Reihan Salam On Identity And Individualism

We talk about our immigrant backgrounds and pluralism in the wake of Trump’s win.

Reihan is a writer and the president of the Manhattan Institute. Before that he was the executive editor of National Review and worked at publications as varied as the NYT, The Atlantic, National Affairs, Slate, CNN, NBC News, and Vice. He’s the author of Melting Pot or Civil War? and Grand New Party — a 2008 book he co-wrote with Ross Douthat that pushed a policy program for a GOP connected to the working class. He was also my very first assistant on the Daily Dish, editing the Letters page, over two decades ago.

For two clips of our convo — on finding “Americanness” out of immigrant diversity, and Trump vs the education system — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Reihan’s upbringing in Brooklyn; his immigrant parents (who both worked two jobs) and his older sisters from Bangladesh; how cities are enlivened by legal immigration; the formative role of TNR and the Dish for a young Reihan; the role of reader dissent in blogging; epistemic humility; Burke; Oakeshott; how outsiders often observe subcultures more accurately; the self-confidence of assimilation; Arthur Schlesinger’s The Disuniting of America; meritocracy; the PC movement of the early ‘90s; marriage equality; gay assimilation; victimhood culture and its self-harm; the love of one’s homeland; Orwell; Thatcher’s mature view of trade-offs and “vigorous virtues”; Bill Clinton; Obama’s view of red states and blue states; the importance of storytelling in politics; Trump’s iconic images in 2024; his trans ads; his multiracial coalition; the self-flagellation of woke whites; John Oliver and Jon Stewart; Seth Moulton and the woke backlash; how Harris might have won by acknowledging 2020 overreach; Eric Kaufmann and sacralization of victim groups; The 1619 Project; the failure of blue city governance; Reagan Democrats and Trump Democrats; the indoctrination in higher ed; the government’s role in curriculum; DEI bureaucracy; SCOTUS vs affirmative action; the American Rescue Plan and inflation; elite disconnect from higher prices and higher migration; October 7, Zionism; and the ordeal of consciousness.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: David Greenberg on John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement, Adam Kirsch on his book On Settler Colonialism, Brianna Wu on trans lives and politics, Mary Matalin on anything but politics, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, and John Gray in the new year on the state of liberal democracy. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

From a fan of last week’s pod:

Paid subscriber here. When I first saw that you were doing a two-hour episode with Anderson Cooper, on grief, I sort of groaned. But I tuned in — and it was SO compelling. Magnificent episode. By far your best ever.

Another listener calls it “an absolutely stunning episode”:

In a sense, this was the perfect episode to come out in this post-election haze. Your ability with all of your episodes to discuss, with clarity, the current events of the day while also setting aside time to dig deep into life’s big questions is what sets you apart from basically every other substack/podcast at the moment. Even when I disagree with you and a guest, I come away completely refreshed and intellectually stimulated. Thank you!

Towards the end of the conversation with Anderson, you spoke wonderfully about your mother’s love of Mary and the invocation of various saints. My grandmother was, to put it lightly, religiously and spiritually fluid, but she held a special place in her heart for Mary and the saints. This standup bit reminds me of her — and makes me laugh every time:

So spot-on! Basically what I was taught as well. Another listener sends a poem:

I listen to most of your episodes, and I was not quite sure what to expect with Anderson Cooper, but I found your discussion very memorable and real. When you talked about your grandmother and her favorite hymn, I sat up. For several weeks now, I have been reciting to myself a few lines from “Lord, for tomorrow and its needs.” It has been a favorite for over 60 years — its beauty and truth never faltering. Before you named which hymn was her favorite, I just felt it had to be this one, and sure enough, it was. It felt telepathic.

Lord, for tomorrow and its needs
I do not pray;
keep me my God from stain of sin
just for today.

[…]

So, for tomorrow and its needs
I do not pray;
but keep me, guide me, love me, Lord,
just for today.

Now, when so many are feeling unmoored, its words seem like a guiding light by which we might just manage to stumble along and hold onto what souls we have left.

I sing it to myself from time to time. It was important to sing it at my mother’s funeral. Another listener:

Thank you so much for the astonishing discussion with Anderson Cooper. I think you both, but Anderson in particular, have stored your grief high up on emotional shelves … and it was heartbreaking to take down those dusty cans and take a look inside. I cried along with you.

