Every year for Thanksgiving, we're bombarded with think pieces and other clickbait about fighting with your family members over politics at Thanksgiving. The Obama Campaign started it by sending your obnoxious leftist cousin home with talking points about Obamacare. It snowballed from there. The worst was this "etiquette" "expert" from a few years ago.

“I do think it's healthy for people to express themselves and to have those conversations," said Swann, who will host her family's Thanksgiving. “My advice is to take a route to allow some sort of platform, but with guidelines."One tactic: sequester the debates. She'll have a room away from the dining table stocked with snacks for people who want to talk politics. She also suggests designating a calm family member as a combination moderator-peacekeeper.

There are many articles on the Internet about "How to Survive Talking Politics at Thanksgiving Dinner." Because "just don't talk about it" isn't long enough for SEO. So, while you enter what could be trench warfare on Thursday, just remember it could be a lot worse. Like this classic Cheers episode of the Thanksgiving food fight.

That's the benchmark for surviving Thanksgiving. If you don't wind up with a face full of mashed potatoes, it was a rather successful dinner.

It's not always possible to have a politics-free family gathering. Further complicating things is what I call the Soy Theorem. Which theorizes that if it's something Americans generally enjoy--like a day celebrating food, football, and booze--there are leftists somewhere trying to ruin it for everyone. You may find yourself stuck with that leftist cousin no one likes, home from another semester at a liberal arts college. They may have thoughts about Dylan Mulvaney. Or be upset over the cool uncle with the F*ck Joe Biden bumper sticker. In a perfect world, the little twerp would be told to stifle it. Go sit in the corner with their free-range vegan tofurkey and keep their opinions to themselves. But life doesn't always work out that way. Suddenly, the family is taking sides.

Maybe it's a coastal elite thing. While out in real America, we have our nieces and nephews getting us beers while we watch football games that are rarely very good.

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Brodigan is Grand Poobah of this here website and when he isn't writing words about things enjoys day drinking, pro-wrestling, and country music. You can find him on the Twitter too.

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