Finally – It’s Family Feud Time

Over Thanksgiving dinner, American families will argue about Donald Trump, the Islamic State, and refugees. Like Facebook, facts will be replaced by emotions: The loudest voice wins. This culture of controversy will eventually take over the Germans, too.

When American families get together at the end of November to celebrate Thanksgiving, it’s all about the food. The turkey will be carved and talk will be about the lengthy journeys endured getting there and what’s happened in everyone’s lives since they last saw each other. And because relatives often only get together once a year, they’ll discuss other important subjects as well.

Numerous Hollywood films and television programs have shown how boisterous these discussions can become because Thanksgiving in the U.S. even surpasses Christmas in Germany as the main family holiday. And when the “drunk uncle” character shows up on “Saturday Night Live,” inebriated, bigoted and obnoxious, many Americans are probably reminded of a real person they know.

Because even when there’s a football game to distract them, they all eventually change the subject to politics and whatever else is on the evening news. While the meal progresses and the drinking starts, the kids home on break from college get into arguments with their conservative grandparents who only watch Fox News. And then it really starts.

Where Obama’s religion and his health care law were hot topics in years past, Americans in 2015 will argue about Donald Trump, the Islamic State jihadis, refugees, “Black Lives Matter” and police brutality. Websites like Vox or TheUpshot run fact-laden survey articles like “How to Survive Thanksgiving Dinner Table-Talk with Your Family.”

But at the dinner table — or later in the living room — whatever facts you may have are usually of little help because in these discussions, personal beliefs, a loud voice and unbridled emotions are far more important.

Everybody Has to Have an Opinion

There is a good deal of evidence that Christmas 2015 will look much the same in German living rooms. Uncertainty runs high in the wake of the Paris attacks that killed 130 people and resulted in a proliferation of rumors and opinions on the Internet. These days, everybody has to have an opinion. Saying “I’m not sure, it’s a complicated issue” is no longer an option. What began with the Greek debt crisis is now ubiquitous: Everyone has to choose sides. Merkel’s refugee policy is either the only right one because of its humanitarian nature or is Germany’s first step toward economic ruin.

Via Facebook, where the battle for opinion leadership in commentary columns is fought in real time, a colleague writes, “It angers me a great deal that my parents are so inhuman as to think that young people arriving here aren’t really war refugees because they have thrown away their identification documents, or some such. My siblings and I believe quite the opposite. It’s quite oppressive. And so close to the Christmas season it horrifies me that they claim to uphold Christian values but have zero compassion for people and feel no responsibility for them.”

Other friends already know they will stay silent when their relatives ask what they think about “the foreigners” and answer that they prefer not to discuss the subject because they are unlikely to change any minds; those who share the same opinions have already isolated themselves in like-minded cliques.

Germany is Becoming Americanized

I hear similar statements from nearly everybody in the circle of friends or family I ask. I previously only heard such things in America, where I spent the last four years traveling the country as a journalist. There, the dominance of opinion is oppressive and it takes some time for foreigners to understand that politics for many Americans has become a battle of faith. Each side exclusively consumes its own media information and mistrusts anything from other sources. (Many Republicans even believe the data provided by their own government are counterfeit.)

In Germany, Merkel has “social-democratized” her party, the Christian Democrats, and no one opposes “universal health insurance” so similar sentiments aren’t evident here. I was disappointed when essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan told me in 2013 that he NEVER talks about politics when he travels because he finds it just too overwhelmingly depressing. He told me that on a return flight from Norway, he was seated next to a Texan woman who suddenly said, “I don’t really want to know, but may I ask where you stand politically?” He said that immediately upset his stomach. Then she continued by telling him how Obama, the socialist president, frightened her by declaring war on businessmen and that she lived on a ranch. Because her husband had to travel a lot, she had a gun of course. “I won’t lie to you,” she told him. “If somebody tries to break in, I’ll shoot him in the face.” That was just how she put it: “Shoot him in the face.”