Your talks felt like sermons to me: that all people — even you two fortunate and successful men — suffer and grieve losses. It is as inescapable as death and taxes, but we don’t want to hear about it. Like the tech bros who search for immortality, I plan on living forever and never suffering too much, and so far it’s worked out pretty well. But unlike them, I know I’m deluded … it’s all coming.

I hope you get out and savor this pretty Sunday and know that your mom and Bowie are together with God, and hopefully enjoying all of it. Prayers to you.

Honestly, I was not expecting Anderson to bring up the AIDS years, and I think it helped me open up. I hope recounting my mother’s suffering when it was visible (and audible) to just the nurses and my siblings did not violate the sacred space of privacy. But I think we need to be more open about sickness and death, stop euphemizing and avoiding, and start living in the awareness of our fragility. It’s liberating. And it’s something our culture once had, and has now lost.

Another listener recommends a book:

Your time with Anderson Cooper was raw … and painful. It brought to mind this book: Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament, written by Mark Vroegop. How do we experience grief with God? As you kindly noted, when caring for a person devastated by grief, our presence with them is often so much more vital than our weak words.

But Vroegap anchors us through the ancient embrace of lament. Here we do speak — boldly and with anguish over our own suffering and that of others. Here, words are vital and join with deep suffering. We lament before the living God. We are encouraged to enter grief deeply, unedited, speaking boldly with God, seeking the presence, wisdom and consolation of the Ancient of Days.

This next listener has a question:

You’ve often mentioned your brief consideration that God might be evil or malevolent. Did the old Gnostic beliefs in a demiurge — an incredibly powerful, incredibly flawed god — ever appeal to you? That ancient idea that the god of the Old Testament and the god of the New Testament were different beings appealed to many people, particularly Marcion of Sinope and Valentinus. While their writings were quickly sought out and destroyed, their arguments did affect the early Church.

No. I remain an orthodox Christian, although quite obviously the God of the New Testament is far more relevant to m than the God of the Old.

Another listener looks to the gay closet:

Your talk with Anderson reminded me so much of my own life (though I’m a little older than you are). I’m 70 years old and just self-published my own memoir called Squiggly Lines: A Life in Design. I grew up in Birmingham, MI — a suburb of Detroit — before moving to London with my parents where I began to “come out of the closet,” as they used to say. I spent the ‘80s working as an interior designer at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill — the architectural firm in Chicago — during the height of the AIDS crisis. I lost many friends, including my own partner, to AIDS. As a friend/client wrote to me, the way I have experienced the visual world, or my life, is an invitation to the reader to share my story.

My own memoir of those years — which is really three connected essays — is Love Undetectable. It remains the book I’m proudest of as a writer. From a straight listener:

Well, that episode with Anderson was a dose, and I mean that in the positive sense. As a heterosexual, nice but boring, 83-year-old guy who has never had the kind of experiences raised in your talk with another gay journalist, you might wonder what I got out of it. I think every listener found something in it that touched their own life, even if their journey has been smooth sailing by comparison. What you are offering your listeners is, to my thinking, unique in today’s journalism. Godspeed!

One more listener this week:

Your column “The Energizing Clarity of Democracy” was a painful but excellent read. The writing was so beautiful, and I sent it to my entire family. (One day, I will ask my son to read everything you’ve written.) I also enjoyed your podcast with Bill Maher — it was hilarious!

But then I heard your podcast with Anderson Cooper, and that just terribly saddened and enlightened me all at once. I grew up in a small town in India in the ‘90s, in a pretty religious and conservative setting, and I only moved to the US in 2011. (I’m now in Canada.) So I was completely unaware of the incredible work you were doing in this time period, or the terrible tragedies you survived throughout this time and before. Thank you so, so much for doing this episode and sharing it with the world. What you say about your Catholic upbringing normalizing you to the suffering in the world was quite enlightening. Maybe it’s the right perspective to lead life with, to face life’s inevitable disappointments better.

Forgive me for asking this, but please do write about your mother and your childhood. For many reasons I won’t bore you with, I want to see how that story came to be and how it led to someone as terrific an individual as you. I was particularly fascinated with how you treat your relationship with your mother with such deep empathy despite how tough some of those experiences must have been for you growing up.

I’m committed to writing a book on Christianity, which is a subject I cannot begin to talk of personally without talking of my mother and grandmother. So she will be in the book — which is becoming a kind of spiritual autobiography in my head as well as a terribly amateur stab at some theology. The Dish is still consuming most of my time and bandwidth so it keeps getting delayed. But I hope to leave that book behind one day.

