Dinner Table Politics: Introduction

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Dinner Table PoliticsThe Myths That Make Us Stupid

Appetizer (Or ‘Amuse’ Bouche if you will)

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Question: I recently hosted a business dinner for clients and their spouses. We were all having a pleasant time when the conversation turned to politics. Clearly, there were some very strong opinions being voiced and the evening began to get ugly. As the host, I tried to make light of certain topics but really there was no turning back – the damage had been done. What might have been a good way of handling this type of situation?

Answer: A host’s primary responsibility is being in ‘control’ of his or her event, which includes initiating and/or moderating topics of conversation. A guest’s primary responsibility is to help contribute to the success of the event. Should your guest begin to over-step conversation boundaries, the host would need to…handle this situation the same way in which you might a tasteless joke or story, e.g., by steering the conversation back into a safe zone in order to maintain the intended tone and tenor of the evening.

- Judy Bowman, Lifestyle writer, ‘Courtesy still the rule in politics’

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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

In many homes and at many dinner tables, a premium is put on obedience to conversational norms. Typical results are triviality and banality. Why? Because two ironclad rules govern conversation in social settings: First, always be polite. Second, never, ever, discuss the ‘unmentionables’ that we all know well: sex, politics or religion. What is left to discuss other than sports, Hollywood or the latest product to buy? Silencing talk about the Big Three ensures that conversation will be so much superficial fluff. Limited by manners and fear, many of us are trapped in a rote script, talking about the weather. How many of us grudgingly suffer through our own dinners because there is so little meaningful discussion on the menu? Or avoid social gatherings outright; at least those not made barely palatable by available alcohol? Everyone knows the rules about the Big Three. For the most part, everyone respects them. But surely, subconsciously, most people recognize both the superficial and deeper costs of playing by them.

Warnings to stay clear of political discussion abound. Even – especially – in stressful situations, people have been warned off of talking politics. Take the stress of war – perhaps the most stressful social situation. During the Second World War, British troops serving in France were officially advised: “Don’t get into arguments about religion or politics. If a Frenchman raises [one or the other], drop the matter. There are two sides to every question, but you don’t want to take either.” As if there are ever only two sides!

In the lead up to the 2006 Congressional elections, The New York Times warned that ignoring the “Elephant in the Room” vis-à-vis partisan politics was the price to pay for harmony in family, camaraderie and at the office water cooler. One school teacher

DRAFT MANUSCRIPT: NOT FOR PUBLICATION OR SHARING WITHOUT PERMISSIONMichael Alex 2009 www.teachlearnchange.org

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mentioned her politics fatigue: “Recently I’ve withdrawn. I’ve been like: ‘I can’t do it anymore. Let me sit here and eat my chicken tetrazzini.” Some interviewees recounted mutually agreed truces to avoid politics at dinner to save friendships, while others ended associations marked by political difference. Others still tried to straddle fences. One woman and her mother stopped talking because of their political differences, a cold war that ended only because one party mended the fence by calmly explaining her politics: “It hit me that if one of us got hit by a bus tomorrow, I don’t want my final thought to be, ‘She supports George Bush’…But I think she probably now views me as even more of a progressive nut job than before.” The Times consulted Dr. P. M. Forni, author of The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct, who argues that safe spaces for democratic discourse have disappeared because people are increasingly unwilling to chance a lasting, damaging political label as a result of a casual conversation. Instead, he argues, those who talk politics at all are those who choose similarly situated people whose common views offer protection, easy validation and mutual reinforcement. Or, in short, opportunities for acts of public, political masturbation where no one really exchanges anything, nor gains much in the way of real satisfaction.

Yet few people will publicly dispute the resulting tedium. Why? Accepted social rituals exert significant power to make overtly political talk taboo. These rules are not lightly broken. Many people – family members, co-workers and friends – have interests in choosing peace over politics. And they enforce their will. Conversational paralysis is the most immediate, superficial result. The tradition of privileging pleasant conversation over potentially contentious debate is so common and ingrained into our social fabric that is rarely noticed and even less often commented upon, beyond enforcing the prohibition on the Big Three. However, our generalized consent to avoid thinking and talking politically in everyday, informal settings has a number of disquieting, and serious, consequences. This social habit and its consequences are unbelievably yet avoidably stupid.

Despite calls for dinner etiquette, the connections between eating and politics are many and obvious. They stretch back to antiquity actually, to the birth of politics. Aristotle, who like his teacher Plato worked from the basic proposition that the personal was every bit as political as government institutions, noted in particular the potential for politics at the dinner table. In The Politics, he noted the politics inherent in the institutionalized Greek tradition of compulsory common meals, or phiditia. However, he explained that their democratic potential was often undermined by their inaccessible nature; not all (freemen) could afford the financial requirements for participation and therefore were disqualified from full citizenship.

