How to Be Grateful Despite Trump

Mona Charen on Nov 29, 2024

How is everybody coping with the decline of America? I'll tell you how I'm doing in a bit, but first I have a few observations about Thanksgiving.

I wish I had a dime for every time I've heard someone declare that Thanksgiving is their favorite holiday. I used to say it myself, before I realized that it's so commonplace. What makes it so special?

There's the indulging, of course. Humans have been celebrating big events -- weddings, religious holidays, births -- with feasts for more than 10,000 years. Preparing and consuming a festive meal satisfies eternal human needs. It's not just the food itself. Eating is the most quotidian of activities. What marks out Thanksgiving is the joint effort, the sense of tradition, the memories of childhood that the food evokes.

Then again, July Fourth and Easter feature iconic foods and childhood memories, too. So does Halloween. And yet all of these trail Thanksgiving in popularity.

As a Jew, I've never celebrated Christmas, but I gather from Christian friends that it ranks below Thanksgiving because of the stress of buying presents, decorating and sibling rivalries (even among adults) about who gets what.

The most important thing about Thanksgiving, though, is the thankfulness, and this, I think, may account for the holiday's chart-topping status. Psychologists affirm that gratitude is good for one's mental health. The Mayo Clinic reports that "Expressing gratitude is associated with a host of mental and physical benefits. Studies have shown that feeling thankful can improve sleep, mood and immunity. Gratitude can decrease depression, anxiety, difficulties with chronic pain and risk of disease."

It's good for your spiritual health as well. Expressing gratitude out loud -- to God or to fortune -- has a way of knitting a family together and helping to buffer the serrated edges of life. Everyone, without exception, can find something for which to be thankful. Remember the Helen Keller admonition, "I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet."

Which brings us to this year. The country has crossed a dangerous threshold with the reelection of Trump, and it would be foolish to hand wave it away. We were already exhausted by eight years of outrages, moral cowardice by those we thought had character and the steady decline of decency. And now, we must prepare for at least four more years of the same or possibly worse. How can a patriotic American be grateful when the country has elevated this villain to the presidency again?

Here are a few things on my list.

The election was close. Trump just missed getting a majority of the popular vote. Half the country voted against him, and among those are tens of millions of Americans who feel as we do about what has happened to the GOP. Kamala Harris got nearly 75 million votes. That's more than the population of every EU country except Germany. We are not shouting into the void. We have plenty of company, and just a few vicissitudes of fate can bring defeat to MAGA. History suggests strongly that the first reverses will arrive in 2026 (particularly if Democrats learn the right lessons from 2024, but that's a subject for another day).

Civil society remains robust in America. Just as in Tocqueville's day, our tendency to form committees and associations to accomplish things is in our national DNA. Expect existing groups and new ones yet unborn to organize to preserve and strengthen the rule of law, anti-corruption initiatives and free speech.

Every election victory, no matter how narrow, invites arrogance. After Biden's success, some were describing him as the next FDR. With Trump, whose self-regard was already stratospheric, expect that error to be compounded a thousandfold. They will make mistakes. Elon Musk will profit from his notional DOGE post, which will infuriate Trump, who hates to see anyone get a payoff other than Himself.

Trump ran on promises he cannot possibly fulfill. He swore to reduce prices and raise tariffs. He doesn't have the foggiest notion how to reduce prices, and raising tariffs will only increase them. He has also promised that high tariffs will pay down the debt, subsidize the costs of housing and child care, and be paid by foreigners. He's said he'll stop taxing tips and social security benefits but will not touch entitlements. Oh, and the tariffs will replace income taxes altogether. Um, no.

He promised to deport 11 million illegal immigrants and to use the military to accomplish this. This would be extremely difficult even for experienced executives accustomed to tough assignments. But this crowd? Leaving aside the moral argument, if Trump's raiders were able to round up and deport millions of people, a number of industries -- agriculture, construction, hospitality and others -- would be devastated, leading once again to the kind of inflation that so soured voters on Biden.

The tide will turn, and in the meantime, those of us who hate illiberalism in all its guises need to refresh our minds and bodies this holiday to prepare for whatever may come. Happy Thanksgiving.

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Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, "Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism," is available now.