Arguing Politics With My Dad

or: Too Fast, Too Furious

One of the best decisions I’ve made in my 40s (and only occasionally relapsed on) is to stop getting furiously worked up about politics with my dear dad.

As far as New Year’s resolutions that can improve both your mental health and your familial relations, this one might be even better — and more doable — than losing 20 pounds or writing the great American novel.

First, let me back up and make this very, very abundantly clear from the outset: My dad is the salt of the earth. To know Don Wingert is to love him. He is one of the kindest, gentlest men I’ve ever known. A man without ego, without malice, and without machismo. A man who, like his father before him, is a dedicated dad and a sweet, silly grandpa who gets down on the floor to goof around with his grandkids. If I end up being even 2/3 as likable as my dad, I’ll consider my life a rousing success.

He’s a saint, I tell you.

Politics is what causes all the trouble. After all, modern political discourse is a prickly business. Divergent opinions on presidents and the 2 major parties during the polarized last decade can threaten to drive a nasty wedge — between friends, between lovers, between siblings. And in many cases, between a loving father and a loving son.

When one of the two of them likes Fox News and World magazine, and the other one likes NPR and The Atlantic, the narratives these two men consume in 21st century have little to no overlap. Each man resides in something of an echo chamber, and those chambers are not adjoining. Heck, they might even exist in not-very-parallel universes.

Thus, a friendly discussion quickly intensifies into a fierce, heated debate. Especially for opinionated sons who grew up idolizing one major political party and then gradually became much more aligned with the other one. A son who has grown estranged from his childhood assumptions, whose tongue has grown hot and overly reactive with frustration.

And so it goes, or at least used to go, between my dad and me.

To be fair, it was almost exclusively me who got worked into a froth over politics. In terms of tone and temper, I was the one who was in the wrong 97.8% of the time. (In terms of political substance, that’s of course a matter of personal preference.)

In any given debate with my dad, I would invariably ratchet up my volume in proportion to how strongly I felt about the subject at hand. Spoiler alert: I usually feel quite strongly. Thus, I was usually quite loud.

Thinking back on my impetuous political temper tantrums makes me sad. Because here’s the thing: I have no idea how long I have left with my 78-year-old parents. Hopefully it will be a decade or two. Or even three, if modern medicine can somehow extend our lives to 110 years! But we are not promised 90-100 years for our parents, and we are not promised 90-100 years for ourselves.

So it hit me a few years ago, possibly in conjunction with the advent of the Covid quarantine era, that I was a short-sighted fool to spend my time with Dad bitterly arguing about politics.

The result of that epiphany? My family’s wonderful weekly visits to my parents’ house, a peaceful place that is filled to the brim with love, are not punctuated by my political outbursts. I mean, I do still get worked up talking about this stuff with my mom sometimes. But she and I have a totally different dynamic. My dad and I simply can’t navigate the acrimony (which again, is primarily my acrimony) in a way that is constructive for anyone involved. So we just… don’t anymore.

Sometimes avoiding a subject is the best path forward.

Sometimes focusing solely on what you have in common is the way of wisdom.

And my dad and I have a ton in common. Like our love of food. And our love of goofy humor. And our love of the Philadelphia Eagles. And our love for my 2 kids. And most of all, our love for each other.

My mental health has benefited from the shift in perspective. As has my relationship with my dear, delightful dad. (And my gosh is that man ever delightful.)

I won’t overreach and tell other people in other family situations that they need to make peace with their differently-voting family. I know my family is unusually close-knit, which makes political differences much more surmountable. And I know in some families, there is genuine toxicity rather than mere voting variance.

But I will say this: If family is valuable to you, and if your family is worth preserving in the long run, then it might well be worth overlooking the votes they cast that you dislike (or even morally disapprove of). Shunning your family is an earth-shifting decision that can carve out fault lines that will have a seismic effect for years. And it’s a decision to approach with great solemnity.

Family and friends are everything in this world. One without the other is bearable, but maintaining both connections is ideal.

So even if you and your dad (or mom, or brother, or sister) disagree about politics, and even if you ardently voted against the person they ardently voted for, consider this:

Your dad or mom might in fact be a wonderful person.

And you might in fact be much better off with them in your life.

It reminds me of what that renowned Zen philosopher Dominic Toretto once asked in Fast & Furious 7: “You’re gonna turn your back on family?” Or it’s like he waxed eloquent in Fast & Furious 10: “Without family, you’ve got nothing.” Or it’s like he said even more concisely in Fast & Furious 8: “What’s real is…”

[wait for it… wait for it…]

“…family.”

Make no mistake: Politics is real, and it has genuine consequences. But politics is not as real as family.

And on this Thanksgiving, I am real thankful for that enduring fact.

And so grateful for my dear, sweet dad.