Thus, Aristotle argued that these meals should be made accessible via full funding at the public expense to better serve the interests of both citizen and state. In essence, he made one of the first calls for publicly funded education, and did so in the context of democratic discourse at the dinner table! Democratizing and reforming informal politics in the context of shared meals was deemed important by the most astute minds of ancient Greece. Despite our own wide inattention to politics in informal filial and social settings, it is no less relevant today. We ignore dinner table politics to our collective detriment.


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A millennium or so later, Thomas More wrote Utopia, a work that critiques many of the excesses of medieval Europe. In it, More advised that a more perfect society, would hold common meals where

the elders introduce topics of conversation, which they try not to make gloomy or dull. They never monopolise the conversation with monologues, but are ready to hear what the young men say. In fact, they deliberately draw them out, in order to discover the natural temper and quality of each one’s mind, as revealed in the freedom of mealtime talk.

Regardless of one’s position on the issue, politics plus dinner, good or bad, there are numerous examples of politics being mixed into dinner table talk. Look for them actively and they spring up everywhere. Consider: the Lick’s (a chain of family restaurants) near my home in Toronto conducting its over the counter ‘Burger Poll’ by surveying customers’ political affiliations in federal election seasons (which the franchise has done for the past twenty years). The numbers, which incidentally, in the last polling period were way, way off how the local riding actually voted, were tabulated and posted on a sign in front of the restaurant. This was a straw poll linked to food, with no context or meaningful discussion – just opinion, and a misleading opinion at that. Talk about a cause for political indigestion!

Cyberspace teems with examples: In Germantown Wisconsin, town clerk Joyce Dhein retired in 2005 after two decades of convening municipal board meetings around her kitchen table. This practice was necessary because Germantown (population 269) is so small that it lacked a town hall. Regardless, residents expressed satisfaction with the domestic setting for democratic decision-making, one where all were welcome to become involved. In a similar vein is Dinner For America, a non-partisan, multi-media gonzo-style effort to engage young people in electoral politics. Its stated aim is to convince the disconnected that, “suddenly, politics is hip” and, implicitly, ‘boring’ without a defining quality that is either unscripted or humourous. Organizers explicitly link their political project to food with their call, “it’s time for dinner!”

Former state governors James Geringer (Republican, Wyoming) and John Kitzhaber (Democrat, Oregon) have called for elected representatives to end the polarized, nonsensical partisan political bickering that has overtaken meaningful politics in recent years. They do so by calling for the inauguration of what they call “a politics of integration,” a system of collaborative governance where citizens are gathered and put to work strategizing about the political dilemmas their communities face. Their proposal, which they note has been used successfully in numerous jurisdictions, is more than empty, feel good rhetoric. They argue that active civic involvement, one based in person-to-person discussion is naturally superior to town meetings, where most citizens listen passively to presentations, or public hearings, or where ‘experts,’ monopolize allotted time by promoting particular interests that are often at odds with the community as a whole. Both, more typical forms of civic association disempower, alienate and bore the very constituents who have the most at stake in issues that are tabled. The location the


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governors suggest for suggest their more dynamic, less divisive meetings? Kitchen tables, a place where, they argue, “America has traditionally found its most durable solutions.”

In the blogsphere, others make reference to politics at their dinner tables or explicitly seek to reclaim them as political spaces in their on-line postings: One, titles his blog “Dinner Table Donts: The ravings of a young philosophy student whose favourite topics are the ones you were told never to speak of at the dinner table. Yes, thats [sic] Politics, Philosophy and all things in between.” Christian pastor Judith Jones urges congregants on her Church blog to preach a gospel of social justice by engaging in “talk about religion and politics at every dinner party, every lunch out, every place you go where people are talking.” Another blogger, in a post explicitly entitled ‘Dinner Table Politics,’ celebrates the power of political talk at family dinner to socialize and provoke critical thinking, recalling that, “just agreeing with dad wouldn’t end the pain, I had to have an opinion and I had to support it,” though he laments the limitations of dinner time talk, calling it

A ritual, shallow in its own way, and [one that] should not be used outside the home. For the world at large, you need to read, widely and well, and pay attention to other sources. I got into trouble and tangles on more than one occasion by using what we discussed the night before and nothing else in other settings. I learned to check up on every damn thing, even my dad’s pearls of wisdom…

This warning has no doubt been noted by a number of community based political associations. Organized activists and untrained but concerned citizens alike have increasingly used the dinner table as a site for political strategizing and organization. Starting from the home, many of these people have started from scratch, discussing and devising their politics around a shared table before engaging with more formal, public institutions. The supportive networks developed from among friends and neighbours have strengthened their politics, often allowing the achievement of substantial measures of success. People for Education, for example, are one such group. Formed in Toronto in 1996 by a group of parents concerned about the fallout of a whopping $2.1 billion cut to annual funding of Ontario’s K-12 public schools, members met first around kitchen tables. Looking back, “their main preoccupation was not just ranting but trying to tell stories about what was going on through evidence,” comments one of its founding members. This community group now has members throughout Ontario and a paid, full-time staff. Former education minister Elizabeth Witmer (whose party’s agenda called for premeditated creation of a ‘crisis in education’ as a means of destabilizing and ultimately rebuilding the education system on a neo-conservative model) has admitted that this small group of concerned parents provided important evidence about the profoundly negative fallout stemming from the cuts.

