Conventional Wisdom: The Anti-Thanksgiving Edition

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Thanksgiving brings Americans together like no other national tradition or holiday. Well, most Americans. A small but vocal minority don’t have happy Thanksgivings.

Turtle Island ⬆

The historic name for North America among some Native American tribes is employed by activists to remind the rest of us of the colonial history of Thanksgiving. Turtle Island never trends on X but around this time of year it easily bests its revisionist rival Gulf of America.

Mass Blackout ⬇

A coalition of leftist groups is asking Americans to withdraw from economic activity to protest oppression over the Thanksgiving weekend. Travel is one of the targets of the boycott, Thanksgiving travel numbers broke records on the day the campaign began, so there’s nothing mass about the blackout yet.

Albuquerque Public Schools ⬇

The school district in New Mexico, the state with America’s worst public schools, told its students that Thanksgiving was a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native peoples. It may be called National Day of Mourning, but at least it’s still a school holiday.

Go No-Contact ⬇

Some of the nearly one-third of Americans who have cut ties with a family member simply can’t stomach their family’s politics anymore. They were reminded by virtually every online columnist his week that Trump and Mamdani showed America exactly how to endure dinner with a curmudgeonly MAGA uncle or a self-righteous socialist nephew.

JD Vance ⬅➡

OK, the vice president really doesn’t belong on this list. But he challenged a cherished Thanksgiving tradition by asking "who even likes Turkey?” That Vance was speaking to the troops after serving them, well, turkey, got CW’s attention.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer ⬆

The cult TV series is no more anti-Thanksgiving than JD Vance. But it got top billing at a Thanksgiving Myth Busters event this week for students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT distanced itself from the event saying it was closed for the holiday, but its students were free to bust myths and watch Buffy.

Originally a staple of Newsweek's print edition, Conventional Wisdom used arrows to track whose stock was rising or falling in the political circus. We're reviving it in the digital age because the problem it lampooned—hyperbole and partisan certainty masquerading as insight—has only intensified.

CW assigns arrows—up, down, or sideways—to the figures and forces shaping current events. The arrows don't predict the future or claim special insight. They capture the prevailing winds of the moment, uncluttered by tribal howling. In an era when partisan media reinforces rather than questions assumptions, CW operates from the center—skeptical of left and right alike, committed to puncturing inflated reputations and recognizing overlooked truths.

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