Making Nice With the Young Progs at Your Table

Since the election we have been regaled with articles detailing the steps angry progressives intend to take against anyone not expressing performative outrage at the reelection of Donald Trump. Tik Tok is full of head shaving, sex strikes, and of course the old faithful, threats to hector relatives at holiday meals.

Sympathetic media outlets have offered their Harris-supporting readers tips for dealing with their MAGA cousins and uncles, mostly deriving from the tired false consciousness trope. Apparently only graduates of elite Ivy League schools can identify the true interests of small business owners and blue collar workers.  Some leftie stalwarts recommend a boycott of benighted families altogether, but their less-exalted acolytes are unlikely to pass on an opportunity for a thrilling bout of rage over the roast turkey.

Which leaves those of us who prefer to protect the bonds of familial affection from the corrosive influence of partisan politics in a bit of a bind as the holidays approach.  Our love for our families is not contingent on a series of political tests. We can still adore our nieces and nephews as they try out various astonishing ideologies, and hope that they may mature into sturdy tax-paying bourgeoisie. We can appreciate their intellectual experiments, and tolerate the emotional riptides that course through the arguments animating them.

Youthful passion can be a lovely thing even when applied to tawdry politics. Familial love can help prevent this passion from curdling into hate, the heroin of emotions: euphoric, destructive, and highly addictive. There is nothing more hypnotic for young zealots than righteous hatred. Your political opponents aren’t just wrong, they are in fact evil and every fiber of your moral being can be devoted to smiting them down.  Which explains the growing penchant for violence among the extreme left. If we are to save our family members from this dire addiction, we must engage with them even when they prefer spiky rhetoric to civil discourse.

Unfortunately, our major media outlets offer little advice to those likely to endure explosions of progressive rage over the holiday table. We are presumably meant to enjoy a dollop of leftist reeducation with our pumpkin pie.  Prior generations could employ the “Bless your heart” tactic, which was the presiding grandmother’s way of saying “please shut up now,” but the white-hot rage animating young progressives these days is unlikely to defer to traditional politesse. Quiet forbearance may only create further unpleasantness as the angry young progressive senses apostasy and seeks to expose the infidel. Once the witch hunt begins, it will be impossible to restore the good humor needed to turn to less fraught topics, such as whether Alabama deserves a spot in the college football playoffs.

The first step to restoring family comity and perhaps forestall an incipient addiction to partisan hatred is to understand the sources of progressive rage since the election. Much has been made of the quasi-religious aspects of contemporary progressivism: the original sin of Western capitalism, doomed to be punished by the angry secular deity of climate change.

A creed offering sin without grace can unleash the inner Cotton Mather in young students insulated from base material considerations like supporting a family amid high inflation. Yet this doesn’t exactly explain the explosion of rage after either the 2016 or 2024 presidential elections. After all, further evidence of America’s fallen state should be a source of calm satisfaction and smug superiority to adherents of a progressive religion. The key to understanding our young progressives is to grasp that what animates them is not ersatz religion, but something much more toxic: thwarted consumer vanity.

Young Americans are the most ferocious consumers the world has ever seen. Before they commit to any purchase, they can instantly compare prices and product reviews online, trawl the recommendations of favored influencers, and check Instagram for the preferences of their social superiors.

Value for money is less important than the status capital imparted by the clothes they wear, the music they prefer, the cars they drive. Thanks to the internet and smartphones, we have created Veblen’s nightmare: a generation of sovereign consumers who accept no constraint on their ambition to adorn themselves with the most socially flattering goods and preferences. For these self-regarding young consumers, political opinions are just another product category.

High status influencers, the ultimate cool kids table, are more important than boring policy analysis. Our young progs may never enjoy a dinner party with Taylor Swift or John Stewart, but social media offers them the chance to break bread virtually with their idols. Any attempt to test the merits of their political claims becomes alarming iconoclasm, and actual disagreement becomes a mortal threat to their carefully curated identity.  You could view the politics of many young progs not as a set of coherent policy prescriptions but rather as a personal marketing campaign designed to win a place in the virtual constellation of high status media figures or failing that, maybe a freelance gig at Slate.

Seen from this perspective, the deranged reactions to the election make more sense. Young progressives were outraged by the country’s refusal to endorse their consumer preferences and harbor a creeping fear that their personal marketing campaigns have gone awry. They bought the Kamala Harris brand because it flattered their social aspirations, in the same way that they embraced Obama as the cool black friend of every young liberal’s dreams.

All the best people working in journalism and entertainment assured our young progs that only the retrogrades doing manual labor out there in the provinces would vote Trump. The mandate of the great and good or at least the stinking rich in New York and LA would sweep Kamala to victory. When the country rejected Harris in both the electoral college and the popular vote, it threatened them with the worst rebuke possible in their rarefied consumer world: your favorite product is for losers.

How can we show affection for our angry young relatives determined to wreak havoc on our holiday gatherings? Consider this analogy: suppose your young nephew fresh out of college shows up at Thanksgiving driving a new BMX X6. You suspect he can’t afford the payments, much less the repair bills. You may agree with experts (me) that this car with its Nostrils of Doom is an ugly, overpriced dog. Yet you also know that he is very proud of the thing, that he is committed to the image of himself this purchase is meant to enhance.

So what do you do? You nod politely, and ask questions about horsepower and features.  You might even sit in it and make positive noises.  Your relationship with your nephew is much more important than his choice in automobiles.  In much the same way, your relationship with the young progs in the family is more important than any damn fool opinions they may have.

So be polite to your young prog, ask interested questions, nod appreciatively, and thank them for explaining things.  No ugly car and no opinion short of endorsing cannibalism is worth ruining your family. You are not going to save the world by engaging in heated debate over the oyster casserole, so don’t.  Show them your love, and rely on life itself to administer the necessary rebukes to their unfortunate consumer preferences.

READ MORE from Karl Pfefferkorn:

For the Democrats, It’s the Keffiyehs vs. the Tote Bags

Failure Is for Other People

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