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 Veggie
Meat 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
mince-meat 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.