Our Holiday Gag Disorder

When I arrived at the restaurant I was surprised to see my friends with two women I did not know. Fine by me. A table of six can hold a single, focused conversation as easily as one of four without crosstalk that always makes me crave Excedrin III.

The two were cousins of my friend with Alzheimer’s, allowed out for an afternoon in the custody of her brother who can be as reticent as she without any such handicap. This was her birthday, hence the family additions.

Ralph, the sixth member of the party, the one who arranged it, tends to be chatty, often effusive, with a wit that makes all he says worth it even when it is nonsense, which it often is. Yes, he and I have enough in common to be friends for 51 years and counting.

We were barely in our chairs when Ralph (not his real name) told us that we could choose between two specials: roast vampire and werewolf a la mode. I laughed at the reference to Hershel Walker’s campaign gibberish, but held to the first rule for holiday gatherings in modern day America and said nothing that could in any way be construed as political.

One of the cousins smirked, but the other asked Ralph what he was talking about, and so he told her. She nodded, but said that “the mainstream media” makes too much of things about Republicans–all while they cover up for Democrats. Her example was Nancy Pelosi’s 84-year-old husband getting beaten with a hammer while at home in San Francisco. I was still making great effort not to roll my eyes at “mainstream media” when I heard this:

They say he was having a gay affair with that guy.

An explosion rattled my teeth:

Who’s they?

Others at the table froze while she claimed that “everybody knows” that the media “censors everything,” and “there was this report but they won’t air it.” I countered that what she calls censorship is actually fact-checking and that, unlike her source, credible news sources will not circulate rumors, slurs, and fabrications that have no basis in fact. I ended by noting that she did not answer my question, so I hit–and I mean hit–repeat:

Who’s they?

Well, it’s a story that’s out there.

Who’s they?

Anyway, it’s not important.

Who’s they?

I can’t remember. I’m not saying it’s true.

Then why did you repeat it?

After a pause:

I was just using it as an example.

During the pause, I looked past her out the window and pointed: “That’s a blue heron!” Without being a shout, it was louder than my exchange with the cousin, during which, also with great effort, I kept my voice down by clenching my otherwise rattling teeth.

You could feel the sigh of relief around the table as the cousins and the brother turned their heads, and as Ralph and the sister looked up. By that time, the heron was gone, no doubt because it was actually a red herring with wings.

There or not, I rode that bird into a conversation about falcons, hawks, owls and others we see on Plum Island. Before long, the party safely landed in agreeable topics ranging from homes to family, from films to music, from hobbies to Sixties nostalgia, and from the clam chowder to the fried clams soon before us.

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Next morning I was enjoying a dark roast in Kafmandu to propel me up the Maine Coast when I overheard two fellows at a nearby table talking about holiday gatherings.

At first, one seemed to agree with his friend’s plans to limit his guest list and to avoid gatherings where he knew so-and-so would be present rather than having to hold his tongue about any subjects other than family, work, hobbies, sports, and weather.

Though tempted to lean in with my approval, I waited to hear the other’s response. In a summary paraphrase:

Wish I could do that. Or keep doing it. Thing is, this has gone too far because we keep letting it slide. We’ve gone with the flow only to find that we flow in a gutter. No, it has to be confronted before we drown in a sewer.

Now I wanted to agree with both of them, but Kennebunkport beckoned. Long-distance drives well accommodate long thoughts, and what could be longer than arguing both sides of a case you just prosecuted on pure impulse the previous day?

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From the McCarthy Era in which I was born, politics and religion have always been topics unfit for polite company.

Up until a few years ago, however, you could remain friendly with folks you knew were of different persuasions, even those who you knew believed you were going to burn hell forever for not accepting the sanctity of their one and only true God. There were student activists at Salem State back in the Sixties who drank and laughed with arch-conservative faculty in a nearby watering hole every Friday afternoon following arguments “hotter than a matchhead.” I was one of them until I got thrown out for being under-age.

When did it change? Some liberal commentators cite Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” in 1994, others the white backlash to the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Both were landmark events, and there’s no doubt Dick Cheney’s Darth Vader approach to foreign affairs and Sarah Palin’s coherence-free descriptions of “real Americans” greased the skid.

Also greasing the skid was the commonly accepted if unwritten rule that nothing can be compared to Hitler and the Nazis, or to slavery. We held to it even as swastikas and Confederate flags started flying publicly in June of 2015. Did we confuse “comparison” with “equation”? Did we forget that making comparisons is a mode of thought? With that self-imposed restriction on our ability to think, why are we now so surprised and shocked to see Nazi insignias and the Stars & Bars all over the American landscape today?

Aversion to any such talk is understandable, especially following revelations of a former president’s connections to those who advocate white supremacy and boast that they “love Hitler.” I still sympathize with the first fellow I overheard in Kafmandu, and I truly regret making three college friends and one of the cousins uncomfortable for a few minutes in the Village Inn.

But I must side with the second fellow. Just as the self-imposed ban on comparisons to what happened in a democracy in the 1930s has greased the skid toward authoritarianism in this century, so too has making politics taboo in polite conversation.

Talk about disconnection: Do we even notice that the words “politics” and “polite” are from the same root?

Kennebunkport is not that long of a drive, but it is long enough to conclude that, although no one uses the term “gag order,” this pact we impose on ourselves to avoid political talk is exactly that. Over the holidays it’s understandable, practical, perhaps necessary. But year-round it becomes a dereliction of civic duty.

In a word, it’s un-American.

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