Divided Tables: Morality and Politics at Thanksgiving

It seems that every 2 years, celebrities and news analysts tell us that we shouldn’t gather with our families for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Whether they are terrorizing us about pathogens or proclaiming the celebration itself as racist, there’s always a reason. This year, Whoopi Goldberg has warned not to gather with those who voted for Trump, an opinion that she claimed to be for the good of children:

“If someone tells me that my child is wrong because of how he or she feels, that tells me that they shouldn't be allowed to be who they are with my permission… I have to question it. I don't want to put my kid in that position.”

Of course, this isn’t about children questioning who they are as much as what they are. The trans issue to which she refers is about whether you can change what you are based on your feelings, and whether you should mutilate yourself to look like that which you claim to be (despite the evidence, which you are trying to surgically remove). In part, it’s even whether or not we should be ruled by our emotions and our most primal desires, as if having the desire to do something is a mandate to do it.

It’s flabbergasting that she could claim moral high ground here when her candidate’s principal issue was about the “right” to prevent children from being born at all. One would think that such people wouldn’t speak much about children, or their rights, since every right is contingent upon one being alive to exercise it.

The trouble is that our cultural strife is so great as to result in us desiring vastly different societies. In earlier America, there was at least an agreed-upon goal of American greatness—we just disagreed about how to get there. After all, the American Dream involved marriage, raising children, and if not affluence, at least enough wealth mobility that you could leave an inheritance for your children. The culture itself was unabashedly Christocentric. Now, when some people want to promote mutilations and mass child death, it’s harder to have cross-aisle discussions.

One wonders how someone who holds such political views can coexist with the concept of family, particularly given how she fails to understand what man is, and wants to subject everything to a simplistic relativism. When we think of family gatherings like those that occur on Thanksgiving, we visualize what has to be the foundation of any healthy society. It is that group gathered around a hearth that our institutions were set up to protect. They are the reason that most people care about politics at all.

It’s different for those who see familial loyalty and love as something secondary to government obedience, which is what we saw during the COVID years, when such people refused to gather out of fear of breaking a governor’s mandate. So, we’re no longer the same on these fundamental values. For example, I would struggle to eat a friendly meal next to someone who is opposed to the Born Alive Protection Act (guaranteeing healthcare for those infants who survive their own abortions). For people like Whoopi, the risk of hearing family members speak the truth about human sexuality and human nature is too great to bear.

Of course, recent revelations show that Kamala Harris paid Whoopi for her public endorsement, as was the case for a long list of celebrities who already leaned left politically but weren’t willing to support Kamala without a payout. Regardless, Whoopi’s stance regarding Trump supporters echoes what is becoming a dominant narrative throughout the country.

It’s one thing to assert that the country is politically divided, like we could utter if one group wanted an expanded welfare state while the other side wanted to shift the burdens onto private charity. It’s an entirely different problem if the country is morally divided, which is where we stand. A moral divide indicates a spiritual crisis at its core, and it’s a battle that is far from over. That divide is widening and the spiritual crisis remains largely unaddressed.