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Thanksgiving Day 2009: Things Could Be Worse

2 years ago

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Senior Correspondent

"It could have been worse" is not a Thanksgiving sentiment normally associated with Norman Rockwell or grandma in her gingham dress. But this has been a tough year and it comes at the end of a troubling decade that could easily be described as the Anxious Aughts. So today as we look out at our turkey-trimmed and stuffing-stuffed holiday tables, it seems appropriate to offer a toast or prayer in honor of all the fashionable fears and dramatic dreads that blessedly have never come to pass.

Less than a year ago, once-bullish economists worried that the global financial system would collapse like a house of frauds -- er, cards. What was predicted was not merely a deep recession, but Rome after the Visigoths. It was not Goldman Sachs, but Goldman Sucks. Instead of a difficult few years, the soothsayers wailed about a lost generation.

We forget how panicked normally rational people were in the face of the economic catastrophe. Here in New York, to be honest, my wife and I worried about being homeless and having to live under a bridge. But the scary thing was the vision that all the Manhattan bridges would be taken and we would have to endure the social indignity of living under an Outer Borough bridge. Instead of Whole Foods, we would be reduced to foraging for food.

This is not to make light of those ravaged by the worst economic downturn in nearly 30 years. Being jobless and unwanted can create indelible scars, both financial and psychological. For those out of work and running low on hope, this will be a cruel Thanksgiving and no count-your-blessings platitudes can change that.

Yet, having endured the angst of last autumn, there is now a sense that we have survived a season on the brink. The recovery may be slower than Barack Obama promised -- and not all jobs and home prices will return -- but this is not a historical turning point when the American economy plunged into permanent gloom. So lift a glass in celebration of the Great Depression that never happened.

Today is the ninth Thanksgiving since the Twin Towers toppled and terrorists spread death from the sky. This is also a moment to offer abiding gratitude that the world-is-crumbling horrors of that September 2001 morning have never been repeated. In the wake of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, it was common for global strategists and government insiders to prophesy that America had to brace itself for wave after wave of suicide bombers and terrorist assaults.

Despite all the pronouncements that things never would be the same, the new normal is almost identical to the old normal. This may be a tribute to human resilience and enhanced government security, but -- aside from visits to barbed-wire airports -- fears of renewed terrorism rarely impinge on our daily consciousness. (Whatever the roots of the tragedy at Fort Hood, the killings there are regarded as an aberration rather than a return to the months of omnipresent fears.)

America surmounted the worst single day since Pearl Harbor with almost all our civil liberties intact, despite the panicky excesses of immigrant roundups and the questionable expansion of governmental surveillance powers. On this holiday, the point is not to debate the anti-terrorism policies of the Bush-Cheney administration. But it is worth taking a moment to reflect thankfully that the nation found a way to preserve our freedoms even while increasing our vigilance.

The challenges to a free press these days come not from government censorship but from the dire economic realities brought on by the Internet and changed consumer tastes. After (yikes!) four decades in the news business, I sometimes find it hard to resist the urge to dirge about the future of serious journalism. But every morning four newspapers (admittedly thinner than they once were) arrive on my doorstep, providing a tangible reminder that newsprint still endures.

More than paper and ink, it is the values of traditional journalism that need to be upheld amid a cacophony of partisan invective. For all the snarls from the right and the left about media bias, there is not a blogger who could opine for long without pining for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and other embattled bastions of the mainstream media. For every newsroom layoff and newspaper closing, there are also bold new efforts (okay, like Politics Daily) to satisfy the unquenchable curiosity of Americans about the world around them. After acknowledging a smidgen of personal self-interest, I am ready to offer a holiday toast to the continued survival of a free press with and without newsprint.

If there is a moral for this Thanksgiving, it lies in the simple pleasures of muddling through hard times. What the doomsayers and gloom-mongers forget is that almost all apocalyptic prophesies never come to pass. Yes, man-made global warming is a serious threat. But that does not mean that a few years from now, I will need a rowboat to get out of my 11th-floor apartment after the seas dramatically rise. Panicked pronouncements create dramatic television and must-read headlines. But that is not how life works in America. So my hope is that we will all be back around the holiday table next November, more prosperous, safer and better read than we are this Thanksgiving.

Tagged: 911, civil liberties, CivilLiberties, economic meltdown, EconomicMeltdown, thanksgiving

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