A Democrat's Holiday Lament

It's Christmas 2016 and you're not feeling it. Somehow you've managed to throw up some decorations, bake some cookies and wrap some gifts. But the more you try to stoke the flames of holiday joy, the more apparent it becomes: This will be a sad one. SAD, as in Seasonal Affective Disorder. SAD as in Sorrowful, Anguished, Distraught.

You've tried to get into the spirit, but instead of counting your blessings, you're counting the number of petitions you've signed, the horrifying cabinet appointments, the looming decades of despair. 

Your incoming president and his minions are laying the framework to destroy the few things you liked about the government. Every day brings another "Springtime for Hitler" moment, and you watch, agape, as another Worst Possible Thing happens. No wait, here's something even worse.

Your friends are sick of listening to you bitch, and vice versa. You all agree the wallowing has got to stop, but each new announcement brings fresh wails of pain.

Your once cohesive group of Facebook friends is now a tattered assemblage of groups you've painstakingly customized to see curated posts. Your Facebook feed is littered with threats, demands and nasty comment-based mudslinging. You've been unfriended and you've unfriended others - including some family members. And so you enter the holiday season with fewer friends, and even though that's only true in a virtual sense, it feels very IRL.

You've attempted a news blackout, swearing off CNN and MSNBC and changing your home page away from The New York Times because every story you forget to avoid punches you in the gut. You feel alternately sick and guilty: The gifting of our country to one percenters and science deniers should be energizing you to take action...but all those worsts have worn you down. So you're only watching Shark Tank and Big Bang Theory on regular TV, and binging on Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. Amazon's cancellation of Good Girls Revolt at the moment you finished the first season hit you like a sucker punch.

You've gotten fewer Christmas cards this year, and those you did get came without a cheery Christmas newsletter because, well, no one's feeling that cheery and there isn't much good news.

The weather is making climate change doubters gleeful because it got cold again and that means the glaciers are saved, right? Drilling in the Arctic is back on, either way.

Sure, SNL is must-see again, but only because it makes you smile as it twists the knife. 

Satire is surely a goner. Fiction couldn't think up anything crazier than what's been going on this year.

Leonard Cohen, Prince and Bowie are silenced forever, while Kid Rock and Ted Nugent step back into the spotlight. 

Christmas 2016: The poster child for Hellish Holidays.

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Thanksgiving Politicking

Guest blogger Jillian Ashley Blair Ivey shares her Bush II-era Thanksgiving memories.

During my freshman year of college I was 2000 miles away from my hometown and completely without any family in the area. My Thanksgiving plans entailed going to New York and spending the holiday weekend with a friend and her relatives. When a combination of laryngitis and acute homesickness put me on a last-minute flight to Texas instead, my friend promised that the invitation for Thanksgiving dinner would still be open the following year. I took her up on it.

At the time, New York still held a bit of mystique for me. I’d been living in Philadelphia for a little over a year by that point, making frequent weekend trips up to the Big Apple. I’d shopped on Fifth Avenue; I’d seen shows on Broadway; I’d been in a rowboat in Central Park; I’d hailed my own taxi. But I hadn’t quite figured out how people could actually live in New York. I felt small and slow and quiet. I needed to take a breath before emerging from Penn Station. This Thanksgiving would give me an opportunity to see how real New York life was lived.

I did not know until I got to my friend’s parents’ apartment, just a few blocks off of Lincoln Center, that I would not actually be experiencing a real New York Thanksgiving, but rather a real North Jersey Thanksgiving. We traveled just over the bridge to a town filled with ex-Manhattanites who’d decided they needed lawns or bigger closets. This is where my friend’s parents’ oldest friends now lived. And on the surface, it was an idyllic setting for a real, old-fashioned Thanksgiving. I wouldn’t get my cramped, Manhattan meal, but maybe I could hope for a slice of Norman Rockwell.

No.