In an analogous situation, Oregon’s Rural Organizing Project launched a March 2005 community effort to push the state government to reverse tax cuts and restore adequate school funding. This particular effort was merely one example of a monthly


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activity aimed at supporting meaningful civic activism among people who are unprofessionally political, that is, politically engaged but not part of a think tank, lobby group, corporation or affiliated political party. People who, while neither paid nor elected, not necessarily trained or formally educated, are engaging with one another in ways that are essential to a society where democracy means more than a jingoist jingle or say-nothing talking point. Again, this group selected dinner tables as the site for concerned community members to gather for political discussions and organizing efforts. The group named their rotating projects ‘Kitchen Table Activism.” Its website explains, “Kitchen Table Activism (KTA) is a monthly project…building on quarterly themes, short actions are described in each KTA. The theory is that basic steps and tasks can lead to powerful collective results as small groups of people gather to complete the same action throughout the state of Oregon.”

The impetus to organize politics around the dinner table has been made most concretely by the CRIC’s “Gathering Around the Dinner Table” initiative, where a meal of several courses provided the setting for an organized political discussion. Their effort was staged to investigate reasons for sagging rates of democratic participation amongst young people (work by Robert Putnam and others has amply illustrated that this generational cohort is by a wide margin the most estranged segment of what is easily the most democratically disengaged generation in the short history of democratic states) and simultaneously promote civic interest in teens prior to reaching voting age. The meals were highly structured: tables were organized to provide a representative intergenerational sampling of youths with community leaders active in the arts, public service, media and the academy. Each table had a speaker designated to keep discussions moving, pose questions and share contributions with the larger group (each dinner was made up of eight tables of eight diners each, meant to mirror a family dinner table). Participants, adults and youth alike, were enthusiastic about the experience and what they learned from one another. Remarked one: “dinner tables work!” Another: “four hours wasn’t long enough,” and one more: “I liked the intense conversation…[this experience] was extremely encouraging to me as a youth.” This feedback contradicts the dinner table politics of those who would squelch political discussion in everyday social gatherings in the name of good manners. Indeed, all these examples make it clear why ignoring the immense power that lies at our own dinner tables is not an option for those suffering from indigestion caused by either the current menu of formal political choices or the status quo on a variety of issues that have a direct bearing on all of our lives, wherever we happen to be eating.

In my neighbourhood, the mix of politics and dinner hit much, much closer to home at a local restaurant where I sat groggily staring at a menu one morning. Given that it markets itself to a predominantly young, educated clientele, I should not have been completely surprised by what was on the menu, or more to the point, off the menu – literally – for breakfast that morning. Along with offering eggs and waffles, it admonished diners to respect the widely observed rules of dinner table conduct. An excerpt, shown below, makes this clear:


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Ironically, the Big Three are the subjects that people are generally most interested in, though perhaps to varying degrees amongst the three (you know who you are!) What is the effect of making such topics taboo? The most obvious observation is that roping off these topics affects a conspiracy to make family and social gatherings mind-numbingly boring and (supposedly) inoffensive. However, tedium is not the only result. Etiquette that prohibits political discussions is deeply problematic because it effectively prevents practice of several habits that are essential to meaningful democratic citizenship, habits of both mind and social engagement: willingness to learn from one another, to effectively form and articulate views, to think about new perspectives or to interact with others meaningfully. When we neglect to talk about controversial subjects, we effectively opt out of nuanced understanding political issues. Worse we avoid really connecting with or learning from one another. We fail to consider what people actually think about the most important issues confronting our society, issues that are, given their importance, almost always contentious. Ignoring sex, politics and religion is a prescription for indifference and passivity. It renders people boring, empty vessels of cliché. Silencing and dumbing people down renders them powerless. Stupidity becomes a destination as much as a habit of being.

