Many people are aware of a change in the world that is both exhilarating and disturbing. This year’s Thanksgiving Day holiday was celebrated on Thursday, November 23. These are crucial times. Just days before the government was scrambling to avert a shutdown. Our former president has been brought to court, while many of his followers, incredibly, consider him to be nothing short of the second coming of Christ! They believe this in spite of the fact that his legal troubles are weighing heavily on him and his family.
On other fronts, people are suffering all over the world. A side bar to this is the rise of a strange kind of Christianity, where people are relying upon their own interpretation of what religion is and how it should control society. This is one of the problems – people are having difficulty living life without trying to dictate to others what their lives should entail. They want to control our bodies, our minds, our neighborhoods, cities, and states, as well as what we eat, drink or where we lay our heads to rest after a long day’s work.
Why are these things important for us to recognize? The answer lies in the foreboding of things that might take place in the near future. We are not out of the woods regarding a government shutdown – we have only a temporary reprieve. We have at least two upcoming threats where we will face that issue again. Hopefully, Congress will find a way to fix the problem so that suffering of the American masses can be averted.
Interestingly, it is said that those who are in charge of finding a solution to the problems connected with the national budget will not be as adversely impacted by a government shutdown. If Congress drags their feet, individual plutocrats won’t suffer nearly as much as the average “joe.” In order to ensure that the issue is tackled with the urgency that it warrants, in the future we might enact a policy wherein Congressmen will not be paid until they come to a swift resolution of the economic problems we collectively face. That would speed things up!
Considering all of the foregoing, we face a new season of uncertainty; we are on the precipice of triumph or tragedy. If we are not able to move aside the cobwebs of collective ignorance regarding the political process, we may actually lose our democracy. Many people just do not understand this because they have been subjected to a steady diet of disinformation. Some of them don’t understand the past; they don’t understand what was at stake during World War II. They can’t comprehend that that war was a fight for the dominance of the entire planet! Hitler wanted to dominate the world, and he almost succeeded.
Today we have a similar threat. A past president has designs on the White House even though he is facing criminal charges. That, however, does not deter his followers. He is actually leading in the polls and is seen as a huge threat to another Biden presidential term if he stays in the race. We are facing one of the biggest threats to our democracy since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
We are also in the throes of climate change, which is having a deleterious impact on our well-being from many angles. Famines, floods, earthquakes and more; it is almost as though our world is feeling the pressure that comes with an unhappy and desperate humanity. We are, after all, stuck on this little blue-green globe together, at least for the time being, if Elon Musk and others continue their quest for us to become a multiplanetary species.
All of the foregoing, and much, much more, is facing us this Thanksgiving as we anxiously anticipate our collective future. So, to what can we be thankful in the face of chaos? We have each other; we have our families, friends, and a cadre of experienced people who can help us navigate the chaotic waters that threaten us if we would just pay attention and do the right things. And what are the right things? It is that which benefits the most people. We can start with our own families and communities; that is where we can make the biggest difference. And finally, we can be thankful to be alive! Free will wouldn’t mean a thing if we did not have our lives! A Luta Continua!
