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    Let’s Talk Turkey and Politics

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    Ah, Thanksgiving. That magical time when friends and family gather round the table to share the love, reminisce — and bicker endlessly about politics and the state of the nation. If your clan is anything like mine, the conversation bends toward the grim and angsty: President Biden’s advanced age, Donald Trump’s legal dramas, Ron DeSantis’s creepy robot smile, the price of Tom Turkey, the chaos in Congress, the government’s alien cover-up …. It can be a lot.But there is, in fact, so much to be grateful for, especially in the political realm. Don’t laugh! And please stick with me while I share several of my favorites. Because while you may need to squint to see the silver lining in the political clouds, it is important to do so. Nothing is quite as dangerous as good people despairing and disengaging from politics, ceding the field to the crooks and cranks. Our democracy is too important.Let me start with an entry that may surprise many of you. I am thankful that Kevin McCarthy, in his brief and inglorious tenure atop the House, cut a bipartisan deal to avoid a debt default. I have said many, many harsh things about the ex-speaker over the years — every one of which he earned with his hollow, slippery spinelessness. But the guy wrecked his dream job to prevent his right-wingers from wrecking the global economy. Gotta give him props.I’m thankful that elections this year earned Republicans another spanking for their efforts to curtail women’s reproductive rights. Pro tip for abortion opponents: If you want women to buy your devotion to “a culture of life,” try pushing policies aimed at supporting mothers and children after delivery rather than focusing so stringently on restrictive measures that make you seem punitive and controlling.I am thankful that Congress is getting some time off this week so that thin-skinned, overly emotional men like Mr. McCarthy and Senator Markwayne Mullin can pull it together and stop picking physical fights — or, if you believe Mr. McCarthy, accidentally thwacking a colleague in the back — in the halls of government. (Sorry, Kev. You just keep asking for it.)On a related note, I am thankful that, after challenging a Senate witness to a smackdown, Mr. Mullin helpfully elaborated: “I’ll bite 100 percent. In a fight, I’m going to bite. I’ll do anything. I’m not above it. And I don’t care where I bite, by the way.” Stay classy, my man!I’m thankful that the U.S. judicial system is not treating Donald Trump as though he is above the law.I’m thankful that it has been more than 1,050 days since Trumpists last stormed the Capitol.More earnestly, I am thankful that we have now gone three election cycles without major upheaval or violence. Kudos to all the people, from lawmakers and lawyers to election clerks and poll workers, who labor to safeguard the integrity of America’s electoral system.I am thankful we have a president who believes in democracy. It feels weird to have to say that, but here we are.I’m thankful that the fine people of New Jersey finally seem ready to kick Senator Bob Menendez to the curb. Two criminal indictments in eight years feels like enough.I’m thankful that even Jim Jordan’s Republican colleagues understood that he is too big of a jerk to be the speaker.I am thankful not to be George Santos’s lawyer.Or Hunter Biden’s.Or Rudy Giuliani’s.Or Eric Adams’s.I am thankful that Jenna Ellis is not my lawyer. Seriously. Who gave this woman a J.D.?I am thankful that inflation is easing, though I wish it would ease even faster. People are struggling. High prices — and the perception of them — influence how voters feel about the state of the nation, and an angry electorate yearning for better economic days plays into the hands of Mr. Trump’s aggrieved brand of politics and his woo-’em-with-nostalgia message.I am thankful for governors of all political persuasions. Most, though certainly not all, tend to be more solutions-oriented and open to cross-aisle compromise than members of Congress, who operate with more of a team-based mind-set.I am thankful that Mike Pence got the message that no one wants him to be president.I am thankful that Nikki Haley knows how to throw a political punch — especially at Vivek Ramaswamy.I am thankful that even many Republicans clearly get that Mr. Ramaswamy is the most obnoxious creature ever to run for president.I am thankful that Tucker Carlson no longer has a sweet prime-time platform from which to poison the minds of America’s grandparents.I would like to be thankful for the Supreme Court’s new ethics code. The court needed some boundaries after all the revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas for years accepting luxury vacations and other eye-popping gifts from rich friends (without disclosing some of them) and participating in conservative donor events (on the q.t.) and failing to recuse himself from cases related to the political shenanigans of his wife, Ginni, including her work to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. Sadly, this code is a wilted, flimsy fig leaf. Still, it suggests the justices can recognize when one of their own has crossed a line. So maybe they’ll do