Of course, common sense dictates that it is better to simply get along with one another, at any cost, rather than risk political or gastrointestinal disturbance. At home, dinner is a vehicle for catching up on one another’s daily lives as much as taking in calories. Work gatherings use shared food and drink as social lubricant with specific ends in mind, be it team building or deal brokering. Friends gather at dinner parties to unwind, have fun and take a break from otherwise hectic lives. Thus justified, etiquette that polices political talk has become as entrenched as prohibitions against putting elbows on the table, talking with a mouth full of chewed food or crudely picking remainders from between one’s teeth. All are deemed boorish and uncivilized. So it goes for politics at the dinner table. Norms regulating eating and talking exist because they are in the perceived common interest of all who dine and discuss. This is true of the conventional wisdom that says politics doesn’t have a place in the conversations that non-expert people have in the


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course of their daily work, play and relaxation. These rules may protect superficial harmony. They do so at the expense of the informed engagement that underlies working democracy.

Perhaps we miss seeing the tragedy of this situation because we are so close to it. After all, that people opt out of or are prohibited from engaging in political conversation appears minor in the relative scheme of pressing social issues. Consider community violence and global war, government corruption and business scandal, environmental calamity, poverty and pandemic. These, when we choose to acknowledge them, are portrayed as ‘real’ problems. They are big problems. Since they have more easily measured consequences, they are the problems that matter. Placed beside any of these, focusing on the politics of how and what people talk about seems to be a preoccupation of trifling significance. It is not. Rules that shut down talk at dinner tables – understood simultaneously as a primary location for most people’s casual, informal conversation and as a metaphor for discussions that take place daily, everywhere, in a variety of informal social settings – are serious. They need to be considered and talked about, in terms of what motivates them, who benefits from political silences and the extent to which taking politics off the menu aides and abets a status quo approach to the problems that face our society. Both efforts to limit political talk and willingness to be limited have serious consequences. Not acknowledging this situation does not make it less real. Nor does it alleviate the myriad of problems that occur when non-experts, non-elites opt, en masse, out of meaningful political thought, talk or action.

Few people would identify these regular failures at our dinner tables as both a source and symptom of much more pervasive social failure. Yet that is exactly what they are: a culture of mass political disengagement, vacant cynicism, selfishness, crass consumerism and learned helplessness that have infected our society. If we hope to treat this infection of apathy masquerading as manners, then rules must be broken. To begin disrupting the inertia of our shared political powerlessness, we need look no further than our own dinner tables. We must agree to search for uncommon sense or else settle for apolitical stupidity.

Calls for politeness often mask intent to smother dissent or anything that might be broadly construed as negative, negative being code for anything provocative. Just as often it is a way of masking discomfort, even terror that one might be exposed as, gasp, not…knowing…something. Few people invite criticism, constructive or otherwise, and no criticism stings like being called stupid. This doesn’t square with the world you see reflected in the media? A society obsessed with irony-free ‘reality’ TV, stocked with an unreal freak show of bug eaters, scolding nannies, off-key singers, Survivors, top-models and bachelor-(ettes) on the make? A society whose best-seller list is, as I write this, topped by a ‘book’/infomercial that proclaims to hold the ‘Secret’ to happiness/wealth/health in the form of a half-baked collection of mealy-mouthed self-help-isms? (One wonders when it will be exposed sufficiently to no longer qualify as a secret.) A society whose cinema is dominated by blockbuster movies designed for viewers with the mental acuity of a pre-teen boy weaned on sugar and first-person shooter video games? One whose periodicals and even news programming is increasingly dominated by vapid


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recounting of celebrities whose fame is based primarily in flashing their privates, gorging on a party life-style, purging to stick-insect thin, adopting tots away from third world squalor and, like, being so bummed about Paris Hilton’s ‘prison ordeal’ but shaking it off in the post-penal Larry King healing session? Isn’t this the shallowest of samplings of a shallow cultural output sufficient to prove that stupid is cool?

Despite mounting evidence that stupidity is winning the day, ‘you’re stupid’ remains the ultimate insult. Why? Because unlike slurs based in race, gender or sexual orientation, the stupid person is judged to be complicit in their own stupidity, and thus causally responsible for their own mockery. Had they just tried harder, stupidity could have been avoided. In fact, this helps explain the floor-scraping low bar of western pop – and political – culture. Dumber and dumber TV, movies and celebrities means that, presto, I can feel better about myself. It no longer matters whether I act stupidly or even if I am stupid. Someone better known and important than me is bound to be stupid-er. Guilt-free, work-free, ‘I’m not stupid’ stupidity is hardly monopolized by entertainment and marketing industries. This phenomenon of generalized inferiority complex also, no doubt, contributed to the two-time election of the walking malapropism that is George W. Bush. I mean, if a simpleton can sit in the Oval Office, then I guess I’m not doing too badly. Right? Right?

