Thanksgiving as a political resilience tool

Gratitude inhibits the resentment and grievance political opportunists exploit for money and power.

While scurrying to finish as much writing and editing as I could before Thanksgiving, I randomly remembered a cringe-worthy incident I caused while scurrying to finish a different writing assignment several Thanksgivings ago. At that point in my life I was still severely afflicted by Trump Derangement Syndrome, including a symptomatic need to Hashtag Resist™ (read: identity-politicize) everything at every opportunity. One of my job duties at that time involved writing my organization’s newsletter, including a Thanksgiving-themed one when the time came. That’s how I got myself into a pointless power struggle with a white senior staffer, over whether I could characterize the Thanksgiving holiday as a reminder that the Bad Orange Man’s “attacks on our rights” were “a continuation of the bigoted dynamics” inherent to “a nation founded on violence, theft, and enslavement.”

I mention my colleague’s race not because it actually mattered then or now, but because it was my primary weapon against her completely understandable distaste for my obnoxious holiday soapboxing. At this point, I don’t even remember the outcome of that particular power struggle. What I do remember is how internalizing this distorted narrative about my country burdened me with an outsized sense of racial resentment. Despite objective evidence that I was living a safer, more luxurious life than most humans of any race past or present, I viewed reality through deeply uncharitable grievance goggles. Highly miseducated and ideologically segregated, I wallowed among millions of perfect marks for bad actors stoking divisiveness within our institutions and culture more broadly. Fortunately, I was just about to get serious about my spiritual and mental health.

Not long after that editing kerfuffle, I started several gratitude practices as a means of retraining my brain to resist the negative cognitive distortions that accompany anxiety and depression. For the next couple of years, that helped me to at least pepper my writing and work with appeals to joy and self-care while doing The Work™ of Resistance™. But once I started to fundamentally question that ideology, and especially once I got some distance from my old echo-chamber, I started to let gratitude reorient my thinking about America itself. That gave me much-needed perspective, which in turn made me more resistant to warped historical narratives-- and to emotionally manipulative rhetoric that relies on those narratives.

Does America have terrible things in its past and present? Of course. So does every other society, because all societies are made up of people. And people, without exception, are simultaneously beautiful and broken in countless ways. Every society has practiced slavery, engaged in warfare and other conflicts over resources, and/or been otherwise crappy to each other. Yet Western nations, and America in particular, have also done significantly more to restrain and overcome those crappy tendencies than activists acknowledge.

Past generations of Americans fought to codify peaceful ways to protect our rights to life, liberty, and property, creating the frameworks later generations (and other nations) would use to outlaw slavery and redress other injustices. The political and economic systems activists like my former self agitate to “dismantle” are the very social technologies that have powered previously unfathomable levels of human freedom and prosperity. Cultivating a sense of gratitude for the historically unique time and place I am blessed to live in helped me recognize how deceptive and reductive the “America is fundamentally oppressive” narrative is. (It also helped me start questioning the voices and institutions fueling my irrational Trump hatred, but my TDS recovery process is a story for another day.)

The notion that America (and the West more generally) is fundamentally or uniquely oppressive fosters an exaggerated sense of grievance and resentment that conditions people to reinterpret universal human struggles as evidence of “systemic injustice.” Misinterpreting those experiences and then blaming “the system” for our problems often leads people to malign the societal frameworks that sustain the freedoms and luxuries we take for granted. Ironically, that misplaced blame encourages academics and activists to attack the very structures that allow them to gain money, power, and fame for their activism instead of being imprisoned or killed for it. As my mother and grandmother would say, we got a lotta attitude when we oughta have gratitude.

Lest we forget, for most of human history -- and in many places to this day-- people have lived under some form of authoritarian rule. Ordinary people having direct, peaceful means of influencing the people and policies that shape our societies, as well as legal recourse if and when government officials violate our rights, is not the norm for our species. Our ancestors purchased that progress in blood. To dismantle one of history’s most despot-resistant systems, in pursuit of some utopia humans would be entirely incapable of maintaining even if we achieved it, would be to saw off the branch we’re sitting on.

Now, in case anyone is misinterpreting this call to gratitude as a call to shut up and tolerate whatever happens in society... just, please don’t. I’m not saying be thankful as a call to denial. We absolutely have real problems to address, problems caused by political actors spanning the entirety of the political spectrum. (No, the Trump administration/your disfavored political party did not invent incompetence or misuses of power. You just ignore it when your faves are guilty.) We’re trillions of dollars deep in economic dysfunction. We are so used to relative comfort, so unaccustomed to life under the actual kings our forebears defeated, that we have voluntarily expanded and misused government for purposes our founders never intended (often at the expense of its ability to do the things we actually need government to do). Those realities, among other things, pose real risks to our freedom and well-being.

Yet I’m saying be thankful because gratitude promotes emotional and cognitive resilience, which is essential for resisting divisive and deceptive political manipulation tactics. Be thankful, because remembering how good we have it compared to people in most other times and places can help us stop sabotaging valuable yet misunderstood elements of our political and economic systems. Be thankful, because cultivating a positive mindset helps us refocus on productive actions that strengthen ourselves, our families, our communities, and our country.

Especially as we approach yet another election year that’s sure to be full of misleading political shenanigans (and likely political violence), now’s a great moment to do whatever we can to help ourselves maintain some perspective. Deepening our understanding and appreciation for the principles and structures that have made us freer and more prosperous than so many other societies is a much better mechanism for political discernment than partisan labels or narratives.

And if nothing else, a little gratitude might just help you avoid an unnecessary argument at work, or over extended family dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving!