Thursday, November 24, 2016

About

America is divided. The two Americas aren't really talking to each other. Mostly they don't even hang out together. Sometimes Thanksgiving is an exception to that rule.

It could be that Thanksgiving is that special day you have to pretend that your moral knowledge is just your political perspective. "It is just my opinion. You are entitled to your own opinion." Maybe it's the day you have to compromise your beliefs just to keep your shit together.

I guess that's OK, but it's not the best. And it's less OK this year than last year, for sure.

It could be that Thanksgiving is that special day when you get to laugh it up, and hug it out, with your political enemies. Maybe you create some little utopian spark within all the surrounding darkness, even though you know that spark will never spread. But for just one day, families can come together and pretend that everything is OK, and that the wider world can just be put on pause. It's the day where we act out overcoming political differences, like a weird play that is supposed to bring hope and healing or something, only nobody is watching except ourselves.

I guess that's OK. But maybe actually it's not OK.

It could be that Thanksgiving is that special day when you just lose it, and speak truth to power, that day when you call somebody or everybody on what they've done, on what they are condoning and what they are embracing. That special day when you put yourself and maybe others at risk, emotionally and maybe in other ways too. You do that, only it comes out all wrong. Or it comes out just right, but somehow everything goes wrong anyway.

And that's pretty good. Except the bit about it coming out all wrong, or everything going wrong anyway.

Is there another way? I don't know. This is a miscellaneous jumble of resources for thinking about Thanksgiving. Hopefully it will grow throughout 2017. Please submit any stuff you'd like to see here. Maybe there should be like a recipe section too?

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