Thus censoring any and all political talk, including political aspects of sex and religion too, is a way for self-proclaimed ‘ordinary’ people (a self-hating label if there ever was one) to insulate themselves from fears of exposed stupidity. Pointing and laughing at others helps protect me, even if I continue to consume and even emulate the daily offering of their stupidity. Engaging this defence mechanism is no small endeavour. It takes real commitment. Fortunately, a whole industry of business, media and political elites are ready and able to act in concert with accomplices at work, at play and at the family dinner table. The result of this attitude and commitment is that, for the most part, introducing politics into informal conversation has become the social equivalent of a loud, unclaimed fart in a crowded elevator. This has translated into a commitment to veto any topic with the potential to add stress to already stressful situations: first dates, business lunches, and, most frequently, family gatherings. This is particularly apparent when family members in question have come in from far-flung parts and political camps. Yet, banning politics from everyday life is a popularly received example of a myth that makes us stupid.

If talking politically is frowned upon in everyday social situations, prohibitions are most strictly enforced during meetings invested with higher levels of social capital, for instance, holiday gatherings. Consider Christmas: Christmas dinner often represents a climax of family stress since it is one of the rare occasions when many families with adult children meet to share a meal and catch up on the state of our world(s). The rules are made explicit in a Washington Times article that ran on Christmas Day 2004: “Keep politics off the dinner table this Christmas…That’s the advice of some specialists in family relations, who say family conflicts can be worsened under the stress of the holiday season, particularly after an election as divisive as the one last month.”


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It is just this advice that I, in concert with my partner, decided to flout in the preparation for hosting the first ‘Christmas’ dinner in our new home. This gathering of our families provided an ideal opportunity to explode the myth making of Bowman and The Washington Times. Better, Christmas dinner isn’t just any family gathering. It is revered (and perhaps dreaded in equal parts – no surprise that suicide rates spike in the stressful holiday season.) This nay saying distressed us, particularly since we frequently discuss politics at our own dinner table. Our work as teachers is built on it. Even in recreation, much of our most valued time with friends is built on political talk as an important and highly pleasurable activity. We grew up talking politics in our parents’ homes, albeit in supper sessions that were ad hoc and unpremeditated. The decision was made: A time had come to draw a line in the proverbial snow. We would refuse to ignore politics in deference to good manners. We aimed to make the family meal we were hosting overtly political.

Circumstances conspired to make our task easier. This particular holiday season witnessed something rarely seen: the call of a federal election campaign over the Christmas holiday. The timing of this election not only broke with the rule that campaigns not be held in winter. This timing led many to proclaim a commonly held assumption regarding politics and holiday socializing, people are loath to have the festivities interrupted by serious talk. It is classic example of an untruth parading as undisputed fact among people, to everyone’s detriment, of dinner table politics if you will. Indeed, the media spilled much ink predicting which party would be punished electorally for dissolving the minority parliament, for mixing political nag with seasonal nog. No surprise here: journalists had vested interests in what commonly a slow news period remaining slow enough to permit their own relaxation. Many pundits even suggested that until the New Year passed, there would be a dearth of campaigning let alone much political exchange amongst voters themselves – and hence little need for media coverage or analysis. Politicians for the most part kept their heads down. They avoided kissing babes for the camera, or promising much in the way of specific presents that the electorate might find under their trees. They deferred instead to Santa’s entrenched and obscenely lucrative seasonal superiority. It was generally agreed that a truce of non-discussion would be widely observed.

Like most examples of dinner table politics, this myth could be, and was, easily debunked. Despite the seeming unanimity of these predictions, an SES poll released following the holidays noted that many Canadians had made the most of their social outings in terms of political talk. Myths to the contrary, many used socials as opportunities change the subject. Many of those surveyed confessed that they had chosen politics over presents. Nik Nanos, head of SES Research, suggests that holiday events served as a ‘Petri dish’ for the growth of political talk. He observes that,

Having a holiday in the middle of a campaign provides a unique chance for family and friends to gather and talk about what is happening politically; corporate research shows that word-of-mouth opinions have a great impact on consumer behaviour. I don’t think one can


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underestimate the impact of friends, parents, siblings and neighbours on voting behaviour.

This observation supports the case I make in Dinner Table Politics. Simply put: people thinking and talking about politics matters. Talking politics is central to making democracy real and not just a cliché or dangerous mirage. Talking politics is essential to individuals becoming activists and communities communing. And not just some people need to be part of the discussion. Any people. All people. (So called) ordinary people must talk politics. We mustn’t squelch political talk with calls for manners or safe discussion topics. Yet we must aim to be responsive, reflective and responsible participants. Discussions need to be substantive and thoughtful. Discussants should aim to question pat assumptions and accepted wisdoms. Talking intelligently to one another about relevant topics matters because the alternative to smart, active talk is stupid, inactive citizens. Such citizens are made easy victims for myths and reproduce myths in turn. Thus, by failing to think, listen and speak up, dinner table politics – a politics based in selfishness and stupidity – take hold. Dinner, conceived this way, is indeed long overdue.

