Francesca Hong’s latest attempt to walk back her “cancel Thanksgiving” tweet is a textbook example of how progressive politicians treat every American tradition as a live grenade that must be defused with the right talking points. By claiming the holiday is “incredibly painful for many” while simultaneously insisting she has cooked the meal herself, Hong is trying to thread an impossible needle: signal solidarity with the grievance-industrial complex without admitting she wants to erase a 400-year-old celebration of gratitude and survival. The pivot from outright cancellation to “views can evolve” is less an evolution than a calculated retreat once she realized the backlash could sink her gubernatorial ambitions in a state where deer camp and family gatherings still matter.
For the 2A community the episode is a reminder that the same cultural impulse driving attacks on Thanksgiving is the one that frames private firearm ownership as inherently suspect. When a candidate signals that foundational American customs are optional or problematic, it is only a short logical hop to treating the Second Amendment as equally negotiable. Wisconsin’s deer woods, trap ranges, and gun clubs are not just recreational outlets; they are living rebuttals to the notion that tradition must be apologized for. Every time a politician like Hong floats the idea that cherished rituals are sources of pain rather than cohesion, gun owners see the next logical target: their range days, their heritage firearms, their right to pass both values and rifles to the next generation.
The takeaway is straightforward: elections are about culture as much as policy, and culture is upstream of law. If Wisconsin voters shrug at a candidate who once thought Thanksgiving should be scrapped, they should not be surprised when the same worldview later questions why law-abiding citizens still need semiautomatic rifles for hunting or self-defense. The 2A community’s best defense is to treat every skirmish over tradition—whether it involves turkeys or triggers—as part of the same fight to keep America’s founding habits intact.
