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 live-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.
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