For those who reject this call embrace casual political talk in daily life as unimportant, take note: Nanos points out that, during the 2005 Christmas portion of the Canadian election campaign, there was a appreciable shift in popular support for political parties. Over this two-week period, the number of ‘undecideds’ dropped and the Conservatives overtook the Liberals by a substantial (and ultimately sustainable) margin for the first time. He makes the point that there is at least a correlation, if not direct, provable causation between the politicized holiday discussions and the Conservatives eventual win.

Following the holidays, and the election, this observation slipped off the collective media radar. It shouldn’t have. Though this is a lone instance (and there are many others that I will consider), it illustrates several important implications for the mixing of dining and politics. First, it disrupts a particular instance of conventional wisdom that politics and social occasions, particularly family or holiday dinners, do not or should not be mixed. Second, it provides anecdotal and statistical evidence for my contention that dinner tables can be instrumental in affecting social change, for good (or ill). That is, when people talk, actions can and often do follow.

Political talk is the necessary precondition for political change. Nanos’ allusion to the strength of word-of-mouth promotion, or viral-marketing as it is increasingly known, makes all people who censor their fellow diners or pollute their tables with nonsense culpable. When we stupefy others or ourselves, myths that are prepared and consumed can and do have terrifically negative impacts on the shape of our communities. Few of us consider the great power that dinner table politics have, nor the great damage they often do, or even the great potential that dinner table discussions hold for fostering altruism and achieving social justice.

In my own kitchen prior to the holidays, we were unaware of these pollster musings. Admittedly, we began planning for what we simply termed ‘our dinner table


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politics experiment.’ The presence of both our families at the same table definitely upped the ante and added to the potential for distress. For our more traditional kin, it was bad enough that we weren’t ‘officially’ celebrating Christmas (For the record, we don’t celebrate Christmas in any religious or commercial sense, meaning, gasp, no presents. It’s telling that the absence of presents always rankles far more than the absence of piety. I’m only using the handle here for the sake of easy identification.). Now we wilfully put politics on the menu at Christmas dinner.

Not that our families were, in retrospect, totally surprised. This was merely the latest in a low-level campaign we had conducted against sacred cows against well established filial rituals over the past several years: imagine a marriage where the two parties refuse to use the terms bride and groom, a red cocktail dress subs for virginal white and plans had been laid – half-seriously – for us to saunter down the aisle together to the tune of Sinatra’s New York, New York. You get the picture. Sufficed to say that though they were not privy to our plans, neither should they have entirely thrown by another break with convention. At worst, this was more fodder for extended relations to shake their heads and comment, “you kids are thinking too hard about things, you should just enjoy yourselves.” To give them their due, our immediate families were more open-minded. They had played significant roles in motivating us to choose politically engaged interests, jobs and life-paths.

During our teen and university years, our own family discussions played important roles in sharpening our interests in current affairs. They helped hone our interests into what eventually became our personal and professional vocations. The formative years of adolescence and early adulthood are important times for political education. During this time youths first encounter an adult world of new ideas and have experiences in this wider world. Often, people can use these years to assume new identities and test fledgling political positions. Certainly this was our experience. Family dinner, when schedules could be co-ordinated, became a forum for experimenting with political personas free from peer pressures. Political discussions at dinner allow people, in particular young people, to construct political identities and frame current events in a meaningful and relevant context.

In preparing for this Christmas dinner, we both recounted the ferocity of discussions we had with our respective fathers during the first semester of university. Our (granted, often intemperate) intellectual excitement ground against parental incredulity at those Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. (Grand)Fathers predicted that university would turn us into communists – the standard slur against left-wingers of any variety. Incidentally, this was a label given to Krista and my brother-in-law by their grandfather. It would stick for years afterward.

At my home, the transgression was more personal: my Lithuanian-descended father had grown up being warned with semi-regularity about the evils of Soviet Bloc Stalinism. The dinner table politics that he passed down to his sons: “Better dead than Red; Kill a Commie for Mommy!” These were intended as jokes, but punch lines carry potency. If words weren’t powerful, the cacophony of complaints about ‘political correctness’ chasing away well-intentioned fun and humour (that is, playing well


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established racist, sexist, homophobic stereotypes for easy laughs) would not be so angry and unrelenting. In any case, neither my brother nor I was persuaded to act as junior McCarthys, hunting for subversives. We got the joke. But the underlying and serious political directive was not lost on us. Members of both families consistently tagged democratic socialists as ‘commies’. We heard the message loud and clear: agreeing with any left-wing party, person or position was tantamount to joining the Red Brigade or a Stalinist fifth column. Social consciousness inherent to democratic socialism was suspect, radical, and definitely not on.