better after Justice Thomas gets back from his next friend-funded holiday or a buddy spots him an even bigger, shinier R.V.I’m thankful that the House Republicans’ shabby impeachment inquiry into President Biden has been almost as embarrassing for them so far as a night out with Lauren Boebert.Speaking of, I’m super thankful Ms. Boebert had the decency not to take her date to a matinee of “Beetlejuice,” where there would probably have been even more easily scarred children.I am thankful the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, brushed back his ultraconservative colleagues to spare the nation a holiday-season government shutdown. Some of these wingers already have started working to make him pay for this betrayal, but, seriously, what are they going to do — oust him?Lastly, I cannot adequately express how thankful I am to live in a country where I can poke fun at political leaders who so richly deserve it without fear of government reprisal. God bless America.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      My Brother’s Thanksgiving Lament

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      Thanksgiving began as a time of prayer. We could use some prayers right now, in a country inflamed with hate and prejudice and generational mistrust. Americans are at each other’s throats, living in different realities, fraught by two brutal, calamitous wars. So, as this annus horribilis lurches to a close, with the hope that we can understand each other better, or at least eat pie together, here is the annual holiday column from a man I frequently disagree with, but always, love, my conservative brother, Kevin.****Less than a year before the country chooses a president, President Biden’s poll numbers are almost catastrophic. The overwhelming majority of voters say he is too old, and Donald Trump is beating him in five of six battleground states, according to one recent survey.While majorities of the country find both Trump and Biden unacceptable, Trump remains the Republican front-runner, bolstered by what his supporters see as overeager Democratic prosecutions. This scenario holds great peril for Republicans because Trump is the weakest candidate against Biden. He already lost to him in 2020 and the reflexive hatred he generates, especially among women, could boost Democratic turnout as only Trump could manage.Biden’s three years have been a disaster. An exorbitant round of unnecessary Covid spending sent inflation through the roof, leading to a destructive rise in interest rates and further squeezing consumers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Your Thursday Briefing: Bombs Kill a Teenager in Jerusalem

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      Plus: Blackouts in Ukraine, Japan’s soccer triumph and an A.I. Thanksgiving menu.Aryeh Schupak, a 15-year-old yeshiva student, was killed in the bombings.Mahmoud Illean/Associated PressBombs explode in JerusalemTwo blasts in Jerusalem yesterday killed a 15-year-old and wounded at least 18 other people. They were the first bomb attacks on Israeli civilians since 2016.The bombs, which detonated at bus stops during the morning rush hour, prompted calls by far-right leaders for the swift formation of a new government that would be tougher on terrorism. Benjamin Netanyahu, who is likely to become the prime minister again, is trying to form Israel’s most right-wing government ever.The blasts were just the latest episode in the deadliest wave of violence to sweep Israel and the occupied West Bank since 2015.Overnight, a Palestinian teenager died during a West Bank firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. This week, the body of an abducted Israeli teenager was being held. He was taken by Palestinian gunmen from a West Bank intensive care unit; his family insisted that he was alive at the time of the kidnapping and later died. And last week, a Palestinian killed three Israelis at a settlement.Comparison: The bombs were smaller and less sophisticated than those used in attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis during a Palestinian uprising two decades ago. But experts said they departed from recent “lone wolf” episodes.Context: This wave of violence began when Arab assailants killed 19 people in five attacks this spring. The Israeli Army then intensified its raids on West Bank militants, which have left more than 100 Palestinians dead and prompted another surge of Palestinian militancy.West Bank: Rising violence by settlers against Palestinians, coupled with Israeli efforts to evict more than 1,000 Palestinians from their homes, has also compounded Palestinian anger.Ukraine said that Russia launched about 70 cruise missiles. Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesPower outages blanket UkraineMuch of Ukraine is without electricity after a new wave of Russian strikes targeted critical infrastructure. At least 10 people were killed, including a newborn who died after a Russian rocket hit a maternity ward in the south.The barrage of Russian missiles appeared to be one of the most damaging attacks in weeks, and left Kyiv and other cities without power. Power was also cut in Moldova, whose Soviet-era electricity system is entwined with Ukraine’s system. Three Ukrainian nuclear power plants were forced to shut down, the authorities said.The State of the WarDnipro River: A volunteer Ukrainian special forces team has been conducting secret raids under the cover of darkness traveling across the strategic waterway, which has become the dividing line of the southern front.Evacuation Plans: The Ukrainian government is preparing to help evacuate residents from the southern cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv, where shattered infrastructure has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis when winter sets in.A Race to Rebuild: Ukrainian attempts to stabilize some of the country’s battered electricity supply and make a dent in the seemingly endless task of demining swaths of the country offered a glimpse into the Herculean effort that lies ahead off the battlefield.Visual Investigation: Videos circulating on social media have ignited a debate over whether Ukrainian forces committed war crimes or acted in self-defense as they tried to capture a group of Russian soldiers who were then killed. Here’s what we know.What’s next: Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said the grid was suffering “colossal” damage. He announced a national drive to prepare thousands of makeshift centers to provide basic services in the event of prolonged blackouts, called “Points of Invincibility.”A hazy day in Delhi this month.Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDelhi’s stubbornly toxic airA decade ago, the capitals of Asia’s two largest countries had some of the dirtiest skies in the world.Beijing pressed ahead with a $100 billion effort to clean its air after China’s government declared war against pollution. Now, the city has 100 more days of clear skies each year.But New Delhi still faces acrid, toxic air, as pollution from millions of vehicles and open fires used for heating and cooking fill the skies. This fall, the haze prompted officials to halt truck traffic, close schools and push for remote work.Context: India — a huge, messy democracy — has lacked both political resolve and public pressure, and is less wealthy than China. Indian politicians use the crisis to attack each other instead of trying to find solutions.Voters: Air pollution has been known to kill more Indians than any other risk factor. But voters ranked air quality as their 17th most urgent concern in a 2019 survey, well behind jobs, health care and infrastructure.THE LATEST NEWSU.S. NewsThere was another mass shooting: A Walmart manager killed six people at a store in Virginia yesterday. The gunman was also found dead.In updates from the mass shooting in Colorado, lawyers for the person accused of killing five people at an L.G.B.T.Q. club said their client identifies as nonbinary.Officials said they anticipated a reduced Covid threat in the coming winter months, but urged people to get updated booster shots.The World CupJapan’s goalkeeper, Shuichi Gonda, makes a save.Petr Josek/Associated PressJapan beat Germany, 2-1, in another defeat of a top team. Before the game, Germany’s players protested FIFA’s decision to stop players from wearing rainbow-colored armbands.Spain defeated Costa Rica, 7-0. Croatia tied with Morocco, 0-0.As we send out this newsletter, Belgium is leading Canada in the second half: 1-0. Here are updates.It’s $200 a night to stay in what is essentially a shipping container.“We got here six beers ago.” After Qatar banned the sale of beer in stadiums, British fans found a solution.Around the WorldAn ambulance drives into a police station in Iran.Iran is using ambulances to infiltrate demonstrations and detain protesters.Rescue workers in Indonesia are still searching for survivors of the earthquake on Monday. The death toll rose to 271.Thieves stole nearly 500 ancient gold coins, which could be worth $1.7 million, from a German museum.Science TimesA farm sanctuary is investigating the inner lives of cows, pigs and chickens — but only if the animals volunteer to be studied.Diagnoses of anxiety disorders are rising among children. Some young patients are trying exposure therapy, which makes them face the situations that cause them distress.Comets, which normally fly in from the far reaches of space, appear to be misplaced in the asteroid belt. Why?A Morning ReadLaundrymen take photos for the poster.Rishi ChandnaOur colleagues on the Opinion desk publish short documentaries. I loved this 20-minute video on the way laundrymen in Mumbai, India, use posters, more commonly deployed by political candidates, to advertise their businesses.The film, by Rishi Chandna, is a wry exploration of the ways religion, politics and science intersect in a ubiquitous poster culture. “No matter how much of a big shot you are, or how much clout you wield, without a poster, you don’t exist,” one man said.Lives lived: Hebe de Bonafini became a human rights campaigner when her two sons were arrested and disappeared under Argentina’s military dictatorship. She died at 93.HOLIDAY SPOTLIGHT“Show me a Thanksgiving menu made for me,” Priya Krishna told the A.I.