Thanksgiving Purge

A little food for thought this Thanksgiving.

I get the temptation to purge all of the relatives who voted in a way you strongly disagree with. It is perhaps satisfying to imagine cutting them out of your life. And who knows, maybe that is the right move for you. Only you know if that is the case.

But I would encourage you to stop for one second and reflect.

Every human life has value.

I hope that this can be one of the lessons of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza and Lebanon.

Every human life has value.

And if that’s true in Palestine it is also true in the United States.

Every human life has value. It is okay to love a person even if you don’t agree with them about everything. It is an unreasonable standard to expect that you would agree with any person about everything.

I don’t know everything. I have weak spots. Places where my knowledge is lacking. Sports come to mind. Never been my thing.

But I do know this.

The world does not look the same for any two people. If I’m standing here and you’re standing there… we can be looking at the same thing and see it very differently. It’s called perspective. Sometimes we may agree about how something looks, sometimes we won’t. Because maybe something looks very different from where I’m standing.

Maybe I can see something you can’t. Maybe you can see something I can’t. It doesn’t mean one of us is always right and the other is always wrong.

It is unreasonable to expect even the people you are closest with to always see things exactly the same way you do. That is an impossible standard.

I know something else. I know that division amongst the working class is a goal of the owning class. The people at the top of the economic pyramid scheme love nothing more than when we hate one another’s guts. The rich benefit when working people are divided. Divide and conquer. It’s simple but it works.

I get the purges. I get the recrimination. I get the reckoning.

And maybe you are right to purge some people from your life. Only you know what the answer to that is. It’s possible that some people in your life only bring stress and division and suffering. Only you know if it is right to cut a person out of your life.
Just remember that every human life has value.

And it is unreasonable to expect that you and your loved ones... Your family... Your friends… will agree about everything with you. That is an unrealistic expectation.

Remember that if another person lives off their paycheck, they share an economic interest with you that transcends past political affiliations. Division helps the rich control our lives.

There is strength in unity.

Let’s make them pay.