How to be grateful despite Trump

How is everyone dealing with the decline of America? I’ll tell you how I feel in a moment, but first I have a few observations about Thanksgiving.

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

Of course there is also enjoyment. For more than 10,000 years, people have celebrated major events – weddings, religious holidays, births – with festivals. The preparation and consumption of a festive meal satisfies eternal human needs. It’s not just the food itself. Eating is the most mundane of all activities. What sets Thanksgiving apart is the shared effort, sense of tradition, and childhood memories that the food evokes.

On the other hand, there are also iconic foods and childhood memories on July 4th and Easter. This also applies to Halloween. And yet they all lag behind Thanksgiving in popularity.

As a Jew, I’ve never celebrated Christmas, but I’ve learned from Christian friends that it takes a backseat to Thanksgiving because of the stress of buying gifts, decorating, and sibling rivalry (even among adults) over who gets what.

However, the most important thing about Thanksgiving is gratitude, and I think that might be the reason the holiday is at the top of the charts. Psychologists confirm that gratitude is good for mental health. The Mayo Clinic reports, “Expressing gratitude is associated with a variety of mental and physical benefits. Studies have shown that gratitude can improve sleep, mood and immunity. Gratitude can reduce depression, anxiety, difficulty with chronic pain, and the risk of disease.”

It’s also good for your mental health. Expressing gratitude out loud—to God or happiness—can bind a family together and help soften life’s jagged edges. Everyone, without exception, can find something to be grateful for. Remember Helen Keller’s admonition: “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”

That brings us to this year. The country has crossed a dangerous threshold with Trump’s re-election, and it would be foolish to simply wave it away. We were already exhausted from eight years of crimes, the moral cowardice of 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 condition. How can a patriotic American be grateful when the country has re-elected this villain as president?

Here are a few things on my list.

The election was close. Trump narrowly missed the majority of votes. Half the country voted against him, and among them are tens of millions of Americans who feel the same way we do about what happened to the Republican Party. Kamala Harris received almost 75 million votes. That is more than the population of all EU countries except Germany. We don’t scream into the void. We have a lot of company and just a few twists of fate can bring defeat to MAGA. History strongly suggests that the first setbacks will occur in 2026 (particularly if Democrats learn the right lessons from 2024, but that is a topic for another day).

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

Every election victory, no matter how narrow, invites arrogance. After Biden’s success, some described him as the next FDR. With Trump, whose self-esteem was already stratospheric, one can expect this error to become a thousand-fold worse. You will make mistakes. Elon Musk will profit from his fictitious DOGE post, which will infuriate Trump, who hates to see anyone other than himself receive a severance package.

Trump made promises that he cannot possibly fulfill. He vowed to cut prices and increase tariffs. He hasn’t the slightest idea how to lower prices, and increasing tariffs will only increase them. He has also promised that high tariffs will pay down debt, subsidize housing and child care costs and be paid for by foreigners. He said he would stop taxing tips and Social Security benefits but would not touch entitlements. Oh, and tariffs will completely replace income taxes. Um, no.

He promised to deport 11 million illegal immigrants and use the military to do so. This would be extremely difficult even for experienced managers who are used to difficult tasks. But this amount? The moral argument aside, 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 destroyed, again leading to the kind of inflation that voters want That’s how angry Biden was.

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

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