More Giving Thanks

Victor Davis Hanson had some "politically-incorrect reasons to be optimistic on Thanksgiving Day." Some of them bear a remarkable resemblance to my own.

The question is not whether America is in decline, but whether it is in decline at a more rapid pace than true of Europe, Russia, or Asia. And one bright spot in the otherwise dark economic news will be the resilience of the United States...

The media violated all the classical cannons of fairness and objectivity in this presidential campaign. Now they are in a dilemma, since most of their long-voiced objections about Bush won’t be operative any more... as they dream of reasons why Gitmo is not that bad, or why keeping the Bush tax cuts for a bit will stimulate the economy, or why wiretapping on suspected terrorists, on reflection, isn’t really that subversive... the media has lost credibility and will have to start over from square one...

I just returned from visiting an ill relative at Fresno Community Hospital in downtown Fresno... I would wager that many did not have health plans in the sense of employer-provided HMOs. But someone was giving them health care, and sophisticated surgery as well... Most who denigrate American medicine know nothing of the alternative...

Once again, I note from mail and the postings that critics on the hard Left continue to lack humor; when they should be ecstatic with the triumph of Obama and the new majority in the Congress, they seem instead curiously consumed by their petty anger and bitterness.

Even though I had the day off, I was in DC today to take care of a few things, and went to the sports bar where I always eat lunch on payday. The place was very empty on a day when the whole town is just as empty. Situated across the street from the Executive Office Building and the White House, it was once the favorite haunt of Clinton appointees. And so it will be again. What there probably won't be, are any "counter-inaugural" demonstrations. Maybe the Republicans are too busy having a life, to go into town and buy up tee-shirts with cheezy pictures of Obama with Martin Luther King (who was a Republican) and President Kennedy (another beneficiary of the Chicago political machine).

Maybe taking the long view of things makes it easier to be thankful. For that, it helps to have a command of history, and a longer memory than people who get their opinions from watching The View.

POSTSCRIPT: I had to buy an auger today to take care of an indoor plumbing malfunction. I could have gone to a "big box" store, but on a day like today, thank God for one of the few mom-and-pop hardware stores left in Arlington County. Things could have been as bad as they were in Nassau County, NY, where a Wal-Mart employee was trampled by a mob of shoppers with more important things on their minds than a sense of proportion. After being given CPR, the unidentified man was later pronounced dead.

Who says the economy is in trouble, when Americans are prepared to trample a man to death, all in the quest to buy more stuff?
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