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesHappy Thanksgiving from … A.I.?Artificial intelligence can create art, play “Jeopardy!” and make scientific breakthroughs. But how good is it in the kitchen? Priya Krishna, a Times food reporter, gave an A.I. system the ultimate challenge: a Thanksgiving menu.Priya used a neural network called GPT-3. She fed it information about her family background, her favorite ingredients and flavors that she likes.It was … interesting. GPT-3 produced recipes both plausible and intriguing: pumpkin spice chaat, naan stuffing and roasted turkey with a soy-ginger glaze. But the turkey was dry and flavorless (the recipe called for one garlic clove, no butter or oil). And the naan stuffing, Priya writes, “tasted like a chana masala and a fruitcake that had gotten into a bar fight.”“This technology is not a replacement for people, at least so far,” Priya writes. “It can nudge cooks in one direction or another. But it is still humanity — with its intuition, storytelling and warmth — that drives a good recipe.”For more: In a video, Priya cooks the recipes and asks Times cooking columnists to judge.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookMelina Hammer for The New York TimesCelebrating Thanksgiving? Here are recipes for turkey, gravy, stuffing, green beans and a pumpkin pie, all of which you can make the day you plan to eat them.What to ReadBrowse our annual list of 100 notable books.What to WatchIn “Leonor Will Never Die,” a comatose genre director in the Philippines becomes trapped in one of her own screenplays.HealthIs it safe to whiten your teeth? And which methods work?EmojisAs tech workers get laid off, they’re saluting in solidarity.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: In good spirits (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — AmeliaP.S. The Athletic plans to double its coverage of women’s sports through a partnership with Google.“The Daily” is about cooking the perfect turkey. And “Still Processing” discusses Beyoncé’s latest album.Email us at briefing@nytimes.com. I read every note. More

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      What We Give Thanks for and What We Say No Thanks To

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      Gail Collins: Happy Thanksgiving week, Bret. Anything you’re thankful for in particular — besides your lovely family of course.Bret Stephens: The E.M.T.s, cardiac surgeons and nurses who saved my mother’s life earlier this year will be the first people we’ll toast this Thursday, Gail.Gail: To the lifesavers!Bret: And I think we’ll also raise a glass to our regular readers, who seem drawn to a style of conversation that isn’t about compulsive loathing, bottomless contempt, frenzied recrimination, petty score-keeping, histrionic eye-rolling, suppurating disdain and Tucker Carlson-style smirking just because we sometimes have different political views.How about you?Gail: Well, gee, not gonna argue against toasting the readers. In a time when trashing folks on the web is so in, they’re so … out in a very, very fine way.Bret: Our readers: Gluttons for emollient.Gail: If I get to add one, I’d add teachers, especially the early childhood education community. They not only do essential work, they do it for very little applause — or money.Bret: Absolutely. But maybe I’m detecting a subtle hint that you really want to switch the subject to the House of Representatives passing the Build Back Bigger bill?Gail: Bret, I am now giving thanks that you remember at least part of the name of the Build Back Better bill. Which I will always think of as Not the Infrastructure Bill Even Though It Sounds Like It.Anyhow, we are talking about the social-safety-net-stop-climate-change bill. Known to many conservatives as That Two Trillion Dollar Thing.Bret: I gather you’re delighted with it.Gail: I’m happy. Never bought into the idea that President Biden was elected just to not be Donald Trump. He promised during his campaign to expand government help for non-wealthy families, battle the cost of prescription drugs, increase the scope of Medicare and achieve universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds.Got elected, now it’s happening. Good news.Bret: Sorry to be the perpetual Grinch, Gail, but I’ll bet you my considerable store of Zabar’s leftovers that it isn’t happening. Certainly not in anything like the size of the House bill and very possibly not at all. And I have two numbers to support my argument: 60 and 32. The first is Joe Manchin’s approval rating in West Virginia. The second is Joe Biden’s approval rating in West Virginia. If Manchin votes for the bill, about which he’s already expressed big doubts, it’s going to mean the likely end of his political career when he’s up for re-election in 2024.Gail: This gives me another chance to point out that West Virginia gets around twice as much in federal aid as its residents pay in federal taxes.Gee, do you think Manchin’s magical ability to hang onto that seat is connected to the federal largess he brings home?Bret: The other pair of numbers I’m looking at is minus 12.1 and minus 11.6 percentage points. The first is the spread between Biden’s approval and disapproval ratings, the second is Kamala Harris’s. Why do you think it makes sense for the administration to double down on its policies instead of a nice Clintonian U-turn?Gail: The negativity is mainly all about Biden’s inability to get things done. Which won’t look better if he fails to get this bill passed.Bret: Despite what you