Thanksgiving

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving. It is a time to thank God for our many blessings.

The most obvious thing to be thankful for today is the release, after two grueling years, of the last twenty surviving Israeli hostages. We can hope as well for an end to the war in Gaza. Not for justice over the initial terrorist assault, perhaps; not in this life. But an end to their suffering, and an end one hopes the suffering of the people of Gaza.

I, for one, and I am not alone, am thankful for President Trump. I was originally skeptical; I thought his nomination in 2016 was a disaster. But he seems to have worked miracles for the US, and set an example for the world, perhaps pulling civilization itself back from the brink.

I am thankful for Pope Leo XIV. No; to be honest, I do not know yet how Leo’s pontificate will turn out. I am really grateful for the end of the pontificate of Pope Francis. I feel immense relief at Francis’s passing. Not to prejudge his fate in the next world, he was terrible as pope. Leo seems at least a conciliatory figure. And I feel it is a good thing to have a pope from the USA.

I am thankful for the general apparent collapse of the “woke” culture; the culture war seems to be over and won. We are in the mopping up phase. The importance of this is beyond calculation. Culture is everything.

Connected to this, I am thankful for what appears to be a renaissance of interest in Catholicism and serious Christianity in the US and in Europe. Celebrities are publicly converting; Christianity and theism have won the intellectual battle over the “New Atheists” and scientism. This will move through the culture over the coming years.

I am grateful for the death of modernism in architecture. We lived recently through an awful era of public ugliness. We seem now to be in recovery. Everybody now acknowledges modernism is drear.

I am thankful for the improvements that technology has brought into our lives. We so readily forget how much has changed in the computer age. Many things were more difficult and expensive before smartphones, before desktop computers, before the Internet, before AI. Entertainment of all kinds is now at our fingertips, and much of it free. Information of all kinds is now at our fingertips, and without filter, to the alarm of established powers, much of it free. Anyone can in effect own a printing press and a broadcast studio; all voices can be heard. We can speak to and even see people anywhere in the world, in real time, at will.

Just think back a few generations ago: party line telephones, long distance was too expensive except for special occasions. Airplane flights were too expensive for most. Entertainment was a black and white TV, radio, and visits to the local cinema. For information, you had the newspaper, two or three news shows for one half hour a night, newsmagazines, and your local library. My grandparents had no indoor plumbing.

For all this—let’s be honest—we owe gratitude to “capitalists,” at least to a certain sort of “capitalist,” the entrepreneurs, who are men of vision. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton, and Steven Jobs. They ought to be celebrated culture heroes.

I am thankful for all the food we now have available to us in all seasons. Not just the fresh and frozen produce, where earlier generations had to weather the winter on canned fruits and vegetables, pickles and preserves. Also the discovery of and access to a variety of cuisines earlier generations knew not: Indian food, Korean dishes, Thai dishes, Middle Eastern dishes, Mexican cuisine. Conversely, these countries are now familiar with hamburgers and poutine. In my youth, my Canadian hometown did not even have a pizzeria. Food is a central part of life; improvement here is a significant life improvement.

We are not as aware as we should be of the general decline of starvation and poverty worldwide. The whole world is developing. When I was young, even Southern Europe was desperately poor. China was starving, India was starving, Africa was starving. We do not hear any longer of mass starvations. The typical modern “Third World” problem is traffic: too many people can suddenly afford cars, and the infrastructure is not ready for it.

As a Canadian, I am profoundly grateful to have the USA next door. In this, we could not be luckier—other than being Americans ourselves. The US shares our culture and is the richest and most influential nation in the world. It is easy for us to emigrate, as most people around the world would love to. And we benefit from being next door, just as an individual would benefit from living next to the richest man in town; and perhaps running a convenience store. In many ways, it gives us a free ride.

We can be grateful that, as Stephen Pinker has shown, war and violence has declined over the years. There are conflicts and tensions today, but at a lower level than even in my youth, when we had Viet Nam and fears of imminent nuclear holocaust. The horrors of the early twentieth century begin to look like a historical anomaly; general war may indeed have become unthinkable. Nuclear weapons may have made it impossible. And any future war, should it occur, may be fought entirely remotely, with drones and robot vehicles.

The evil empire Reagan spoke of, the Communist Bloc, which once looked so sinister, evaporated like a mirage 35 years ago, freeing Eastern Europe. Vietnam has largely abandoned communism; China has opened up, at least economically. Cuba looks like it is in its last throes as a Communist system. Twenty percent of the population, mostly the top professionals, have emigrated recently.

We no longer need to fear the diseases that were once scourges, the greatest fears we faced. And no so long ago: tuberculosis, scarlet fever, polio, smallpox. Even AIDS; we all so recently feared dying of AIDS. Now we only speak of being “HIV-positive.” Perhaps slower than might be the case, medical science is reducing pain and extending life.

I feel uneasy expressing gratitude to God for personal things, for it seems to lack empathy for those who are not so lucky. But for all these things, I think all Canadians can be thankful.