Small talk, even on Thanksgiving—perhaps especially on Thanksgiving—is hard for me. Eating before dinner, eating dinner, eating dessert after dinner forces my stomach to suck blood from my brain in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of the caloric rush. And I can either go with the gastric-juice flow, becoming comatose with each successive bite, or I can fight back, which I chose to do this last Thanksgiving at the home of friends who had created wonderful dishes of cranberries with onions and apricots, parsnips with apples, rutabaga with carrots, turkey and stuffing.

To keep my eyes open, I posed the following question before we had even sat down to dinner: Why is it, if I’m intent on doing wrong, that I can successfully deflect criticism from myself by accusing others of doing what I’m doing?

For example, I tell my wife to be nice, implying, of course, that she’s not being nice, which is really what I’m not being—nice. But I say it first and sometimes put her on the defensive, an obvious sign of guilt. It’s a tactic which seems to work remarkably well, though after 25 years of marriage she’s on to me more often than not.

No sooner had I posed the question on Thanksgiving than two said simultaneously: “Projection.” Not being familiar with the psychological term, I asked them to explain. They said that I was transferring or projecting onto another my own beliefs and experiences.

Perhaps, I said, but why does it work? Though the accused, especially my wife, may be on to me when I employ the when-did-you-stop-beating-your-husband strategy, it nonetheless can play extremely well to an audience.

If I’m Hitler, for example, I blame the Jews, Gypsies, blacks, homosexuals and others for destroying German society. I then recruit Germans in the destruction of their citizens and society.

If I feel drug addicts are hurting our communities, I create drug-abuse crimes, the societal effect of which pales in comparison with the abuse of alcohol. I then proceed to select the poorest and most disadvantaged for prosecution, locking up predominantly young black males for significant portions of their lives, an anti-community action which is much worse than drug use and abuse.

If I’m a Democrat, I claim that the Republicans are intent on destroying public education and our communities by proposing vouchers. I then proceed to undermine our education and communities by advocating NAFTA and other free-trade agreements that push us and our children toward low-salary, unskilled service jobs for which an education is a disadvantage.

If I’m a Green, I claim that both the Democrats and Republicans are self-serving liars, enslaved by corporate interests, more the same than different. I then proceed to lie, certainly serving my interests and those who gave me money, by distorting the record of candidates who, in fact, may be more different than the same.

And if I’m a Republican, I claim that the Democrats are stealing the election in Florida by manipulating manual vote counts. I then proceed to disenfranchise voters and steal the election by manipulating the vote count, ridiculously claiming that machines, which are notoriously bad at detecting and counting any input which is not tightly controlled, are better at counting votes than humans.

While our Thanksgiving discussion kept me awake, we didn’t converge on an answer. The next day, however, when blood had returned to my brain, I stumbled on why the strategy is so effective: It appeals to prejudice.

The above approaches leverage our need to abuse others by creating categorical simplifications. We like our prejudices because they simplify our lives, energize our crusades, and make us feel like the superior people we used to be when we pointed at the kid on the playground and laughed at his appearance, made fun of his incompetence, made jokes about his family. They make us feel good because they make us feel right.

All of which is not to suggest that people don’t do bad things that they should be stopped from doing. But we may be more cynical and apathetic today because prejudice is constantly at play, and most of us, in our hearts, try to cleanse our prejudiced ways. We avoid the constant, prejudicial harangues that characterize public discourse. We become convinced that only the prejudiced are in control. We avoid public life. We drop out.

And we look at our presidential election and shake our heads in disbelief, finding ourselves back on the playground, watching a President-elect consumed by prejudice.