On to politics, here’s a reader in Portland who has given the Dish periodic updates on the vibe-shift there:

As someone from Portland, Oregon, I haven’t been surprised that the Democrats lost across the country. My friends and family who voted for Trump in Oregon simply point to Portland (and Seattle, San Francisco, and LA) to say that this is what Dem governance looks like, and they don’t want to live in that world. They don’t like Trump personally and don’t like how he talks, but he is their champion.   For states like Oregon where the Democrats have a supermajority and dismiss Republicans as stupid and racist, this is their only recourse.

I would caution any analysis on long-term trends based on 2024’s results. The Republicans seriously underperformed in 2022 and that could foreshadow what Trumpism without Trump looks like. I think many people are fed up with both parties, and if there is too much chaos and the economy stalls out under Trump, people could easily shift back to the Democrats.

This recent NYT article on the waning trends of progressive identity politics didn’t get much attention, and I think it’s accurate. It calls out many of the changes I’ve seen in Portland. For example, there is a new comedy YouTube series that is gaining popularity called “Hasaan Hates Portland” — about a black man’s experience living in the whitest, most progressive city in America:

I urge my progressive friends to watch this series when they are perplexed on the demographic trends of voters moving to Trump.  I’m not sure if progressive activists are self-aware enough to notice, but people who use terms like “BIPOC”, “LatinX”, and “heteronormative” have become a punchline.

Voters in Portland are in a grumpy mood and are looking for results. The new mayor, Keith Wilson, has stated his plan to end unsheltered homelessness in 12 months, and the clock is ticking. I would also caution on analysis that it’s a conservative vs. progressive victory. People are looking to candidates to get things done. There were many new progressive candidates who won, but they ran campaigns about roll-up-your-sleeves action and showing results.

Ezra Klein has rightly called out the politics of disorder. While I do think it’s true that major crime stats have decreased, that doesn’t cover disorder, and the general perception that everything is unsafe. When you have homeless people yell at you and your kids, see widespread graffiti and street camping, see everything locked up at CVS, that erodes any sense of safety. This isn’t a messaging issue. Democrats need to stop talking and start doing things to address disorder if they want to change this perception on safety.

I am optimistic that there was so much split-ticket voting in this past election. Montana and Missouri voters overwhelmingly supported the pro-choice measures. You saw candidates like Josh Stein and Ruben Gallego win in red states. I think voters are reasonable and not as polarized as they are made out to be. That gives me hope for the future. I love my city, and I’m optimistic on our recovery.

Also, I really enjoy the Dish’s weekly format. I’ve stopped using social media, and limit my time reading political news. I’ve asked friends and family to stop texting me the minute-by-minute drama of the Trump transition. I am concerned about the next four years, but I’m not going to take the bait of his daily trolling. It’s been better for my mental health already. I urge people to get off their screens, get out of their rooms, and go connect with other human beings in the real world.

One suggestion I have for a future Dishcast is a follow-up interview with Nicholas Christakis. One of the things that really stuck with me in your previous discussion was how he didn’t think we’d get back to “normal” after COVID until about 2024.   This felt so far away at the time, and yet I feel like this year really felt like we were getting back to pre-pandemic life again. I’m curious about his thoughts about how the past four years played out and any insights on the next four years as compared to history.

A reader returns to the ongoing trans debate:

Thank you so much for continuing to hammer the Democratic Party on the trans “rights” issue in last week’s column. I’m a very liberal lifelong Democrat appalled and enraged by my party’s wholesale embrace of this deeply anti-liberal, regressive, and, yes, totalitarian ideology. The latest example this week comes from a statement by Montana State Rep Zooey Zephyr, a trans-identified male: “Transgender women are every bit as ‘biologically female’ as cis women.” Orwell much? (Hey Zooey, if you’re a biological female, then why the hell are you a “trans” woman? Why do you need the “trans” at all?)

As you say, Zephyr and fellow extremists don’t ever answer the simple and obvious objections to their truly deranged demands — like a “right” of males to access female-only spaces and sports — because they can’t. Look at Whoopi Goldberg on The View this week: It’s only a vanishingly small number of trans girls/women in women’s sports!

First, that’s not true, but much more importantly: What difference does it make?

If it’s only 10 trans girls in female sport, that is 10 girls stripped of their right to fair competition in sport — why is that okay?? I thought liberals were the folks who say an “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”? If a tiny cafe in a tiny town in upstate NY put up a sign in their window “No Gays Or Lesbians Allowed,” would we say, “Well it’s ok, it only affects a tiny handful of people, so it’s totally fine!” These are not coherent arguments.

