Holiday cheer or political fear? Cancel culture hits the dinner table



One of my big takeaways from the 2024 presidential election is that allowing politics to consume your life — and relationships — is deeply unhealthy. The most rabid progressives in politics have been advising Kamala Harris supporters to cut off loved ones who voted for Donald Trump at the time of year when families should be coming together, not splitting apart.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid put out a video the week before Thanksgiving explaining why some people might not feel “safe” around their MAGA relatives. She also had a Yale psychiatrist on her show who said LGBTQ+ people should feel free to avoid conservative family members.

The worst thing anyone can do this holiday season is cut off family or friends over politics. We need stronger connections.

“So if you are going through a situation where you have family members or you have close friends who you know have voted in ways that are against you, that are against your livelihood, then it’s completely fine to not be around those people and to tell them why,” Reid said.

After the 2020 election, I don’t recall any conservative articles encouraging Republicans to cut ties with liberal family members after Joe Biden won the White House. Yet, political divorce stories have become a genre of their own in progressive post-election commentary.

One Huffington Post contributor announced she was canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas because her husband and his family voted for Trump. Similar stories of people distancing themselves from relatives over politics have appeared in USA Today and Newsweek. This trend is troubling, but it aligns perfectly with the modern left’s approach to personal relationships.

The recent election revealed the anti-family ideology increasingly prevalent in progressive politics. For instance, the “Your Vote, Your Choice” political ad narrated by Julia Roberts in late October targeted married white women. The ad seemed designed to make wives feel a stronger allegiance to the “sisterhood” than to their husbands.

It’s bad enough that Democrats openly try to sow discord within families and divide husbands and wives. What makes their tactics even more egregious is the party’s unwillingness to define the word “woman” publicly. Democrats avoid doing so out of fear of offending a small group of men who believe they were born in the wrong body.

Anti-family and anti-human rhetoric isn’t just another Democratic Party talking point; it reflects a larger societal problem.

Nearly 30% of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated “nones” when asked about their personal faith. However, this doesn’t mean they lack deeply held beliefs. Every religion offers its followers a moral framework for distinguishing good from evil, a sense of community, and a set of deeply held convictions.

Although America has become less religious in recent decades, people remain passionate about their beliefs. In fact, those willing to sever ties with family members and destroy lifelong friendships over politics often display more zeal than the candidates running for office.

Consider this contrast: Joe Biden recently met with Donald Trump to congratulate him and discuss the transition process. The two men shook hands in front of a blazing fireplace as photographers captured the moment. Yet, some people won’t even share a meal with their parents because they voted for Trump.

Cutting off family over politics is shortsighted and extreme, especially when candidates often trade insults and baseless accusations they likely don’t even believe themselves.

Americans should spend more time with loved ones and less time online, where partisan politics dominate. Technology may give the illusion of greater connection, but in reality, American society is becoming increasingly fragmented.

People are delaying marriage and parenthood until later in life — or skipping them altogether. Families sit together at the dinner table or in restaurants, staring at screens like zombies. The politicization of companies, sports, and entertainment has turned the products we buy and the teams we root for into battlegrounds in the culture wars.

Meanwhile, our most important institutions have weakened, while partisan politics has grown unchecked, like an athlete on a human growth hormone. This imbalance is not a sign of a healthy society.

The worst thing anyone can do this holiday season is cut off family or friends over politics. We need stronger connections with those who care about our well-being. Political parties see us as voters, but our family and friends see us as real people and love us despite our flaws. No one should put politics over personal relationships.

This holiday season, my hope is that families will gather to eat, drink, and celebrate together, regardless of their political preferences. Karl Marx famously said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” but the progressives urging people to cut ties with family members who voted for Donald Trump are a reminder that politics has become a religion for far too many Democrats today.

Chris Cuomo says he called Trump after assassination attempt because he's 'ashamed' of media's 'unacceptable' lack of concern



NewsNation host Chris Cuomo said in a lengthy monologue on his show Monday that he called former President Donald Trump after the latest assassination attempt because he's "ashamed" of the media's "unacceptable" lack of concern about the "threats" on Trump's life.

Cuomo — who's certainly no fan of Trump — told his audience he's bothered by "the lack of reaction to the second attempt on Trump in the last couple of months. 'Oh, but the [suspect] didn't even shoot.' What if it was your father? Or what if it was Kamala Harris? Or President Biden, God forbid? You think that it would be almost a shoulder shrug and more talk about the Secret Service and allocation of funds than just how crazy it is that this is what's happening in our country? That reaction of, 'Well, c'mon, don't make too much of it.' He had an AK-47 pointed at him! The reaction is unacceptable. And it's the second time media and political players have gotten away with playing down what should be a cause for panic."

'And I gotta tell you, I don't know how he stays in the race. ... I don't know how he got up after being shot in the head. And you people who try to mitigate that, you need to check yourself. He gets up, pumping his fist, stays in the race, barely even talks about it.'

Cuomo also took aim at Biden and Harris, saying it's "troubling ... to hear fake concern by our sitting president and almost nothing from the Democrat who wants to lead us about what happened with Trump."

The host also spoke about the steadily growing sociopolitical divide in the United States and noted how journalists stoke that fire: "Division gets you paid, division gets you clicks, division gets you a following, division — especially in digital media — is absolutely the way to get known." Cuomo added that people like Trump's would-be assassins are "picking up on all the hostility."

