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Thanksgiving in the Time of Cholera
What will Thanksgiving 2022 hold for a nation beleaguered by pandemic and recession?
On the cons side, 2021 hasn’t exactly been the glorious return to normalcy we optimistically hoped it would be at the close of 2020.
The nation is as politically divided as ever. In fact, the nation has seldom been so divided since the tumultuous days of the Vietnam War. Disagreements, and bitter ones, have marked this year as they marked the previous one.
And the one before that.
COVID-19 took a big bite out of Thanksgiving 2020; it took a bigger bite out of Thanksgiving 2021. The pandemic, and the many unprecedented measures we took to mitigate it, seems to have…done things to society.
In major cities across the U.S., crime has been skyrocketing over the past year. Smash and grab robberies perpetrated by large organized groups have become strangely common, almost overnight. The FBI estimates the U.S. murder rate has increased by over 30%. Washington, D.C. just recorded its 200th murder- the highest in two decades- and the year isn’t over yet.
The San Francisco Chronicle got dragged recently for suggesting city residents might need to “learn to tolerate” burglaries as a part of city life and focus on barricading their homes. The city of Santa Monica was similarly…