said earlier, I don’t think Biden was elected to be a transformative president the way Reagan or Obama were, both of whom had clear electoral mandates to change America. He was elected to be a steadying presence. Biden’s failed totally so far, partly for reasons that were not under his control, like the persistence of the pandemic, and partly for reasons that were, like the bungled exit from Afghanistan.Either way, he is misreading his mandate, and the new legislation won’t help. It’s deeply unwise to try to change the entire shape of government based on a tiebreaking vote in the Senate. It’s even more unwise to do so when prices for groceries and gas seem to be rising by the minute.Biden is overseeing a combustible mixture of sweeping progressive social change and working-class economic distress — a formula that gave us Trump in 2016 and may give us Trump again in 2024. And all this is on top of the already hyperpolarized culture we have in this country.Gail: Well, let’s move onto something even more depressing. I sorta hate to bring this up on a holiday week, Bret. But I have to ask you about the Rittenhouse verdict. Your thoughts?Bret: David French had a lovely line on the case in a recent essay in The Atlantic: “The law allows even a foolish man to defend himself, even if his own foolishness put him in harm’s way.” Obviously Kyle Rittenhouse should not have been out that night, much less waltzing around with a rifle. But it also seems clear from the trial that much of what the world thought it knew about him — that he was some kind of out-of-town white supremacist who had crossed state lines with a gun and was looking for trouble — was false.What’s your view?Gail: I can understand the way it went, given the absolute mess that Wisconsin’s gun laws seem to be. But I wish I believed it would be a call to state legislatures — and Congress — to fix the system so that toting guns around in public is flat-out illegal. For anybody.Bret: Something like 43 states allow people to carry around guns in most places. And depending on how it goes with a case being decided this term by the Supreme Court, that number may soon be 50. Personally, I’d argue that if you’re too young to buy a beer you’re surely too young to parade around with a gun, unless you’re in the military or the National Guard.Gail: The two things that totally depress me are realizing that our politicians aren’t going to stop fawning over the gun-rights lobby and knowing that Rittenhouse is going to become even more of a right-wing hero who’ll probably be given a medal at the next Republican convention.Bret: He’s no hero. But I also think this case is a good reminder of why America needs responsible and effective policing, particularly during violent urban protests or riots: When law enforcement fails to protect lives and property, vigilantes spring up.Gail: Back for a minute to the House vote on Biden’s non-infrastructure bill: I presume that you listened to every word of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s more than eight-hour speech against it, right? What were your takeaways?Bret: Yeah, sure, right after I performed a root canal on myself while watching “Ishtar” dubbed in Finnish.OK, I didn’t actually see the speech, but I did read The Times’s priceless account of it. My favorite detail: “Representative Madison Cawthorn, a hard-line Republican from North Carolina, sat behind him, stuffing his lip with chewing tobacco and spitting in a cup. Mr. McCarthy, for his part, sustained himself with peppermint candies, unwrapped one by one by aides.”Gail: Do you think that was in their original job descriptions?Bret: How much do you look forward to having him as Speaker, Gail?Gail: Aaauuughh. I’m not the most pessimistic Democrat when it comes to future expectations, but I have to admit the chances of the party hanging onto the House and Senate are not … super.My greatest source of optimism is what seems like a flood of terrible Republican candidates, many of them already endorsed by Trump despite minor defects like allegations of spousal assault.I know you have some extremely responsible, forward-looking Republican contenders you can point to, but it seems like there are only about six of them. Do you disagree?Bret: Unfortunately, you’re pretty much right. John Stuart Mill once described the Tories of his day as “the stupider party,” and the er in “stupider” seems to describe today’s G.O.P. pretty nicely. It isn’t out of the question that Republicans could trip themselves up on the way to a Congressional majority because all of the most Trumpy candidates win the primaries and then lose in the general election.On the other hand, Republicans will benefit mightily from the latest round of gerrymanders. Also, Glenn Youngkin in Virginia showed how a Republican candidate can distance himself just enough from Trump to win back more moderate voters, while not so much as to alienate the Trump die-hards. Which is another way of saying that I think you’ll be dealing with Speaker McCarthy and Leader McConnell in the next Congress.Gail: And both of them are the opposite of bipartisan, unless there’s a chunk of money for back-home roadbuilding up for grabs.OK, gonna block all this out until after the holidays.Bret: So, remind me again, what else will you be giving thanks for this Thanksgiving?Gail: Don’t know if I ever told you, but we have a tradition of having a group of old friends over every year for the holiday dinner. This is something we started in college — one of this year’s guests, who is 32, was born into it. So it’s partly an annual reunion and a chance to be grateful for longtime pals.As well, of course, for the relative newcomers. So when it comes to thanks, I’ll be including another year of conversing with you, Bret. And looking forward to carrying on into 2022 and beyond.Bret: As am I. And here’s to you.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      A Thanksgiving Myth Debunked: People Aren’t Fighting About Politics