This is not to say that dinners in either of our homes were always or even mostly consciously political. But, as we grew up, we both found adult talk – of whatever variety - more interesting than play. Both of us remember playtime with other kids could mean relegation to a sort of hell. We were both eldest children, and perhaps both anxious to grow up. Thus, we were eager to sit with the adults when friends and family gathered. At first we were happy to sit quietly and merely listen. Later, we experienced the delicious feeling of being congratulated for a funny or original observation. We may not have been aware of it then, but this was the beginning of our political education. Talk is human beings’ most remarkable talent. It teaches, informs opinion, reinforces judgement and shapes values within and between groups. Our sociability – to borrow from Aristotle, our inherently political natures – grants and defines our humanity.

Participation in adult talk is an important rite of passage toward maturity. Dinner tables can be intoxicating places for young minds, above all when a respected relative or family friend is present to offer alternatives to what is regularly served up at home. As a teen, I often snuck off to eat at my best friend’s house in part because the discussion there was often overtly political. Their table also sat further left on the spectrum of opinion than was usual at my home. Hearing adults disagree is important for kids, even if those who disagree are not in the same room. It can be the genesis of thinking for one’s self. It was in my experience. Such self-discovery isn’t possible in a climate of apathetic silence or bubble gum-oriented naval gazing.

Exposure to new perspectives allows us to recognize the existence and value of difference. It encourages scepticism and dissent since alternative political interpretations must then vie for acceptance. No wonder many people avoid political activities such as voting, joining civic clubs and associations or actively engaging in political campaigns when they haven’t had or taken the opportunity to practice or participate in even the micro-politics of informal political talk. Such myopia goes a long way to explaining the much-bemoaned decline in western democracies’ levels of popular political engagement. Yet critics often incorrectly identify declining voter turnouts as the chief democratic dysfunction. Though important, I submit that voters staying home are symptomatic, not causal. If only it were so easy to fix flagging community and democratic involvement by merely herding more and more people into voters booths to check a box every few years!

Instead of considering the poor quality or frequency of everyday political talk, various prescriptions ranging from electoral reform to civic education to mandatory voting monopolize popular attention. Few commentators acknowledge that people are unlikely to take note of current events or public policy issues, volunteer or become active


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in their community, or to participate in formal politics without actively and habitually engaging in political talk. We are witnessing the disappearance of our society as a politically engaged polity. Democratic sheep, those unwilling to think or talk politically, or who do so only in cursory or irresponsible ways, are fast replacing an already sparse minority of thoughtful, committed social democrats. Complaints about easier to identify rates of formal participation have grown. They drown out discussion about the state of our less noted, but equally serious, everyday political discourse. Despite how many people engaging in superficial political talk might sound or act, most are not (inherently) stupid. They have simply been robbed of both maturity and power by a culture that increasingly encourages and rewards complicit political silence if not outright immaturity.

Maturity, political or otherwise, requires openness to the unfamiliar and a willingness to doubt. Prolonged exposure to homogeneous, unquestioned ‘wisdom’ coupled with resistance to anything that is overtly political stunts one’s growth and increases hostility toward things that are unfamiliar or challenge convention. This is as true for adults as children. Not talking at all, or talking unconsciously – or irresponsibly – has troubling consequences. Such habits make people susceptible to bias, selfishness and xenophobia. These are hallmarks of people victimized by and responsible for what I term ‘dinner table politics.’

With these concerns in mind, and the concept of dinner table politics – now named – germinating, plans for Christmas dinner took shape. I used the weeks before Christmas to prepare a series of debate topics that were related to the federal election specifically, and the state of electoral politics and democratic health in Canada in general. This would, I hoped, be a Christmas dinner like no other. Despite best-laid plans, things did not transpire as expected. Yet what ensued was promising. Once the food was served and everyone was eating, I made it clear that beyond family fellowship we were hosting with a Purpose, capital P. I went on to explain what we had been talking about, and that we hoped to use this family gathering to engage each other, rather than simply engorging ourselves.

Stunned silence and various tics followed the initial call to overtly turn the focus of discussion to politics (remember our two immediate families were blended at this dinner.) Then, something not anticipated happened. Rather than tabling political arguments, I began with a question: For whom do you intend to vote for next month, and what are the three main priorities that will influence the decision to cast your ballot in that particular way? This was a particularly provocative question since, amongst my in-laws at least, there is an unspoken rule that one never asks people how they are planning to vote, especially in mixed company.

This meal marked a revolutionary shift away from the patterns of our historical family dinners. Well-worn patterns of political arguments (and more often all of us simply razzing one another) gave way to thoughtful if admittedly careful discussion. There was little rhetoric. Few judgements or decisions were made, perhaps since everyone was on their best inter-family behaviour. Discussion was respectful, thoughtful and engaged. In turn, all assembled shared their choices and rationales. They also shared


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their doubts, their hopes and fears for the future. A number of issues were parsed and teased – chiefly the environment, health care, the economy and political accountability.

