Each Thanksgiving my family goes through an extended ritual of talking about things we’ve been thankful for during the previous year. This all started several Thanksgivings ago when my friend and I went to visit Alice at the church near the restaurant in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I was thankful then for the meal she provided. And I figured I should do something for her.
This Thanksgiving I am extremely thankful for those who are injected, inspected, detected, neglected and all kinds of mean, nasty ugly things for democracy.
The millions of poll workers, precinct captains and local election judges who give us their time to make sure our elections are fair, accurate and safe have my thanks.
Those who walk away, complaining about how they’ve been pressured and hounded, do not. Don’t let the bastards win. All that it takes for evil to succeed, as wiser men than I have noted in the past, is for good people to do nothing. I mean, I mean, I’m just sitting here on the bench and noticing all those who’ve walked away from the Republican Party while complaining about it yet doing nothing. They do not have my thanks. I’m also tired of hearing from former Trump staffers and administration officials who didn’t fess up to the boss’s insanity while they worked for him. They only found their conscience after they left Trump and signed lucrative book deals. None of them stood up to him when it mattered – when they were on the inside.
The coming presidential election is the ultimate test of survival and it’s going to be a struggle.
President Biden often refers to this in his stump speech. “Right now, we face an inflection point – one of those challenging moment in history where the decisions we make today will determine decades to come. But I don’t see a dark, dismal, divided future for America. I see an America about to take off,” Biden said when he opened his latest social media account on the new platform Threads for his 81st birthday.
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The agents of despair and chaotic despotism are smaller in numbers, but louder and more threatening than Biden. They are led by Trump, who rarely speaks of hope but always speaks about division, revenge and hate. The seditionists who love Trump have driven people with little stomach for the fight from the ranks of the Republican Party. They’re overwhelming us on social media with their scatological politics, their brazen threats and their attempted rewriting of history. They are a cult and supported by various corporate media and social media companies, mostly because of money, but also because some who run corporate and social media companies are as racist and misogynistic as everyone else in the cult.
These fascists who threaten the United States should not have their time in the sun. They deserve time in prison. Donald Trump is chief among them.
I spent too much time in and around Trump during the four years of his stain-spreading cancer in the White House. He is an empty threat — if you vote against him. I’m thankful for those who see that. He is a demented, devious, delusional, disgustingly disingenuous, dreary, despicable, destructive destroyer of worlds. He is destined to be historically synonymous with Benedict Arnold.
When all is said and done, if Donald Trump faces prison time, I still suggest we refurbish Alcatraz just for him. Call it Mar-a-Lago West. Put in a one-hole golf course. Let it be his compound staffed by his Secret Service agents and federal prison guards — no one else. Trump can live there unable to leave. His only contact with the outside world should be two hours, twice a day when he has to dress in an orange jump suit and stand in a cage. Tourists can visit him and get their picture taken for $20 a pop. It’ll pay for his incarceration and may help pay down some of the national debt incurred during his presidency. For that, I’d be thankful.
I’m thankful when people who haven’t spent as much time with him as I have, recognize the vile, villainous creature for what he is. “Make no mistake: the twice-impeached, 4-time indicted Donald Trump is still a fool. But we can’t let our fellow Americans write him off like one. Evil thrives in the shadow of dismissive mockery, which is why we must take the danger of Donald Trump very seriously. So today we issue another warning. From this place where Abraham Lincoln spoke — right here in the beating heart of New York — to the rest of America: This is our last chance. Democracy won’t survive the return of a wannabe dictator. And it won’t overcome evil if we are divided.” Those words were spoken by actor Robert De Niro.
The fact is, I’m also thankful many are aware that Trump is nothing but an empty suit who loathes everyone and everything on Earth — including himself. I also remain thankful, and have always been, for those who are capable of critical thinking and those who have the ability to discern vetted facts from craven lunacy aimed at dividing and conquering.
The price of liberty is, indeed, eternal vigilance as Thomas Jefferson taught us, but you need vetted factual information in order to be vigilant; so I also am thankful for my colleagues in the press, slim that their numbers are, who are dedicated to providing vetted facts to the American public for us to decide how best to use them.
You see, we still have choices. The most difficult of which, for some, will be who we will vote for in the presidential race next year.
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Some of those people are thankful for and say “God Bless Donald Trump” every day and pray for his ascendency as President and to replace Jesus on the throne. You can’t argue with the fact that he’s given millions of people a voice they never had before. Those people see Trump as a savior who restored American dignity, gave us tax cuts, cured a virus that many also believe didn’t exist, and he has “fought the deep state”, drained the swamp and built thousands of miles of wall, thus securing borders and he also single-handedly kept oil prices low. They also see the January 6 insurrection as a simple protest against Joe Biden — because Biden, according to them, didn’t actually win the election — Trump did (in a landslide no less). Of course, none of this is true, but his followers are thankful for Trump’s continued efforts to make it so.
Me? I’m also thankful for education and only wish more people took advantage of it. There are those who believe only Trump can set us free. There are others, more critical and educated, who know Trump is a phony, but he’s their phony. And then there are the racists, misogynists and assorted misanthropes who are happy to burn it all down and Trump is both the gasoline and the match to get this fire sale started. They have no hope, but are thankful Trump is contributing to their fatalistic cause. The rest are morons.
Many people have forgotten the horror of Trump and listen eagerly as Trump and his minions try to preach that Biden is the problem. The press, mindful of the Trump-led bat guano show, find themselves going easier on Biden — and that is not helping. Millions, who are capable of critical thinking are thankful Biden is around, but scared to death he’ll be defeated in 2024. Many who are incapable of critical thinking believe that Biden is the worst president ever, is on the take, and is both befuddled and an evil mastermind.
I’m thankful the election isn’t today, because a lot of people just don’t get it. Maybe we need four-part harmony.
What the MAGA supporter believes, on a very fundamental level, is that Donald Trump is the ultimate middle finger to the establishment that has been grifting and fleecing the middle-class and the poor for years. What those who oppose Trump understand is that he’s just the ultimate grifter. And he is by far the most dangerous to crawl out of the primordial ooze and infect the hopeless with imagined enemies, contrived inconveniences, and fill them with false hope since Lucifer fell from heaven. Yes. If you’re an evangelical, he’s not only amoral and dangerous, but that combination makes him truly evil. Donald Trump is the deacon of disaster.
I have just one question for the Don. Kid, have you ever been arrested? Did you ever go to court? I’m thankful that all of his mean and nasty and ugly, horrible crime-type stuff is now on display in a court of law complete with 27 eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one is to be used as evidence against Don. I’m thankful that so far, at least three of the judges in the four criminal cases against Trump aren’t a typical case of an American blind to justice.
You know what else I’m thankful for? Alice, Ray and Sasha the dog. So I’m going to get a friend of mine, go over to the church in my red, VW Microbus, loaded with shovels and rakes and other implements of destruction and load up their garbage for Thanksgiving.
Anybody know where the nearest dump is? And don’t tell me about the one that’s closed on Thanksgiving. I hear officer Obie gets mighty persnickety about that.
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