But there are Democrats like me at the grassroots level furiously organizing to take our party back from these Lysenkoist reality-deniers. Please, Andrew and Chris, I implore you, give us a name check in this week’s edition: Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender (www.di-ag.org). We are an all-volunteer band of liberal Democrats, including a number of parents whose children have been caught up in this medical scandal, fighting back against the radical trans activists who have hijacked the party and viciously bullied everyone into silence. We’re focused on pediatric gender “medicine”, but we’re also doing everything we can on all other fronts — such as supporting Seth Moulton and fighting for open discussion in our party on all trans demands.

We are new (founded early this year); we all work full-time jobs; and we all know this will be a difficult, drawn-out fight. But we are mad as hell, and every time Zephyr and company make another unhinged public statement, it’s like throwing a big can of gasoline on an already raging fire.

I do think that the insistence that we ignore the evidence of our eyes and ears is one reason the trans movement is going backwards in terms of public support. You don’t have to be that absolutist to defend the rights and dignity of trans people.

Another reader:

You highlighted Seth Moulton’s thoroughly sane and decent position on supporting trans rights while opposing trans girls competing against girls, and you noted that he hadn’t been cowed by the backlash he’s received from the left. One reason he may not have been cowed is that he’s a Marine who served four combat tours in Iraq, so I’m guessing he’s not scared of much. I’ve respected him for a long time for his service and for his apparent moderation, so his recent stance has increased my respect for him.

Moulton might make a good Dishcast guest. Another one I’d love to hear in conversation with you is Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Personally, I wish that she and Moulton were in charge of the Democratic Party.

Another quotes me:

Last week, you wrote regarding radical trans activists: “Until someone in the Democratic leadership finally has the balls to say no to the groups. Whoever does has a bright political future.” I was puzzled by this comment because earlier in the column you quoted Seth Moulton, and I’m not sure what he’s been going through can be called a “bright political future.” For example, today I read in the NYT what is pretty much a parody of Democratic intra-party politics nowadays:

“You have a choice as a party,” Gilberto Hinojosa, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, commented in an interview on Nov. 6 with a Texas public radio station — after turnout for the former president helped Texas Republicans win big. “You can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.” Hinojosa then added, “If you are going to ignore the political consequences of these kinds of things, then you’re asking to lose these elections in the manner that we did.”

By the end of the day, Hinojosa reversed himself, posting on X: “I extend my sincerest apologies to those I hurt with my comments today. I recognize the pain and frustration my words have caused. In frustration over the G.O.P.’s lies to incite hate for trans communities, I failed to communicate my thoughts with care and clarity.” Two days later, Hinojosa announced his retirement, ending 12 years’ service as chairman.

If there is a Democratic politician who has stood up to radical trans activism and hasn’t been defenestrated as a result, I am not aware of that person.

Moulton may be out on a limb as a Democrat, but he is in a much better position to be re-elected, if he isn’t primaries. Another reader flags another example of woke backlash:

I was reading your most recent column about how embracing campus madness has driven the Democratic Party into the wilderness. While I couldn’t agree more, I think that it will take a lot more than one election to undo the structural weirdness that has taken hold in public schools and other educational institutions.

I don’t know if you’ve heard what happened in Bow, NH recently, but what started as a trans school policy issue has morphed into a serious violation of the First Amendment. In brief, two parents of a girl at Bow High School were upset that their daughter had to play against a natal male from the Plymouth High School team. They wore pink wristbands with the letters “XX” on them to the game to silently protest.

That’s when things went mad: the school administrators dragooned a police officer into demanding that the parents remove the wristbands or leave. The parents refused to comply, citing their First Amendment rights. Then the referee of the game declared that if the parents didn’t remove the wristbands, their daughter’s team would have to forfeit the game, at which point they complied. They were rewarded with a “no trespass” order barring them from school property, effectively preventing them from picking their kids up at school or attending events.

Now this isn’t Selma, but it is an outrageous violation of those parents’ rights, in the service of … what? If this were about any other issue, it would be obvious how insane the situation is. Can you believe a referee — full of self-righteous certainty and with an ego the size of Jupiter — would put the parents in that position? Can you believe that the school administrators and police officer would try to stifle free speech in a way that almost exactly parallels the defining “what type of protest is permitted in public schools” Supreme Court precedent? I guess ideology really can make you dumb and blind.