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      With millions of Americans choosing not to visit loved ones this Thanksgiving out of caution over the coronavirus, a lot of small rituals will get passed over in the process.No shared turkey dinners, no football-watching parties in the TV room, no wondering aloud what stuffing is actually made of. And none of those famous, knock-down-drag-out fights with your relatives over politics. Right?Sort of. Those storied fights might never have been such a big part of the tradition to begin with. Like many aspects of the story that this holiday commemorates, brutal family infighting over politics is more myth than reality.“I’m Italian, so my family fights about anything and everything,” said Matthew Dean, 34, a construction project manager living in Pittsburgh. “They can agree with each other and still be arguing.”Mr. Dean is a Republican who supports President Trump, while other members of his family, including his father, dislike the president. He said they’re usually able to disagree without being too disagreeable.“From an outsider’s perspective, it would be arguing, but it never ruined any family time together,” Mr. Dean said, describing the raucous scene at past Thanksgiving dinners. “I think we have a greater sense of the bonds that hold us together as family and friends. And we don’t allow the politics to get above that.”Two years ago, a survey by The Associated Press and NORC, an independent research group at the University of Chicago, found that just 9 percent of American parents with adolescent or young-adult children reported having had a holiday gathering ruined by family disagreements over politics. Online, it was a different story: The same parents were twice as likely to say that they had unfriended or blocked a family member for political reasons.“The vast majority of Americans have no interest in discussing politics,” Samara Klar, a professor of political science at the University of Arizona, said in an interview. “Politics is important when it arises, but for most people it’s not something that they are excited to bring up at dinner.”For most Americans, politics isn’t anywhere near their favorite conversation topic. Dr. Klar said that while studies have shown that American parents would generally prefer to see their children marry someone of the same political persuasion, her own research went a level further — and found that the even stronger desire was for their children to marry someone who simply won’t force them to discuss politics all that much.“They just don’t want somebody who talks about politics all the time,” she said. “Partisan identity will always fall dead last,” she added. “Behind their gender, family role, their nationality, their race.”As a result, if coming together at the holidays means dealing with an outspoken relative of a different political stripe, the most common response may simply be flight — not fight.A study of Thanksgiving diners in 2016 matched up anonymized smartphone-location data with precinct-level voting information, and found that when relatives visited each other from areas with opposite political leanings, their meals together tended to be measurably shorter.This tracks with a separate study from 2016, “Political Chameleons: An Exploration of Conformity in Political Discussions,” finding that people would often prefer to avoid talking politics over openly disagreeing about them.“If you have somebody who’s really vocal politically, they’re going to dominate the discussion,” said Yanna Krupnikov, a Stony Brook University political scientist who has collaborated with Dr. Klar. “You’re not necessarily going to have people fight with them — you’re more likely to have people agree politely and just leave a little early.”Over the past few decades, as polarization has grown, families have in fact become more politically homogeneous.Kent Tedin, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, cited research he has done in recent years picking up on data compiled since the 1960s by Kent Jennings at the University of Michigan. It found that married, heterosexual couples are now far more likely to be politically aligned than they were 50 years ago — or even a couple decades ago.Dr. Klar said that her research has indicated that this trend is driven in part by the fact that, since the feminist movement’s second wave in the mid-20th century, women have grown more directly engaged in politics — and have become more likely to put a priority on finding a husband with whom they agree politically.The same thing goes for parents and their