Let Us {Give Thanks} For Facts

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m reminded that I’m one of the lucky ones. Yes, lucky for being male, white, straight, upper middle class. I’m like a wunderkind of privilege. Ricky Stratton, but without the whole estranged father thing and, of course, the mansion with that train.

But I’m also lucky that I will be spending Thanksgiving surrounded by a bunch of other #NeverTrump folks. I don’t envy my many friends who must travel home for Thanksgiving only to find themselves sitting around a table with people who share Bashar al-Assad’s belief that Trump is a “natural ally.”

Now look, it’s easy to share memes and articles about how “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter.” Harder to go home and face up to the more complicated reality, especially when those voters are your mom or your dad.

Of course you can’t just write off your family any more than we can just write off half the voting population (well, technically speaking, just under half). That’s just not how the world works. The world sucks, and one of the reasons it sucks is that actions we often feel are unjustifiable are perpetrated by people we regard as otherwise good and decent human beings.

In any case, here we are. And we aren’t all about to just blow up our families the way that John Oliver recently blew up 2016.

But what to actually talk about around that table? My suggestion is to look for common ground. Hold off on arguing ideology and policies and start with the facts. Because this election proved, beyond any lingering doubts, that facts are dead. And, we, as a nation, can’t hope to make any meaningful progress until you and your family can at least agree on a few basic facts.

I suggest starting with really, really basic stuff like the following:

Fact #1: The Earth IS round.

Think that’s too basic? Well, tell that to members of one of several Modern Flat Earth Societies. If that’s your crazy uncle you might as well just excuse yourself from the table. There’s nothing to be gained from conversation at this point.

Fact #2: Everything is NOT “relative.”

Sometimes in an argument about “facts” you’ll get that person who claims that even Einstein believed everything was “relative,” and therefore, who are you to say my facts aren’t as valid as your facts? To which the proper response is, “No, Einstein didn’t say everything was relative. He said that time and space may be relative to different observers if said different observers are moving at drastically different speeds.”

Unless all those Trump voters were traveling at upwards of 100,000 mph when they pulled the lever, “relativity” doesn’t apply. And in any case, Einstein’s larger point was that the speed of light is always constant. It’s a universal. Unlike basic human decency, apparently.

Fact #3: 75 percent is not a sure thing.

Seventy-five percent is what FiveThirtyEight gave as the probability for a Hillary Clinton win going into Election Day. When she lost, I heard so many people freaking out about how badly the press and polls got it wrong (many did), including FiveThirtyEight with their 75 percent prediction. These people seem to believe that if the probability of an event occurring is “greater than 50 percent” and it doesn’t happen, that means the prediction was wrong. That’s not how probability works.

To get a handle on what 75 percent actually means, here’s another event that has a 75 percent chance of occurring: having kid a with brown eyes when both parents have brown eyes. My wife and I happen to both have brown eyes. But guess what color eyes our two oldest children have? They both have blue eyes, despite that outcome having the same odds as Trump being elected. So if your liberal dad is pissed at Nate Silver over his “failed prediction,” tell him he needs to direct some of that same moral indignation at Gregor Mendel.

Fact #4: Cell membranes are made of phospholipid bilayers.

I slept through AP Biology. I failed many a quiz. But I do have a valuable insight for any of your nieces or nephews around the table who are taking AP Biology. I did a few late night study sessions for the AP exam with some smart friends. We had an ongoing schtick where we’d constantly ask one another, “What is a cell membrane made of?” as if knowing that alone would be the guide to our testing salvation. Go ahead and guess what was the very first question on that exam. Facts matter people. Don’t leave the dinner table without making sure your nieces and nephews understand this simple, and elegant, fact about our cellular biology. They may be our only hope.

Fact #5: Racism, sexism, xenophobia, and LGBT discrimination are things.

You don’t have to be as super-woke as this dude to understand that we’ve got a long way to go to be post-racial or post-anything, frankly. Yes, of course liberals can be overly smug. But that doesn’t mean these are not real issues. Look at it this way. Would any amount of smugness on the part of the Round Earth contingent give more credence to the flat Earth hypothesis? Right. So tell Aunt Trudy that she needs to admit there’s a problem before you are willing to listen to her (no doubt well researched) critiques of #BlackLivesMatter.

Honestly, if you can agree on these five basic facts by the time the pecan pie is being served, then you’ve got something to build on going into Christmas.