Thanksgiving 2022

Subject: Thanksgiving 2022 October 3rd 2011, 11:01 am

Thanksgiving 2022

"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to
her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered.
Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday
football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government
passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football
for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest
of the world", Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to
be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the
thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type
of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American
Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden
foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat
pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey.

And ever since the government officially changed the name of
"Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020, to
officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of
Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam
of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look
even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever
since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all
thermostats - which were monitored and controlled by the electric
company - be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the
house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the
family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she
had used up her legal allotment of life-saving medical treatment. He had
had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium,
spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and
everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though
he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The
RHC's resources are limited", explained the government bureaucrat
Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits
to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss."

Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car
last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of
2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines - for everyone but
government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too
far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere
between here and there. Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his
wife were flying in.

Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the
occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting
down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports,
which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist
successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told
Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order
to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists." Winston's own body had
grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded
their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling
Act of 2022.

That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for
"unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity
searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become
almost routine. Almost. The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but
most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three
conservatives to leave the law intact . "A living Constitution is
extremely flexible", said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan.
"Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their
example", she added.

Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well
with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him.
Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone
at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real
confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month,
explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got
over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it
was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming,
the bird flu, terrorism, or any of a number of other calamities were
"just around the corner", but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic
attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility.
It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for
smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking
Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet
of another human being.

Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive
before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of
QE13. The latest round of Quantitative Easing the federal government
initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth." This time, they
promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but
Winston was not particularly hopeful. Yet the family had a lot for which
to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of
Atonement. At least, he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness
when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the
Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life "fair for
everyone" realized their full potential.

Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much
things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by
little, so people could get used to them. He wondered what might have
happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe
back around 2011, when all the real nonsense began.

"Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought.

Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.