Removing the ideological tentacles that this round of identity politics has lodged in education schools and various education bureaucracies is going to be very difficult, and I hope that people don’t sit back and assume the situation is fixed because there’s a different person in the Oval Office.

Here’s a news segment about the trans girl involved in the Bow dispute — as well as the state’s law against trans girls on girls’ teams that is getting challenged in court:

A dissenting reader talks about “our experience in Houston, TX”:

Our youngest child (now a 23-year-old college senior) is transgender — female to male. He came out to us at 13 following inpatient psychiatric hospitalization for suicidal depression. He lacked the language then to describe it as gender dysphoria.

We have a world-class medical center minutes from our home. Consequently the standard of care is insanely high in most medical specialties — a great benefit to consumers. The experience we had with treatment was nothing like the coercive bum rush to life-altering interventions that you have repeatedly insisted is ubiquitous. My wife and I are career mental health professionals who take ethical consent and respect for patient rights very seriously. We would not have tolerated pressure or coercion.

There are many out gay and lesbian colleagues in our field. My stepsister is lesbian, happily married to a woman with two beautiful boys. By contrast, we were at square one on trans issues, completely blindsided with no knowledge. We were referred to a psychologist who gave us solid advice, saying there is a wide array of possible ultimate outcomes — ranging from complete unwavering transition culminating in surgery on one end, to a change of heart and detransition on the other. No way to know at age 13 where it would end up. The psychologist suggested taking things slowly, assessing how insistent, persistent, and consistent our child remained as he developed.

We were fortunate again to consult a world-renowned, double-credentialed (child psychiatry and endocrinology) doctor in Galveston, an hour away. He walked us through hormone treatment (testosterone shots) in terms of benefits, risks, and long-term outcomes. He too urged us to take our time.

We took almost a year doing research ourselves and getting comfortable. We ultimately decided to go ahead with T-shots. They stopped his menstruation — a major trigger for his gender dysphoria — and they brought about a big improvement in mood. He is also prone to depression and anxiety, and we were again fortunate to find a terrific outpatient therapist. Our son still checks in with her occasionally.

We agree with you that other mental health issues should be treated separately to ensure they don’t confound or confuse the gender issue. But our son remained insistent, persistent, and consistent throughout, graduating high school and beginning college. Before enrolling, he went ahead with top surgery, waiting until he turned 18 at our insistence. Following that we saw a further boost in confidence and self-esteem.

Our son is now thriving, entering his senior year as a chemistry major with two successful internships on his resume and good post-graduation employment prospects. He has enjoyed a relationship with a young man for the past year whom we like very much.

With that as background, I was enraged at the deeply dishonest and, yes, transphobic ads during the campaign. Here in Texas, those ads were a centerpiece of the Cruz campaign for Senate. Not a word about our failing electric grid (hundreds died in a recent freeze) or poor COVID response (just under 100,000 deaths statewide) — both on Cruz’s watch. (You might remember video of Cruz fleeing Houston for Cancun during the freeze.)

Your column in praise of Trump’s anti-trans ads (“anyone with eyes and ears can see”) wasn’t much better. Both fail to mention crucial facts noted recently by FactCheck.org. Trans treatment for prisoners began while Trump was in office, dictated by federal law. Prisoner trans surgeries only occurred following litigation and were court ordered. No transgender surgeries on immigrant detainees have occurred, though hormone treatment has.

Your column concluded that trans athletes have “ended women’s sports.” To call that hyperbolic would be a wild understatement. Are you suggesting that the women’s Olympic competition in Paris and WNBA playoffs (which set records for viewership) were made bogus by this issue? If so, please name the trans athletes that spoiled them.

You ridicule Harris and a CNN panelist for noting that the ads blow a very small issue massively out of proportion. Both had a valid point. The trans phenomenon is real but also very rare (estimated incidence 0.5 to 1%). The percentage of that very small minority that are competitive athletes is minuscule. Yet the ads imply a far bigger problem through innuendo. Credulous imaginations do the rest.

I heard you loud and clear about the role these ads played in the election. I don’t doubt your numbers — that enough people bought it to make a difference in a close election. Republican disinformation and the worldwide losses by post-COVID incumbents (left and right) were big factors.