He then said that despite being a Trump critic, "I called him today because I am ashamed of how we are responding and not responding to the threats on him, and I feel for his family, and I know you can roll your eyes and say, 'Oh yeah he asked for it' — listen, that’s your choice, and I think it’s a wrong choice, OK? We gotta get out of the judgment business unless it is judging ourselves, and you gotta start rewarding things that are better."

"And I gotta tell you, I don't know how he stays in the race," Cuomo added. "I don't know how he got up after being shot in the head. And you people who try to mitigate that, you need to check yourself. He gets up, pumping his fist, stays in the race, barely even talks about it."

More from Cuomo's monologue:

That's why I reached out to Trump. I wanted to just say, 'Listen, I'm really sorry that this is going on, and it's being dealt with this way.' Not because I'm in favor of his politics or what he says; I criticize him all the time, that's my job, and he deserves it. But he doesn't deserve this. A guy pointing an AK-47 at him while he's playing golf? And we take solace in the fact that the guy didn't get any rounds off? That does not work for me. If I had been through what that [Trump]'s been through in the last two months, you would not know where I am. You would never see me on TV again. No way I would do that. I don't know how he does it. He's got kids — they're adults — but he's got grandkids, he's got a wife. And people giving ... crap to [former first lady] Melania Trump, worrying about whether or not there was a plot around [her] husband. How could she not? I don't think she's right, but I totally get why she feels that way — and people mock her? And then her husband has a guy pointing ... an AK-47? Where are those people apologizing? That's what it's time for: 'I should not have come at you, Melania Trump, for suggesting that maybe there was something more afoot. I get your paranoia. I get your feelings. You have a right to that.' There's nothing wrong with saying that, with being a basic, decent human being. It has gotten too out of control, too far from where we need to be, and how we need to be. And I don't know what to do about it. I don't know.

You can view Cuomo's monologue here.

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Horowitz: New Hampshire Republican Gov. Sununu threatens to veto bill barring divisive anti-white curriculum in schools



The reason the left has been so successful in transforming the country even when Republicans are in charge is because Republicans have ceded the education system to the most extreme social engineers in the country. The latest fad is the teaching of "critical race theory," which essentially abuses young children with white guilt rather than de-emphasizing race altogether. Trump uprooted it from the federal curriculum last year, but now the Biden administration has brought it back in full force.

Now that New Hampshire Republicans won the trifecta of government in the Granite State last November, they can easily get rid of this divisive education curriculum, right? Not if Gov. Chris Sununu (R) has a say in the matter.

The New Hampshire House is planning to vote on HB 544, a bill that would prohibit New Hampshire public schools or government agencies from teaching divisive curricula, such as critical race theory. The bill enumerates the following list of offensive principles that have been percolating throughout the education system, the media, and the government:

(a) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
(b) The state of New Hampshire or the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist;
(c) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;
(d) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex;
(e) Members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex;
(f) An individual's moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex;
(g) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
(h) Any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or
(i) Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.

The Iowa House of Representatives recently passed a similar bill barring all schools and government officials from teaching diversity training. Iowa House File 802 specifically bars any curriculum teaching "that the United States of America and the state of Iowa are fundamentally or systemically racist or sexist, that an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past and that an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously."

Although our country is deeply divided, can't we all agree that such racist views should have no place in publicly funded and state-sanctioned schools? Evidently not. The left feasts off playing one group against another, which is why its curriculum places identity above all else.

Yet, in a shocking announcement, Gov. Sununu indicated that he would veto this bill. "Look, that bill, as I've read it to date, really limits free speech," said the governor on March 9 to a NHPR show host. "We may not like what is said in a public setting or a school or whatever it is, but that's the beauty of local control ... you don't control that by having a big government law that says you can't say certain things. If that's not changed, I'd very likely veto it" (audio at 47-minute mark).

So, like every RINO, Sununu discovers his conservatism and affinity for the Constitution in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a man who has locked down his state and is criminalizing the breathing of human beings without masks. He has shredded life, liberty, and property of private citizens and has even criticized the legislature for encouraging "law breaking" by zeroing out his COVID business fines, referring to his edicts as the law and the lawmakers as some pariahs who have no say in legislation. Yet this same man somehow thinks that education institutions run by the state can only silence pro-American voices, but not anti-American curriculum, and that it is somehow protected by the First Amendment?

Also, you gotta love his affinity for localism. Suddenly, he thinks that little towns should be able to control the state's education process when he knows darn well that New Hampshire is not a home rule state. In other words, localities have less autonomy than in almost any state on nearly every policy issue because the state's constitution grants no power to towns and cities.

Remember, Sununu is being touted as the great hope of the GOP to win back the Senate for Republicans because he is weighing a challenge to Sen. Maggie Hassan for the Senate seat in 2022. But this is why we have so many liberal Republicans in the Senate. We rely on candidates who are out of touch with the most basic values of their own party in their respective states.

The antithesis of someone like Sununu is Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) of Florida. Even without the legislature passing any bill, he announced yesterday that he is banning critical race theory from the schools. "There's no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory," said the Florida governor at a press conference on Wednesday. "Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money."

Indeed, as we are locked in mortal combat for the culture of our civilization, the difference between a DeSantis Republican and a Sununu Republican is greater than the difference between a standard Republican and a Democrat.