A Thanksgiving Day argument between two sons over NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem led to a father shooting one of his sons in the leg. The Cary, NC father was arrested and has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury in connection with the shooting.
As usual the leftist media and bloggers went out of their way to encourage their anti-American comrades to stick it to conservatives this year at Thanksgiving. They warned their unhinged followers to not be afraid of confrontation with family members, claiming it was actually their moral obligation to stir things up with their relatives.
In a piece written by Amy McArthy titled: You’re Morally Obligated to Call Out Your Racist Relatives at Thanksgiving—The annual dinner is the perfect time for uncomfortable conversation, she suggests ignoring social norms and going after your relatives at the dinner table if they don’t conform to your views:
There’s a real bystander effect that comes into play when someone at the Thanksgiving table begins ranting. At first, maybe you think the presence of a large group of people will prevent racial slurs from falling out of someone’s mouth, and then they do.
Most of us are raised to unfailingly respect our elders, which creates a hierarchy of who is even allowed to “talk back” to our grandparents and aunts in general, much less at a table full of people.
Overcoming what you’ve been trained to do since birth takes a little bit of courage and a lot of hard work, bizarre family dynamics notwithstanding. (As a Southern progressive, I’ve learned that “no politics at the dinner table” really just means “keep your mouth shut and don’t upset your grandmama.”) But if you’re so disgusted by what you see in the news, you can’t just sit there and pretend that the people in your family didn’t play some role in getting to where we are today: If your family has a particularly conservative political bent, it’s unlikely that they’ll feel uncomfortable talking about the hypothetical harms of the caravan of migrants currently making their way across Mexico, or shy away from agreeing with Trump that certain people of color, like LeBron James and Maxine Waters, are “dumb.” For that temporary peace during dinner, you trade an opportunity to make a space you occupy safer for everyone. What’s actually happening here is that you’re being asked to overlook bigotry in favor of politeness, which is a classic modeling of the way that calls for civility are used to excuse this behavior and suppress pushback against it.
For one Cary, NC family, the advise of Amy McArthy, who suggested it’s a moral obligation to confront relatives over Thanksgiving dinner could have caused the death of a son and possibly life behind bars for the father.
According to CBS17– Witnesses told police that the victim had been drinking heavily throughout the day before the physical and verbal confrontation that led to the shooting occurred.
Lamadrid told police that his family had just sat down to have Thanksgiving dinner when two of his sons got into an argument about athletes taking a knee during the national anthem, warrants show.
The victim became confrontational with his older brother and it was at that point that Lamadrid told his 21-year-old son to leave the house. Soon after telling his son to leave the home, the confrontation between his two children became physical and he tried to step in, but was not strong enough to keep his sons separated, he told police.
According to the warrants, once Lamadrid realized he couldn’t stop the confrontation and his youngest son wouldn’t leave the home, he went to get his shotgun. The man left the home and went to the backyard after seeing his father with a shotgun.
One of Lamadrid’s other sons then started an argument with him saying that it was his fault the whole confrontation began, warrants show. He then asked that son to leave the house. His son complied and left.
Once that son left, the victim came back into the house and continued to argue with his father before Lamadrid took his son’s bags and put them outside on the back porch. His other son, who was first in the argument with the victim, then threw his brother’s bags off the back porch, according to the warrants.
The victim then began throwing patio furniture in the backyard. Lamadrid was still holding the shotgun as the furniture was being thrown around, warrants show.
According to Lamadrid, his son then threw a water bottle at him and hit him in the face, which caused him to squeeze the trigger and fire off a shot.
The victim was hit in the hand and leg. Lamadrid told police he went to check on his son and then went inside to get dressed and wait for police to arrive.
The victim suffered non-life threatening injuries.
