Office Hours: In a time of disappointment and fear, can we be grateful?

Thoughts on Thanksgiving Eve

Friends,

It’s been just three weeks and a day since the world was turned upside down and Donald Trump — after instigating a coup along with an attack on the U.S. Capitol, after being impeached twice, after intentionally nominating justices to the Supreme Court who eliminated a woman’s right to an abortion, after being convicted of committing criminal felonies, after being found in a civil suit to have raped a woman — was reelected president.

In the interim, he has nominated a Star Wars cantina of people utterly unqualified to run departments or take on governing responsibilities — conspiracy theorists, paranoids, bomb-throwers, right-wing hacks, and blithering Fox News hosts.

Under these circumstances, as America slips into the darkness of a Trumpian dystopia, it seems almost absurd to feel gratitude. Yet today, with Thanksgiving around the corner, I’m feeling grateful for many things.