children. On matters of partisanship and political views — including a measurement that academics call the “racial resentment scale” — young people are far more likely to hold similar views to their parents than they were in the mid-1970s, or even in the 1990s.As a result, Dr. Tedin said, at the Thanksgiving table, “if there is a disagreement, almost anybody in the nuclear family — mom, dad and the kids — is going to be on one side, and the cousins are going to be on the other side.”But mostly, they’re likely to tiptoe around one another. “Polarized politics increases avoidance within families,” he said. “You might think polarized politics means they’re going to be fighting at Thanksgiving, but no — it’s the reverse. Polarized politics increases the pressure to avoid conflict at the holiday.”The inclination to avoid conflict doesn’t necessarily mean that disagreement is inevitable if the conversation does turn to politics. Matthew Levendusky, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies political polarization, said that when those kinds of conflicts do come up, they aren’t necessarily likely to become hostile. And whether hard or easy, Dr. Levendusky added, those conversations are fundamental to the functioning of a democracy — especially in a time when social media and cable news often play up each party’s most extreme elements.In 2016, Dr. Levendusky published a study showing that people tended to vastly overestimate the differences between the two parties. “We asked people where their position was, and where they thought the average Republican and Democratic positions were,” he said. “Basically, they thought the parties were twice as far apart as they are in reality, on a wide variety of issues.”Now he is at work on a book about how people with differing perspectives might overcome their political animus. Simply talking to one another, he said, is essential to bridging the divide — and it’s often not as painful as people expect it to be. That’s because most Americans are not deeply ideological, so political disagreements are not terribly high-stakes for them. In completing the research for the book, he and his collaborators convened roughly 500 study participants from across the political spectrum, and invited them to talk about politics.Dr. Levendusky found that participants were pleasantly surprised by the experience: “A number of people came up to me afterward and said, ‘I wasn’t sure I was going to like this, but I found all these people who thought like me, even if we weren’t on the same political side.’”Still, for many families, the primary goal this holiday is to find anything other than politics to talk about.Antonette Iverson, 27, said that her extended family in Detroit would be celebrating Thanksgiving remotely this year, saying grace over a Zoom call and then retreating to separate holiday meals. She doesn’t expect anyone would want to talk much about politics even if they were getting together, she said, adding that her family is mostly of a like mind about the presidential election anyway.“I don’t think there needs to be a discussion,” she said. “We’re all pretty exhausted with the situation.”Kathleen Gray contributed reporting. More

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      A Turkey Recipe for 2020

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      Julia Rothman (@juliarothman) illustrates the Scratch feature in The Times’s Sunday Business section.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Happy Thanksgiving to All Those Who Told the Truth in This Election

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      With so many families gathering, in person or virtually, for this most unusual Thanksgiving after this most unusual election, if you’re looking for a special way to say grace this year, I recommend the West Point Cadet Prayer. It calls upon each of these future military leaders to always choose “the harder right instead of the easier wrong” and to know “no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.”Because we should be truly thankful this Thanksgiving that — after Donald Trump spent the last three weeks refusing to acknowledge that he’d lost re-election and enlisted much of his party in a naked power play to ignore the vote counts and reinstall him in office — we had a critical mass of civil servants, elected officials and judges who did their jobs, always opting for the “harder right” that justice demanded, not the “easier wrong” that Trump and his allies were pressing for.It was their collective integrity, their willingness to stand with “Team America,” not either party, that protected our democracy when it was facing one of its greatest threats — from within. History will remember them fondly.Who am I talking about? I am talking about F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, who in September openly contradicted the president and declared that historically we have not seen “any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election” involving mail-in voting.I am talking about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — a conservative Republican — who oversaw the Georgia count and recount and insisted that Joe Biden had won fair and square and that his state’s two G.O.P. senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, did