One unchanging complaint about Thanksgiving in America is that it’s a time that forces many people to have to interact with relatives that have wildly differing opinions, whether politically, ethically, religiously, and so on. And while a variety of points of view and challenging one’s own ideas is undeniably healthy, it’s easy for holiday gatherings to get out of hand. Luckily, as always, I have a solution, and it involves cars. But it still keeps the arguing you don’t even realize you’d miss.
See, it’s absurd to think you’ll have a Thanksgiving with no arguments that devolve into tearful shouting matches and don’t end until a folding chair impacts someone’s face, sending geysers of gravy and clumps of stuffing flying around like a condom full of ground beef flung into a window fan—that’s just how the holiday is.
But, while I can’t remove the fighting—and, really, who would want to deprive the holiday of its most essential charm—what I can do is provide a list of sure-fire automotive-related argument starters that will keep the fighting away from the truly sensitive aspects of your life—who you choose to love, how you express your gender, who won an election, are viruses real, and so on.
So, avoid the real topics and get fighting with your aunts and uncles and weird cousins using these rage-tested car argument starters!
Try them out:
1. Nobody should own their own car. Instead, cars should be swapped between people every week, based on your zodiac sign.
2. The best car ever designed and built in America would have been the Datsun B210, if only Lee Iacocca (you can substitute pretty much any auto executive from the past century here, like Henry Ford II or George Romney) had any vision.
3. There should be different pedal arrangements for people based on their religious beliefs.
4. If you want a car with six cylinders or more, you should have to take weekly competency tests and drug testing.
5. Glove compartments should be required to have clear doors.
6. Masturbation in your car should be legal and encouraged for speeds under 35 mph.
7. Modern cars should require cellphones to be locked in a compartment before the car can be started. Also, if you speed, a mechanism in the compartment will scratch your screen.
8. Car colors should be assigned based on income level.
9. Jews control the automotive industry and they’re planning on making all speed limits end in a 7 and it’s time we called this out for what it clearly is.
10. Talk about how Elon Musk is either wonderful or terrible. Read the room to decide which will have more impact.
11. Neither the Mustang or Camaro is as bitchin’ a car as a Hyundai Tiburon.
12. Kia’s new logo is great and highly legible.
13. The industry’s abandonment of air-cooling represents a betrayal to decent people everywhere.
14. The Dodge Cirrus represents the last genuinely sincere car ever built.
15. In automatic transmission cars, the different gears should be selected by tracing the letter of the gear you want onto a pad with your finger.
I hope these help your family avoid real arguments about real, important issues. It will be up to you to figure out which side to take in these suggestions, but I promise all have plenty of anger-raising points available from nearly any angle, and you can push and twist most of these to touch on people’s sensitive beliefs, all while keeping things safely automotive-focused.