Giving Thanks for What We've Averted

[kpete]

Tom Nichols: “On Thanksgiving, we tend to express our gratitude for what we already have. We roll out of bed, glad (if we’re so blessed) that we are well and that our home is intact, and then head to the dinner table for a nice meal. Millions of us will do that on Thursday, and this is as it should be.”

“But I want to challenge you to find gratitude for the disasters we’ve escaped over the past few years. This is the thankfulness not for the warm hearth or full belly, but the visceral sense of relief, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, that comes from being shot at and missed.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/11/thanksgiving-american-economy-pandemic/672248/
https://politicalwire.com/2022/11/24/giving-thanks-for-what-weve-averted/

[jaxexpat]

1. Yep, only a flesh wound, a mere scratch.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

2. Most American's truly don't understand just how close we came to losing out democracy,

I am very thankful that our courts and military held to our democratic roots and rejected the tyranny of Benedict Donald and his criminal cabal.

This is a Thanksgiving to remember.

[Ocelot II]

3. Exactly that.

My relief on the night of November 8 was massive, almost as intense as on November 7, 2020, when the election was called for Biden. We have dodged a lot of bullets and we'll have to keep dodging them, but I have more hope now than I did a few months ago.

[onetexan]

4. Sure thing. We live to fight fascism another day.

I'm thankful for the good POTUS & his lovely mrs in the WH.

[localroger]

5. Being shot at and missed

31 years ago I was on the wrong end of a drive-by shooting. The perps fired five rounds at my house (Pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!) but only actually hit the building once. It was nearly midnight on December 23 and I'm sure they were wasted as heck. They had apparently been waiting for my wife to not be in the living room. My ex-neighbor, who was the real target, had "stopped by for a visit" because as he told me much later he realized he was being followed and didn't want to lead the perps to his own family.

Ex-friend as well as ex-neighbor, I might add.

One of the bullets put a hole in the window and a hole in the cedar cabinet I had taken from the Goodwill and turned into a media cabinet. I still have the cedar cabinet media center with the bullet hole. If you traced a line between the two holes, it ran about twelve inches in front of my face. I didn't know what the pops were, they sounded like firecrackers, but I felt a breeze as the bullet passed by. Ex-friend did know what the pops were and he had dialed 911 on my phone before the event was over.

It is difficult to comprehend how much those few seconds, more than half my lifetime ago, changed my life. It changed where I live, every relationship that I had, and the way I deal with new places and new people. For awhile I could not resist ducking for cover if I heard a car backfiring. My entire way of life changed.

And yes, this years midterm election was like that. I still don't feel safe and may never feel safe again.

[Timeflyer]

6. Living in Florida--feels like we took a hit. RW hopes for DeathSatan the 2024 Wonder Candidate

should scare the stuffing out of the rest of US.

[mahina]

7. Sorry mate

It’s rough!

[TomDaisy]

8. A republic, if you can keep it. #EternalVigilance