Too small Thanksgiving

It isn’t that I don’t have anything to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving in America in 2024. I am seated before a stunning view, only partly captured in the photo accompanying this post. I have dear family and friends. Over the course of the past year, I left an institution I had thoroughly outgrown and moved to a wonderful new state. I could list more. But the problem with many of the things I’m thankful for is that they are too small. They are about me, my narrow life. On better Thanksgivings, I have had larger, broader things to be thankful for. I have been able to feel thankful to be part of a country actively working to realize constitutional democracy and a rule of law to underpin it. Thanksgivings where I could be thankful that more Americans had access to healthcare than ever before, where women had gained legal protection for their right to equal pay, where federal tax rates were adjusted in favor of lower personal income earners, where the Environmental Protection Agency was held to have an affirmative legal obligation to regulate greenhouse gas pollutants, where Americans as a whole seemed to be moving away from racism and homophobia, where U.S. military power was used to protect democracy and human rights in Europe. I could list more. Certainly on those Thanksgivings there were many aspects of American law, politics and culture for which I was not thankful. But overall my thankfulness easily ran beyond my own narrow well-being.

I want a larger Thanksgiving, one where I can be thankful for an America ambitious in its vision of secular constitutional democracy and the distribution of the wealth we collectively generate. I doubt we are going to see that capacious Thanksgiving any time soon. The Republican Party has long stood for small, cramped circles: personal wealth jealously hoarded; religious communities with parochial mores; families in service to a patriarch. Now the that the Republican Party has degenerated into a criminal syndicate/cult of personality, it can, does, and will pursue its small-mindedness with vicious vigor.

Thanksgivings in an America dominated by Republican Fascist control are too small for me. Yet as Thanksgiving 2024 has proceeded, I have realized that there are a couple of somewhat larger thing for which I am thankful. As of today, I am healthy enough, materially secure enough, and sufficiently supported by family and friends for me to contest and oppose the Republican Fascist takeover of my country. I know and actively combine with others who are also able and willing to be in the fight against Republican Fascism. For these things, I feel a deep gratitude. I am thankful to be able to fight for bigger Thanksgivings to come.