The big meal is over. The Vikings beat the Lions in a thrilling game. All across the nation people are wandering home, full of obligations fulfilled and too much food. Many have had the chance to actually count their blessings, the real meaning of the day, and understand that they are indeed wealthy.
Not everyone is so blessed, of course. Far too many people are alone and afraid, hungry and isolated. For all of the riches of our land they have been distributed unevenly and, at times, apparently at random. Yet this is indeed a good time to be alive to see the world come together, no matter how difficult it seems.
We have much to be thankful for.
Let’s all pray for the same things – and all be thankful for our gifts.
This is the start of the holiday season, the time when the northern part of the nation is slowly enveloped by darkness and cold. It is the start of a shopping binge for many, driven by tradition and a need to show off the riches that we all should be thankful we have. In the rush and drive these days apart, loafing and long, are a good practice.
Years from now, we will look back on these times and wonder what we were so anxious about. We will either come together and solve our problems or drift further apart. There is no third way. No matter what, we will change and evolve.
There is a lingering feeling that something has died. Maybe it’s the American Empire, the sense of rule that we should never have arisen in the first place. Americanism became the standard for the world, in culture and language and even at times the drive for freedom. Most of what has swept over the world is the exact opposite of empire, bringing the entire operation into question at the very start.
What is to become of us?
The world is connected. The answer is out there.
We will all know in some number of years. Today it seems like everything is up for grabs and the future belongs to those who are aggressive and determined. That won’t hold. Like the empire, there is a flaw built into the heart of it which makes it unsustainable. The world will either rise in rebellion or, more likely, wander away from those who claim an undeserved supremacy. That process will liberate, inspire, and bring success that the whiners who insist on their right to rule based on their aggression to slowly fade away.
It’s the speed of the process that is a problem.
The world does belong to those who can integrate, those who can cross cultural lines and make new friends and inspire. The world has a lot of work to do, and those who do it will be successful. It just doesn’t seem like it right now.
When it does become obvious the riches of the times we live in will become much more apparent. And we will wonder what all the noise and fuss and whine was all about.
This, too shall pass. We have much to be thankful for.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 
Happy Thanksgiving from Canada Erik.
Leslie
It has to get better.
Reblogged this on Filosofa's Word and commented:
For those of us who are not enthralled with the antics of the man in the White House and his minions, it is sometimes difficult these days to keep our perspective, to see that ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. More than once, I have been sagely advised to look back at history, to note that these dark periods always come to an end and saner heads ultimately prevail. Today, I share with you a post by my old friend and fellow-blogger, Erik Hare, that I found especially encouraging, and I hope you will too. Thank you, Erik, for helping us remember to put everything into perspective, and for your implied permission to share your work!
Erika,
Well said. If we don’t alter our path, this period will be remembered as when America ceded its global leadership position. Twice now the President has given an inward looking speech, once in Davos and just last week in Vietnam. Each time, he was followed by Xi Jingping who gave the speech the American President usually gives about global collaboration. This is more than symbolic. What troubles me is what I just wrote has been espoused by two former global security leaders in separate interviews. We cannot shrink to greatness. Keith
Sorry for the extra “a”
As many including George Harrison have said or sung, all things must pass. Isaac Asimov addressed the idea in his famous Foundation series (Empire came into being, then empiredisappeared.). Apartheid in South Africa ended too. (Despite the whites there writing every law possible to sustain their “superiority” over everyone who wasn’t white, or rich.) And it is true in most cases that wrong will be made right.
But as much as I respect your assessment of the United States of America, there are times that “time” needs a nudge, and I believe that today is such a time. Trump is destroying America as fast as he can. And he doesn’t care about how he does it. By the time that “time” works its magic, this time that time might be too far away, too late in arriving. AND THE WHOLE WORLD WILL SUFFER FOR IT. Help time do what needs to be done. Get rid of Trump before he gets rid of the rest of us.
A good and perspective post Erik.
Writing from the UK I’ve always felt a little sorry for America. Your time on centre stage during an Act in the Historical Opera came just when folk got hold of some notions of Existentialism at the same time as folk were playing the old game of ‘Who’s Fault Is It, Apart From Me, That Is’.
So here you were America. The economical power house which provided the tools and some of the blood to beat the Axis in WWII. Top Nation (Along with The USSR that is). But the rules had changed you weren’t allowed to be too triumphal. The Romans, The British, The French, The Germans, The Japanese, The Chinese to name but a few had empires and were criticised for them by others, but did they care? Hell no! They revelled in it. Walked tall.
But in the US, in the wake of the horrors of WWI & WWII, many of you wondered if conquest and domination were the only ways. Many of you tried to stifle that feeling. Of course it didn’t stop the fashionable and the hacks (Buy-My-Badly-Researched-Book) blaming everything on the USA even if the rest of the World was doing just what it had been for centuries before you’d even been thought of.
Give you credit you tried. OK, so it didn’t work as good as you hoped, and the Usual Mistakes were made The Usual Way (You had Vietnam. Athens had Sicily. Britain had….ooh lots, and in the Whitehouse no one bothered to learn from what happened in the Philippines or to the Native Americans and there was Slavery…and guys who didn’t get why they lost the Civil War. You thinks that’s bad. Yes it is, but check out European history)
And currently, as happens in History, when the Nation hits turbulent times you get an incompetent in power, that’s not new. (You check out Hitler and the Japanese Military Clique of the 1930s-40s- in long term history- idiots!).
So I wish you folk well on your historical journey. But honestly, The USA as a big power with world-wide influence. Not a new thing. You are having your time. The Ups and The Downs. But actually, your are not The Great Satan; Nor The Source of All Bad Deeds; Nor The Great World Reaver. Ignore all the spite heaped upon you as if you were all to blame. You just got saddled with a wave of Idiots; it happens. (Nice break for Putin, according to the UK fashionable Left, he never does anything thing wrong- the Russian term is ‘useful idiots’)
Best wishes from a Hard Left Realist.
Roger
Pingback: Be Not Afraid | Barataria - The work of Erik Hare