Gratitude

by DM

I try to live my life as a grateful person. It has been difficult the past few years as I watch my country slip from civilization into a theocratic mess of corporate anarchy; but I try to look at the positive things and I find them. I am employed, I am a parent, I am a spouse, I am a neighbor and friend, I am employed and with shelter, I have food and clothing.

Today, I am grateful that I am an American living in the safety of New York City. I am grateful that I am not in Mumbai (Bombay), India, where security has never been, nor will ever be as strong as I enjoy.

I am grateful that my government is going back into the hands of civilized Americans who will protect us from the kinds of attacks we see today in India, and the similar attacks against Americans on September 11, 2001.

We have had a small share of terrorist attacks within the borders of the United States since WWII. I think of three off-hand: (1) Lolita Lebron and a group of Puerto Rican nationalists attacked the House of Representatives during the Eisenhower Administration; (2) the Weather Underground (f/k/a the Weathermen) perpetrated a series of attacks during the Nixon/Ford Administration and committed one last crime during the Reagan Administration; and (3) a group of Muslim men with no known group moniker and whose names have slipped quickly into obscurity, hijacked jets in Boston and New York and rammed them into buildings, during the Bush Administration.

As our nation and the world slip into the waste of corporate anarchy, I am grateful we will have a Democratic President, who will in some tiny way try to bring some semblance of equity and sanity to our economic system; which efforts I believe will reduce hostilities internally and around the world, and will shift the burden of financing society so that the wealthy begin to pay their fair share of civilization (which they currently do not).

As bad as the world is today, there is hope that things will get better.

And for that I am grateful.