Your best point was the Democrats’ failure to counter that disinformation. Kamala pushed back in her Fox News interview with some of the FactCheck points. It turned out to be a leaf in a gale. Trump/MAGA have mastered fitting demagoguery in a bumper sticker or a 30-second ad. Countering honestly requires nuance and context — much harder in soundbite form. You are dead right that failure means more losses.

A few things. First, thank you for writing. Second, the process you describe — watchful waiting with counseling — was once the norm. With some educated parents, it’s still the case. But it is equally true that a teen can show up at Planned Parenthood and be given puberty blockers and testosterone within a matter of hours. It is true that access to hormones at any age is what many trans activists believe in. So there’s a range.

But the range has narrowed. The new bans on so-called conversion therapy for children with gender dysphoria are actually bans on exactly this kind of slow, careful, compassionate care, which takes into account the entire universe of mental health issues a child may have in order to truly determine whether the kid is trans or not. And your son did not have his development arrested by the off-label use of puberty blockers, which is one of my main concerns.

But I wonder: can you not see why it’s unfair for boys to compete against girls? There is no limiting principle to self-ID as trans and the end of women’s sports — which is why major sports leagues are changing their policies back. Why can we not embrace full rights for trans people but allow a few exceptions like sports and child sex reassignment for fairness and consent issues? Not so hard. Why is any compromise intolerable?

Next up, a “quick take from a psychiatrist on trans activists and Democrats”:

The behavior and the tactics of trans activists, and even activists on campus quadrangles or social media, remind me of children and teens in my practice who essentially — by throwing tantrums and lashing out at family members and even threatening suicide — hold the family hostage. The parents — who often neglected to provide strong attachment, clear containment, and high expectations from the beginning — often shrink back and cave in to their demands.

In my field, some believe that much of the behavior of these Millennial and Gen Z agitators — the black-and-white thinking, the hair-trigger responses, and the explosive rage — are characteristics of individuals grouped in the Cluster B category of personality disorders, especially those with narcissistic-borderline traits such as inability to accept ownership and blame for misconduct, inability to modulate emotions or inhibit impulsivity, a sense of entitlement, and being at the center of the universe. These individuals often force others to bend and accept their version of reality and are often known to sow discord and stir up disruption.

We always knew when a borderline patient was in the unit because the level of distress and disarray escalated, as other patients began to feel more on edge, more argumentative, more regressed. For the sake of the community, it was necessary to set strict limits and boundaries, in a sense, to be the adults in the room. The trouble with the Democratic Party is that no one is willing to step up and be an adult in the room.

Speaking of anti-social behavior, here’s one more reader:

The calls for people to cut ties with family members who voted for Trump is not only mass psychosis; it’s counterproductive.

I am a white woman, 48 years old, who became interested in race issues in 1997 while volunteering at a homeless shelter. I have worked at building relationships, and I live, work and worship in primarily Black neighborhoods. And it felt very foreign to my parents at the time.

Did I cut them off? No.

We kept talking. I explained why I chose to live where I do, do the work I do, teach in the schools I taught in. And — this is key — it’s not what we talked about all the time. These were conversations that took place in between talking about the Houston Astros, whose church we’d go to for Christmas Eve, books we were reading, movies we liked, how we wished my sister would discipline her kids — in other words, normal family things.

And then one day, in the middle of an Astros game, my dad said casually, “You know, I think if you’re born white in America, you’ve got a leg up.” Yes!

I don’t know what it was about the seventh-inning stretch that initiated that observation, but I have to believe it was that we were AT the game together — as we had been for 10+ years, at Friday night home games. He knew I didn’t think he was an irredeemable racist. He’s my dad. He has been my biggest cheerleader my entire life. When his time comes, I hope I’m holding his hand and that I’m the last face he sees before he sees the face of Jesus.

Also, my 74-year-old mom said recently, “I’m not a liberal, but you’ve helped move me away from being on the far right.” How? By engaging in loving conversations over decades and not making it the crux of our relationship and not issuing ultimatums. We created space to talk.

Cutting off your family makes you feel virtuous. It also makes it more likely your family will double down, because now YOU are the intolerant, irrational one. All these calls over the years to “call out your racist uncle at Thanksgiving,” when Thanksgiving is probably the only time you see him, doesn’t make you a hero; it makes you the asshole who ruined Thanksgiving — and that’s all anyone is going to talk about for ten years.

Keep the faith, Andrew. The normie Democrats and liberals aren’t all like the loud fingers on social media. Cheers, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and all Dishheads and their families. We’re off next week for the holiday but back the Friday after. See you then.

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