept that minor level of politeness, they can have their own Thanksgiving dinners and discuss all the politics and boil-lancing they want. Being a guest at someone's house comes with certain obligations.

35
Labeling everybody who voted for Trump a racist ignores the fact that 30% of Hispanics voted for him, higher numbers than those who voted for Romney. I'm a progressive and Hillary ( well, actually Bernie, but I didn't have that option ) supporter, but just because some people are concerned about illegal immigration does not automatically make them racist. Its too bad that progressives continue to name call and demean Trump voters instead of finding out what drove them and making sure we are a better choice the next election.
36
@8 Xian-Qi, the hawkishness that leads to high death tolls and refugee crises among non-white populations abroad seems to be pretty evenly spread between the two major parties, and their supporters.

The Republicans seem less keen on taking in any of the resulting refugees, and if Trump is going to go after ISIS, back Putin, etc, that doesn't bode too well for peace and survival either.

I wouldn't say I envy either of the choices US voters had, but a full-on equivalency between HRC and DT seems like a stretch. Dismissing domestic minority rights as not such a big deal seems like the same kind of "who cares how people that aren't like us live, or if they live" attitude you find repugnant in pro-war Democrats.

Also, I'm still lost how same-sex marriage or bathroom access for transpeople in any way interfere with the interests of people who need jobs. If they want a focus back on fixing the economy, why don't they tell those on their side who keep putting money into legal campaigns to block reverse SSM and trans rights to knock it off and stop derailing? Or those who want to focus on deporting the not actually that many undocumented migrants, or registration of Moslems, or fence-building?
37
I've made this point before and I'll make it again: I think it would be a phenomenally bad idea for the electors to make Clinton the next president. Trump is extremely dangerous and we as Americans find ourselves in a precarious situation -- but I think if the electors were to flagrantly violate established process in that way, it could actually plunge this country into civil war. At **an absolute minimum**, it would fuel right-wing extremist conspiracies, activism, and terrorism for several decades.

What you're advocating is a technically-legal coup. Let's not turn Trump into a martyr for the extreme right. Let's spend the next four years fighting fascism, and force the Democratic Party to nominate a person who is NOT more tied to Wall Street and the Washington establishment in the eyes of Americans than any other public figure -- which is precisely what they did this time around, and what they would always do if they could.
38
@36 Strangermyself: Regarding the hawkishness being in both parties, that's just my point. We say, "You voted for the same guy supported by the KKK, that makes you racist." By that logic, you voted for the candidate that threatened war with Russia (shooting down their planes) and continued the pattern of death and mayhem in the Mid East, therefore you must be pro-war. No, it they're not racists, just as you're not pro-war.

Regarding the rest, I wasn't trying to create equivalency, but it doesn't mean that liberals can go on acting badly and feel they can get away with it because "the other side is worse." You can't keep lecturing the right about PC behavior and anti-bullying when they see liberals on TV every night making fat jokes, orangutan jokes, horse-faced jokes, etc about Christie, Trump, and Coulter -- liberals should have been writing op-eds saying, "That's enough. Stop it." It doesn't help that we nominated a candidate who called black youth "super predators" and promoted a bill that increased incarceration of blacks. Yep, false equivalency again, but look at it from the other side when we DEFEND that instead of saying to our candidate, "You have to apologize for that and say it was wrong." It's the way we excuse our own shit that bugs the right.

It goes way back to the 1990s, when we (yes, we) liberals were sending office staff to anti-sexual-harassment seminars, talking about abuse of power if the boss consensualy flirted with his secretary, while completely giving a pass to Bill Clinton, having the most power of all, getting blow-jobs from an intern. "If only we could be more like the Europeans, this would be no big deal." Meanwhile middle-managers are getting lectures about workplace harassers if they so much as comment on their secretary's new hairstyle. "So how come I can't be one of these fucking Europeans like Clinton? Why does he get a free pass?" Saying "it's false equivalency" rather than saying, "You know, you actually have a point," just makes it worse. Sometimes the other side DOES have a point, and if we want them to listen to OUR points (which are, on the whole, more powerful) we have to listen and not just say they're all siding with the KKK.
39
I'm not American, and I'm sure there may be nuances missed, but my point was more that both parties seem hawkish on foreign policy, so it looks more like a choice between hawks with KKK and hawks without.

Or a choice between someone whose sleazy personal habits are at least not endorsed by party policy versus someone who runs on a platform of "eh, harassment, who cares unless the harassers are Democrats or Moslems".

I'm still lost how letting people use their preferred washroom or marry their preferred gender has any effect on other people that could justify voting Trump.
40
"And since your parents will probably be too dead four years from now..."

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but like Debug @32, that made me cringe. Dan, you lost your mom and still talk about how hard it is years later. Ask yourself how you'd feel if someone referenced her so cold-heartedly. Yes, the LW's folks voted for someone you & I (and millions of others) find repugnant, but that was beyond the pale.

Telling someone's friends some version of, "Hey, the wonderful meal and inviting holiday home you're taking advantage of (perhaps for the umpteenth time) is hosted by a couple of 'pitiable wrecks'" is some cold shit. Would you approve of the same comments and attitude if elderly parents who voted for Hillary hosted a lot of Trump voters, and then found out their children had insulted them and advised their friends to just eat the food without discord, because fortunately, the parents will be dead soon?
41
Forgive me if someone already posted this but you can control who sees what on your Facebook page. They have lists and filters. I have a Friend List, Family List, Republican List. FB has gotten pretty sophisticated about this and it's worth looking into.
42
@8

I agree with what you are saying, and I agree also that some people (including Dan's) refusal to turn any criticism inward (into the DNC and liberal establishment) is a big part of the problem.

But that doesn't seem to be the case in this letter. The LW says they voted for Trump because of Hilary hate- and there are plenty of people like this. I live among people who have been hating her for decades now and believe really nutty things about her. Satanic cult. Illuminati member. Pedophile murder terrorist. Etc. It's crazy.

There are plenty of people who looked at the situation and the two undesirable candidates and chose Trump over Hilary because they have legitimate complaints about the way the Clintons and mainstream Dems have handled policy in the past. But it is also true that there are plenty who just really desperately hate Hilary for nutso reasons. The LW says his parents are in the latter group, and I think he knows them better than we do.
43
I feel Dan is right: First thing is warn LW's friends, and tell them politics is a no-no. If they want to go elsewhere, they should. What Dan left out is that, should they choose to do so, LW needs to tell his "nice" mom and pop that those people don't want to break bread with people who vote for hate. And whenever mumsy talks about being offended, then LW should make fun of her like Trump made fun of Serge Kovaleski, then grab her pussy. When she becomes shocked, mock her further for being weak and bringing America down. That's the world LW's parents wanted, let them enjoy it firsthand.
44
The actual reason for the Electoral College was to give additional weight to the votes of th white citizens of slave states. Congressional districts were allocated on the basis of citizen population plus three-fifths of the population of slaves (and certain Indians). Electoral votes being allocated on the basis of Congressional representation is not a coincidence.

This was pretty openly discussed at the time that Electoral College system was amended in 1804. http://time.com/4558510/electoral-colleg…

What you were probably taught in junior high civics was whitewashed BS.
45
@26 Original Andrew, Quit beating around the bush and tell us what you really think!

Seriously, I couldn't agree more. Thanks for being blunt.

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