I may not have been in New York, but I was still amongst New Yorkers. As a Texan, I was regarded as a bit of a novelty at the dinner table. There are no Bloomingdale’s in El Paso, Texas. No Neiman Marcuses or Saks Fifth Avenues. We had a Macy’s but it was brand new. Theater tended to be of the community variety, with the occasional touring company coming through. I love my hometown, but suddenly it felt so … pedestrian. But still, I knew the questions I was asked were borne of curiosity and not rudeness. I was a guest, and made to feel welcome. At least until the conversation turned to politics.

Although New York City had, by that point, had Republican mayors for almost a decade, the city is generally regarded as a Democratic one. My friend’s family and their friends certainly voted blue. It was 2003, two years and change after September 11. While possibly popular with New Yorkers for five minutes after visiting Ground Zero, the second President Bush was doubtless amongst New Yorkers’ least-beloved public figures by this dinner. And he had served as governor in my home state for five years before becoming president. General consensus at the table was that Bush was a bad president; this was expressed in ways varying from a call for impeachment to a call for his head. Suddenly, I felt all eyes on me: “Jill, you’re from Texas. What do you think of the president?”

There was absolutely no correct way to answer that question, so I answered around it: “I think that I spend too much time studying to pay much attention to politics.”

“Don’t you have an opinion?”

“Not one I feel qualified to share.”

The room was quiet, but I was raised not to discuss politics in polite company, whether I agreed with them or not (and I did, in some regards) and so I wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. I think everyone at the table finished eating as quickly as possible, just to get away from the awkwardness.

The next Thanksgiving, I had dinner with friends in Philadelphia.

Political Thanksgiving Blessings

I know I don't always accentuate the positive in this blog. I mean really, with a name spotlighting hellishness, I can't always latch onto the affirmative. But this year, this Thanksgiving, I'm making an exception. I just can't stop smiling, even when I'm tearing up. Thanksgiving is all about gratitude and I'm really feeling it right now.

I fell for Barack Obama early on. It started out as a respect for his eloquence. His speeches - his 2004 Democratic Convention speech, his speech on race and, more recently, his acceptance speech - will be taught in schools and quoted in other speeches for decades to come. That's because behind his well-crafted words is a depth, seriousness of purpose, a vision that have been missing from American politics for way too long. I hardly dared believe we could elect someone who doesn't dodge hard questions, play games or recommend going shopping as a solution to a crisis. I didn't think we Americans were capable any more of doing the right thing over the expedient, of embracing change over business as usual.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful that I was wrong. I am thankful that my son Greg, who is 15, has a role model who makes it cool to study hard, stay strong, aim high and do good for society, such as through some misguidedly maligned community organizing. Greg was only seven when Bill Clinton left office. Clinton was a smart guy who cared passionately about making the future better than the immediate past. It was tragic to see the improvements achieved during his eight years not just decimated but repudiated over the following eight years. But the fact is, Clinton will always live in the shadow of his lack of discipline. He did not leave office as a role model, for reasons I could only recently explain to my son (and even then it was an awkward conversation).

We all expect a lot of Obama. Around the world there is a faith in this man that brings a lump to the throat, but also fear to the heart. Who could live up to these expectations? Will Americans, and citizens of other nations with whom we are inextricably linked, be patient, supportive and self-sacrificing enough to make the steep climb Obama referred to in his acceptance speech?

I believe so, because I know things have changed. The shared experience on election night was unlike the shared experiences we have had as a country for many years: unlike the Clinton impeachment, unlike the 2000 election results, unlike 9/11, unlike Hurricane Katrina. Finally, it was a celebration we were sharing, not public shame or horror. It was an embrace of the new.

We have seen the damage that can be wrought by a provincial leader without intellectual curiosity or empathy for the poor and middle class. This Thanksgiving I am grateful that we had the collective wisdom to choose the personification of the opposite. I am grateful, as always, to be an American - just more than usual this year.