I put off penning my Thanksgiving missive to avoid one of those cranky thanks-for-nothing rants. I’m not all that thankful at present with the Nameless One tearing down my house and hopes. I’m furious, fulminous – but a little of that goes a long way and not on today, of all days. No one welcomes grumpy Gramps at the holiday board.

I also wanted to avoid one of those platitudinous count-your-blessings bonbons served up on festive occasions. Yes, I’m grateful for many things – loved ones, beauty, grace, kindness, you guys – but these lasting joys are darkened by our shared danger. Nowadays I am happy sometimes but as often disconsolate, a truth impossible to omit.

Yet I am thankful this Thanksgiving – in a new way, that surprises me. I give thanks for my education into the nature of our species.

You’d think by age 74 I might have settled on an opinion of mankind. Turns out my convictions were all wrong. The behavior of my fellow citizens has moved me from Rousseau’s optimism, that we are good deep down, to Hobbes’ pessimism, we’re essentially vile. Not all of us – not you – but enough to make a mess of civilization and my grandkids’ future. I’m thankful for this new knowledge, however bleak.

The focus of my disgust is curiously not the Nameless One and his goons, horrifying as they are. There will always be evil in the world: this lot is no worse than I expected.

Neither do I revile the voters who elected these misleaders. Stupidity is perdurable in our species (though it seems to be getting worse).

Neither do I blame the greedy plutocrats for grabbing all they can grasp. If money’s to be had, they’ll have it – that is their nature.

What has shocked me is the pusillanimity of those who ought to have been good, especially those who ignored the Constitution they swore to defend; who, to keep their jobs, knowingly looked away from the trashing of the public good. No defensible ideal explains their acquiescence to the decimation of democracy. Nary a Republican Senator or Representative had the guts to yell “No!” And those Supreme Court justices!

I’ve contempt left over for those who convinced President Biden, whom I thought a good man, to seek reelection to an office for which he was manifestly unfit. What irresponsible monomania – from folks who share my politics! As Francis Bacon snarked (in 1623): “Some men set their houses on fire to roast their eggs.” Plus ça change.

It’s possible that the American public will rescue a free America from this wreckage. The battle seems not yet lost. But how revolting – and revelatory – that we the people and our representatives allowed this to happen. How passionate our devotion to our own interests, to hell with our neighbors’!

I am thankful, too, for the gift of a mission in my later years. Humanity needs morality more than ever, we need our heads fixed, and that is a job for teachers, preachers, and screechers. We need to be shown why the Sermon on the Mount, US Constitution and Gettysburg Address are not just eloquent but essential for our species’ survival. We need to encourage one another to spread the word and never surrender to our depravity. The mission of right-thinkers is as much spiritual as political. To fix our nation we must fix our souls.

This mission gives me a job that feels important. No rocking chair, no sayonara, for every voice counts. The only admissible excuse for abstention from this battle is death. Dead we can rest in peace but not until.