Gratitude 2012

It's only been a couple of weeks since the election, and so perhaps appropriately it comes to mind when considering this year's reasons for gratitude.

Of course there are the personal and family things--everybody being healthy at the top of that list.  Several of our younger generation bought homes in recent months, despite recent tough times.  So there's that.

But considering how close we came to disasters of amazing breadth and proportion, and how important these election victories are to the near future and hopefully to the farther future, it's hard not to think of gratitude at the outcome.

We need not even speak of the poetic justice of Mitt Romney's final share of the popular vote likely being 47%.   But considering the consequences of electing him and fellow GOPers is inevitable even while viewing the consequences of the positive outcome.  For example, President Obama's southeast Asia trip, and his successful gaining of a cease fire in the Middle East, with the important assistance of Secretary Clinton.  President Obama is pursuing a forward-looking Pacific strategy that has vast potential for American benefits for decades to come.  No GOPer these days seems to have any conception of a forward-looking foreign policy.  They don't even approach a sane one.  Mitt Romney and Ryan were together the least experienced, least interested and most incompetent candidates in history on foreign policy and diplomacy.  It should be shocking, and maybe, judging by the election returns, it was.

As details about the election continue to come out, we can become even more thankful for the volunteers and the staff of the Obama campaign that worked so hard and so well for so long. And again, as GOPers in several states push even more voter suppression, we can be thankful for those who stubbornly stood in line for hours to make sure their votes counted.

I'm still a little wary of the talk about amity in Washington and the new weakness of the GOP--we heard it all right after the 2008 election.  Then came 2010, and soon comes 2014.  But maybe the mood has changed.  It's one thing to give a brand new President a vote of confidence in approval ratings, etc.  But it's something more to boost a reelected President's approval rate (to 58%), and to have more confidence in his leadership (and his party) to solve pressing problems by a wide margin, as evidenced in other recent polls.

The country is perhaps ready to treat this President as their President, more openly than before.  That photo above, for instance, is the most shared photo in the history of Twitter, and the most liked photo in the history of Facebook.  Not long histories exactly, but that's overcoming some big, big numbers.

But this President very deliberately campaigned on a philosophy and a set of policies, so they won, too. There has never quite been as stark a choice before.  In terms of general issues like fact-based science, womens rights over their bodies, equal rights, against growing income inequality, for universal health care, etc.--the future was affirmed.  A diverse American community was affirmed--even slightly in advance of true demographic equality. 

And so, perhaps most appropriately to the holiday, let's note that compassion won.  "We're all in this together" won.  "You'd do the same for me" won.  

So with wishes for a happy thanksgiving to U.S. readers (and belated greetings to readers in Canada, who celebrate their thanksgiving in October), once again here's a link to excerpts from Joanna Macy's essay on Gratitude.