Areas of shared concern were noted. For instance, almost all at the table expressed fundamental disconnection with their government and hence sought increased openness and reform. There were also areas of profound disagreement: how to address homelessness and poverty for example raised some hackles. But more questions were asked than arguments made. It was a fascinating discussion and it lasted long into the night, when Krista and the assorted family moved into the living room for drinks and more talk. I, meanwhile, did the dishes in satisfied silence, listening to the politics generated at the dinner table.

I don’t mean to overstate the importance or impact of this one engineered dinner table discussion. I merely provide it as a model, an appetizer if you will. Many of us choose to dumb down our conversations in the name of family peace, yet wars rage on and disrupt families within and beyond our borders. As I argue in the chapters that follow, the well being of our nuclear, extended, local and global families depend on us abandoning comfortable beliefs, both in terms of what we discuss at the dinner table and how we conventionally think about our lives and our world.

It is a telling commentary that the social commentators label such as those in the Washington Times Christmas dinner article cite pluralistic politics and the articulation of political views as a source of friction rather than as evidence of democratic vigour. As you will see, these views are the rule, not the exception. For the most part, commentators suggest that we should wilfully ignore differences between family members (and by extension members of local and global communities), choosing shallow harmony over much needed political engagement in the places and at the times that we are most able become involved: in the course discussions in our everyday lives. I pointedly reject this advice and hope to convince you to do the same.

Before continuing, a quick word about my liberal use of the word stupidity: For my purposes, ‘stupid’ is anything that makes people powerless, unintelligent, careless or selfish. I do not mean to offend. I make the disclaimer at the outset that I use the term stupidity in the spirit of a concerned town crier rather than as a mean-spirited civic slanderer. Ignorance, for some, may indeed be bliss. But this blissed out state is wreaking havoc. People can do better than stupidity. They have to or our world is in big, big trouble.

This book is my attempt to contribute to a political project that invigorates our democracy. It is one part social commentary – polemical social criticism really (one must try to be honest.) It is at least in part a self-help book, and a how-to guide as well. Ideally, it will be thought provoking as well as informative. More importantly, if you too are nagged by a queasy feeling in your gut when dinner table politicians start to rant or call for silence, and you can’t ignore it any more, it will be a call to action. Hopefully it is an acknowledgement of a feeling that many people share, but of which they rarely speak. There is power in discussion. Speaking up is a start to affecting social change and to renewing our politics at a most fundamental level.


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I hope that you will accept my invitation to consider an alternative menu and perhaps the value of setting tables differently. What follows is a seven-course tasting menu of political myths that continue to be served at tables everywhere. These are myths that have personal and political significance in my own community, though I think they will resonate elsewhere. Sadly, there were so many to choose from, I restricted myself to the ones I couldn’t resist challenging – indigestion and table manners be damned. Each chapter addresses a pervasive myth that makes us, our friends and families, our students, and our neighbours stupid. This menu is as follows:

First course: Politics should not be discussed at the dinner table.

Second course: The news media, operate in a free press environment, objectivelyand effectively informing audiences about political issues

Third course: The primary purpose of the education system, as it currently operates, is actually education.

Fourth course: Corrupt politicians are primarily to blame for the dysfunction of our government.

Fifth course: We live in a meritocracy where the free market liberates all.

Sixth course: We can make our neighbourhood safe by kicking ‘them’ out of our backyards.

Dessert: ‘Ordinary’ people are powerless to affect meaningful political change in the world.

This list is far from exhaustive. Dinner table politics are varied and ubiquitous. Sufficed to say, I hope that this discussion will whet your appetite and provide the impetus to examine those myths that you perpetuate at your own dinner table, especially the ones that result in the most severe cases of political indigestion. Political disagreements should not be avoided; rather they are subjects for exploration. If you cause indigestion amongst fellow diners who would rather conversation be comfortably trite, perhaps this is a sign that you have begun to spark change. A place must be set at all dinner tables for those who refuse to unquestioningly consume the discussion menus they are served, and instead demand improved, overtly political conversation. Perhaps reading this book can be a catalyst for change at your dinner table.

So, I hope that you have an appetite for a renewed political discourse. The table has been set. The food is prepared. Family and friends are gathered. Whatever will we talk about? Ultimately, specific content is less important than the participants’ mindsets. I may be your host, but unlike etiquette guru Judy Bowman, I do not intend to control this event I’ve organized - at least beyond getting the discussion started. Let us all be civil,


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yes, but we must not throw aside politics in the name of courtesy and petty manners. Food and knowledge are inexorably linked. Let us dig in before either grows cold. Pull up a chair, raise a glass and consider the words of Byron:

All human history attestsThat happiness for man, -the hungry sinner!-

Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner.

Bon Appétit! - Michael, July 2007


Dinner Table Politics: Introduction

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Transcript of Dinner Table Politics: Introduction