To Give Thanks is be Humble

To be humble is to be forgiving

When President Abraham Lincoln, whose name has been co-opted of late by many to justify any number of acts big and small, declared Thanksgiving a national holiday he had perspective in mind.

While the Civil War raged around him, with bodies being piled up, homes burned to the ground, division and hatred everywhere, Lincoln knew that it was still essential to communicate the bigger picture to Americans. To that end, he declared Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Lincoln didn’t mean it as a way to make Americans spend more money, as it’s come to be known. What are we if we aren’t an army of consumers? He didn’t do it to give a sanctimonious lecture to those whose politics he didn’t agree with. He didn’t believe, nor did most Americans believe, that people who fought on the Confederate side were evil in their hearts. If he’d believed that he would have simply put them in the gas chambers and wiped them all out. After all, that is what genocide is. Ridding the world of whole groups of people you believe are evil. Otherwise, no one would ever get away with it.

Had Lincoln given that kind of speech he’d have been Hitler. Hitler convinced Germany that the Jews were evil and not worthy of any kind of decent life, income, homes, status in society. They were greedy takers who had not fought in WWI (a lie). Just because no one sees it that way now doesn’t mean that Hitler didn’t sell it to the German people as a way of stereotyping a population for his own ends.

That is what we’re doing now on the left with anyone who voted for Trump. We see them, as we see anyone who fought on the Confederate side, as evil. People who allow for evil to take place. There is no doubt about this truth on the left and thus, as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday we know that Lincoln’s own speech, which was about thanking God for the bounty all Americans still had, would ring hollow.

On Twitter I would be called out for defending people who sold human beings as slaves and sat idly by while slavery helped build this nation. That is what they do on Twitter because Twitter is incapable of thinking in a complex way. It is one or the other. Good or evil. Pick a side. In order to settle with Lincoln himself (student at a Wisconsin university are, as we speak, trying to have a statue of him removed) and with your fellow Americans, you are required to see things from their point of view - with compassion. I know that’s a tall order when so much hate has been the only thing on offer for so long but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying for.

What Lincoln says in his speech is still true. It doesn’t excuse anything. It simply macros out to the bigger picture - to see what we all still have, what a beautiful planet we still live on, what kind of community this country still is, how kindness and empathy are still a choice, how the only thing human beings do that can achieve any kind of greatness whatsoever is choosing humanity in the face of inhumanity.

I know Twitter isn’t real life. And I know hate is the easier, more satisfying road. I know making other people the problem always makes it easier to look in the mirror at yourself, believing that you are on the right side. The number of people in this country who really are committed to white supremacy is very small. Yet, because the accusation is so broad and all-encompassing - coming up on 75 million by now, it’s hard to see this country as one. Pick a side.

I am grateful and thankful to have so much. Even if I am, much of the time, alone (except for my dogs and cats) I know that I am not alone because I have people who listen to me, who value what I think, who read these emails, who follow me on Twitter. That means a lot to me, so thank you. I also feel lucky that my daughter is happy and healthy and has now graduated college, is working and in a relationship. I am also grateful in the Lincoln sense - that we still have a country worth fighting for. We still have life - all of us still living.

Lincoln reminds the people of America that they are still under one God. Since we don’t really have much on the left that unites us, because many of us aren’t religious, we don’t have a way to bring ourselves together under one almighty force. That might be, at least partly why, we are having a harder time finding our way back towards unity. Back then, Lincoln could say - we might be killing each other over slavery but we can still agree that God is Great. Maybe that helped, maybe it didn’t. I do not know. But Lincoln did somehow bring the country together, even if forces back then continued to drive it apart, resentments continued to grow, division and hatred to foster until it all exploded again.

All the same, at a time when we’ve lost so many through COVID, like they did during the Civil War, it is still worth remembering what remains.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

William H. Seward,
Secretary of State