The Prisoner's Dilemma of Thanksgiving Political Debates

As I prepare to leave Charlottesville for Thanksgiving this coming week, I look forward to spending time with family as well as reconnecting with hometown friends. However, with Thanksgiving comes perhaps the most unsavory holiday externality this side of being single on Valentine’s Day: political debate at the dinner table. I’m not quite sure what about turkey, stuffing, and being thankful for stuff provokes heated ideological debate between opinionated family members; perhaps it is proximity to election time, or the tendency of the holiday to bring together family members from far-away branches of the family tree, even more so than Christmas. Either way, it’s such a well-recognized phenomenon that many publications make it a tradition to prepare debate guides, from CNN, to Bloomberg, to… Barstool Sports?

               This tradition has indeed become such a fixture in Thanksgiving proceedings that a prisoner’s dilemma has been created, forcing family members to participate in political debate. I believe this is because there is a significant advantage to instigating political debate, and dragging others into it: if one family member engages and one does not, the person choosing to engage is able to take moral high ground, establishing their political views as uncontested and taking jabs at the opposing party without opposition. This becomes a nuisance for members of a party that chooses not to engage. However, if both parties engage, other discussions are consumed with political hostilities, and the quintessential American magic of a thankful family coming together to share a meal is disrupted as arguments proceed.

Republican family members\Democrat family members	Don’t engage in political debate	Engage in political debate
Don’t engage in political debate	3 \ 3	1 \ 4
Engage in political debate	4 \ 1	2 \ 2

              

Despite this prisoner’s dilemma, other family members often act as the government that forces a pareto efficient move. By forcing particularly opinionated family members to “not bring up politics again this year” a collective effort is made by the rest of the family to ensure civilized discourse.