not garner enough votes to avoid election runoffs. Perdue and Loeffler dishonorably opted for the easier wrong and brazenly demanded Raffensperger resign for not declaring them winners.I am talking about Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who not only refused to back up Trump’s claims of election fraud, but whose agency issued a statement calling the 2020 election “the most secure in American history,” adding in bold type, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”Krebs did the hard right thing, and Trump fired him by tweet for it. Mitch McConnell, doing the easy wrong thing, did not utter a peep of protest.I am talking about the Republican-led Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County, Ariz., which, according to The Washington Post, “voted unanimously Friday to certify the county’s election results, with the board chairman declaring there was no evidence of fraud or misconduct ‘and that is with a big zero.’”I am talking about Mitt Romney, the first (and still virtually only) Republican senator to truly call out Trump’s postelection actions for what they really were: “overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election.”I am talking about U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann, a registered Republican, who dismissed Trump’s allegations that Republican voters in Pennsylvania had been illegally disadvantaged because some counties permitted voters to cure administrative errors on their mail ballots.As The Washington Post reported, Brann scathingly wrote on Saturday “that Trump’s attorneys had haphazardly stitched this allegation together ‘like Frankenstein’s Monster’ in an attempt to avoid unfavorable legal precedent.”And I am talking about all the other election verification commissioners who did the hard right things in tossing out Trump’s fraudulent claims of fraud.Asking for recounts in close elections was perfectly legitimate. But when that failed to produce any significant change in the results, Trump took us to a new dark depth. He pushed utterly bogus claims of voting irregularities and then tried to get Republican state legislatures to simply ignore the popular vote totals and appoint their own pro-Trump electors before the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.That shifted this postelection struggle from Trump versus Biden — and who had the most votes — to Trump versus the Constitution — and who had the raw power and will to defend it or ignore it.To all of these people who chose to do the hard right thing and defend the Constitution and the rule of law over their party’s interest or personal gain, may you have a blessed Thanksgiving.You stand in stark contrast to Bill Barr, Mike Pompeo (who apparently never attended chapel at West Point), Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Nikki Haley, Kayleigh McEnany and all the other G.O.P. senators and House members, who put their party and self-interest before their country and opted for the easy wrongs. History will remember them, too.Though Trump is now grudgingly letting the presidential transition proceed, we must never, ever, forget the damage he and his allies inflicted on American democracy by attacking its very core — our ability to hold free and fair elections and transfer power peacefully. Tens of millions of Americans now believe something that is untrue — that our system is rigged. Who knows what that will mean in the long run?The depths to which Trump and his legal team sank was manifested last Thursday when Giuliani and Sidney Powell held a news conference alleging, among other things, that software used to disadvantage Trump voters was created at the direction of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. It was insane.As Jonah Goldberg, a conservative critic of Trumpism, wrote in thedispatch.com: “The G.O.P.’s social media account spewed sound bites from Powell and Giuliani out into the country like a fire hose attached to a sewage tank.” Fox carried the whole news conference live — uninterrupted — for virtually its entire 90 minutes.Shame on all these people.Sure, now Trump and many of his enablers are finally bowing to reality — but it is not because they’ve developed integrity. It is because they WERE STOPPED by all those people who had integrity and did the hard right things.And “shame” is the right word for these people, because a sense of shame was lost these past four years and it needs to be re-established. Otherwise, what Trump and all his sycophants did gets normalized and permanently erodes confidence in our elections. That is how democracies die.You can only hope that once they are out of power, Barr, Pompeo, Giuliani and all their compatriots will be stopped on the streets, in restaurants or at conferences and politely but firmly asked by everyday Americans: “How could you have stayed all-in when Trump was violating the deepest norms that bind us as a democracy?”And if they are deaf to the message being sent from their fellow citizens, then let’s hope some will have to face an interrogation from their own children at the Thanksgiving table this year:“Mom, Dad — did you really side with Trump when it was Trump versus the Constitution?”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More