It’s Thanksgiving Day and, as always, we who live in America in 2023 have so much to be thankful for. However, this year, I’m thankful not only for the good things, I’m also thankful for the bad ones, for I hope they are the wake-up call that apathetic Americans need.

Personally, I’m very blessed. I have a loving family, many friends, a comfortable home, decent health, food on my table, and a job I adore. I am daily filled with gratitude, although I particularly like the food and sociability that comes with that gratitude on Thanksgiving Day itself.

Looking at the larger canvas, I’m endlessly grateful to live in America. I’ve traveled widely in Europe and Asia, as well as making smaller forays into parts of Latin America and the Middle East. Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve seen beautiful, impressive, and inspiring things, both natural and manmade. I’ve also met good, kind, and interesting people along the way.

And yet, for me, the best part of every trip is coming home. No matter how friendly people are in other parts of the world, Americans are more friendly. And no matter how well-run their countries are (Japan gets a special nod on this one), for the average person, the American standard of living is always better. In a material way, Americans easily outstrip the rest of the world, and I am a person who likes her creature comforts.

Recently, though, America’s begun to fray around the edges. In too many places, it’s not big and shiny anymore, and people often have a bristling hostility about them. Believe it or not, for that, I am grateful.

Image: The First Thanksgiving by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, 1914. Public domain.

I’m grateful because, for too long, we have had the political equivalent of an infection eating away at America. Because we Americans could tolerate the early symptoms, we ignored the problem and simply continued as before. Now, though, we can’t ignore the problem anymore. My eternally optimistic pessimism sees me devoutly hope that our painful wake-up to reality means that, when we cast our votes in November 2024, we’ll make the choices that will finally treat the scourge of leftism that is ravaging our body politic.

As one example of that disease, for decades, we Americans (especially those of us who have traveled) have known that America is the least racist nation in the world. However, we’re finally waking up to the fact that the leftist plagues of CRT and DEI that infect our schools and institutions are turning us into a racist country.

As another example, for centuries, we believed that America lived up to its constitutional promise to keep the government away from our religions while not keeping religious values out of government. Therefore, we had a country remarkably free from the religious animus that has plagued many other nations.

Now, though, we’re waking up to the fact that leftism, too, is a belief system that relies on faith, not reason and that the government is using its might to force that faith on us and, worse, our children. The religion of leftism teaches us to hate America, the Judeo-Christian faith, the gender binary, the concept of colorblind brotherhood, and the idea of absolute truth. The fact that increasing numbers of Americans finally understand this ugly reality promises to galvanize those who want a country where all faiths, not just leftism, can participate in the public square.

The biggest wake-up of all, though, is that Americans are seeing that we no longer have two functional political parties, both of which are patriotic but see different means to achieve the same pro-American ends. The corrupt, anti-American Biden administration has opened the curtain, revealing how politics really work in America.

In 2023, we don’t have “Democrats versus Republicans.” Instead, we have Democrats, the Uniparty, the GOP, and the Deep State versus a small cohort of conservatives.

The Democrats have morphed from anti-communist working-class people seeking a piece of the American pie into hardcore communists whose policies, when put into action, destroy the economy, national security (both foreign and domestic), education, families, and children.

The Uniparty has shown that most people in Washington, D.C., operate for the benefit of most people in Washington, D.C. The GOP has been revealed as a subset of the Uniparty. Losing constantly is the perfect grift, for it has perks without responsibility.

The Deep State stands revealed as the real power in the country. It’s an unconstrained permanent bureaucracy that supports the Democrat party and that, thanks to the Supreme Court, circumvents the Constitution by generating rules that have the force of law.

And finally, standing in opposition to America’s power brokers are the people who will fight for core constitutional values. These are the people who believe in the promise of America, the superiority of the Constitution as the best contract ever written between a people and their government, and the essential role that the Judeo-Christian faith plays in creating the moral people without which a free society cannot function.

To drag out Al Gore’s frog in the pot of boiling water analogy, Americans have been basking in what they thought was comfortably warm water. They ignored increasing heat, convincing themselves it was a hot tub and that it was good for them to tolerate a bit of heat. Now, though, the pot is approaching boiling point.

Here’s the important thing, though: We’re not frogs. We don’t have to lie there and cook to death. The good news is that, as things get worse in America, more people are seeing what’s happening, hopping out of that pot, and taking a stand against the ideological corruption destroying their country.

People don’t change unless they’re forced to, and the left, finally, may have applied that force in the nastiest way possible. And for that, I am very, very thankful.