More and More Germans Are Angry, Insecure and Suspicious of Journalists

Of course, the subject of firearms in America is unique — and in Nuremberg, Germany, the number of applications for gun licenses has also meanwhile doubled — but the public mood in Germany is so strained that I can understand if people choose to silently avoid the issue. I’ve discovered there is increasingly more America in Western Europe. Shortly before the 2012 elections, Mitt Romney fans chanted “Shame on you, do your job” in front of a press tent in Ohio. And in Germany, trust in the media is waning. “Lying press” is a term all journalists have heard in their private lives.

After the wedding guests sharing her table at the reception discovered our colleague was a journalist, one of them was heard to say, “Aha! Then we know what we won’t be discussing tonight.” Another journalist we know reports that the chimney sweep having coffee with his apprentice said, “Things will get uncomfortable and start heading toward a civil war – you against us, you being the refugees, half of whom belong to the Islamic State.” When asked where he got that information from he replied, “You can read that everywhere; just not in your Sueddeutsche Zeitung.”

Such accusations sound strangely familiar to me, reminiscent of discussions I have had with members of the tea party movement in the United States. The American economy will collapse when Obamacare is completely implemented. Whoever watches Fox News regularly for a few hours — or listens to talk radio — can relate to that panic: No subject is played out more and in so many different variations than the inevitable demise of the United States.

That there is no proof the German government plans to take in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees serves only to show how sneaky the government really is. Of course they don’t want to reveal their secret plans.

Longing for the Good Old Days

Behind these paranoid suspicions — if something is unprovable, that only makes it more dangerous and threatening — lurks a huge uncertainty. American society is rapidly changing. Spanish is already the nation’s de facto second official language and white Caucasians will become a minority in 2042. Studies show that older, middle-aged white males make up the angriest sub-group, because their homeland is no longer the same as it was when they were young.

German society is presently discovering that change can be frightening and is learning that lesson in fast-forward mode. The country cannot profit as the world’s number one exporter and at the same time ignore global problems partly caused by German politicians through their inaction and partly caused by the German public through its lack of interest.

Personal convictions, whether for or against Merkel’s refugee policies, influence each individual’s way of evaluating information. Facebook and the filter bubble result in users primarily seeing the information that reinforces their own opinions first. But unlike the majority of Americans, many Germans must first consider what they will say. Do you fight to defend personal convictions? Should you be totally frank if you find the words of your relatives, friends or colleagues to actually be racist? Or do you hold your tongue? Another acquaintance recounts a discussion with his parents:

“It bothers them that money is given to foreigners at all. Another subject was the absolute impossibility of integrating ‘all men.’ The main reason is the terrible image Arabs have of women. Above all, they see the wearing of head scarves as an affront to native culture. Over and over, head scarves and women’s rights. The many Vietnamese women who live in the Middle East have integrated rather well, the children are hard-working and the women work like the men. This conversation was very difficult for me — I scarcely recognized my parents, they seemed like completely different people — more like concerned citizens with whom I wanted no contact whatsoever. My brother and I argued with them for as long as we could, but we finally gave up without accomplishing anything. Still, I love my parents in spite of that.”

Those horrified by the prospect of holiday table talk are probably in the minority. Trying to avoid such conversations, even if they’re certain to be unpleasant, is definitely the wrong strategy. These are extraordinary political times and it’s important to know how German society will react to them, and how we want the European Union to look in the future. Such things can be discussed, should be discussed, and must be discussed.

If we succeed in listening respectfully and make an attempt to at least partly understand the feelings and concerns of others it doesn’t have to end in a family fight. The English formula — agreeing to disagree — offers a good solution.

The American tradition of squaring off against the drunken uncle and other relatives can also be interpreted this way: Next year all of us will sit down together at the dinner table once again because we are family. Columnist E.J. Dionne puts it this way: “When I was a kid, the raucous Thanksgiving arguments our extended family treasured taught me that disagreement and love aren’t antithetical.”