Let’s give thanks to those working tirelessly to keep us safe

And so the holiday season begins. We’ve finished the candy we hid for ourselves and are now dieting frantically so we can fill up on Thanksgiving — which is really just a prelude to Christmas and/or Hannukah. Thanksgiving is there because Americans are entitled to at least one holiday that states right up front that it is there just for the eating. No presents. No really profound thoughts. Just stretch out your stomach at Thanksgiving so it will be ready for overindulgence through the entire month of December.

But aside from thanking Native Americans for “giving” us their land, shouldn’t we somehow come up with some things to truly be thankful for that aren’t harmful to others?

I think our Assembly members deserve a huge vote of thanks because, quite honestly, I would not put up with the nonsense they put up with for the minimum return they receive. Getting elected to national or state government can come with lots of perks. Getting elected to a local Assembly means getting a lot of grief with few perks involved. Did you spend any time listening to the Assembly meetings that recently ended? I’d have come across the room with a fire hose on some of those rude, obnoxious people.

But our Assembly members did what they were elected to do. They listened respectfully, no matter how idiotic the current speaker was sounding. How many of us could say we could hold our temper in such a situation?

And what about thanking those health care workers — you know, the ones the anti-vaxxers screamed at, yet the same ones they would want saving them if they had to be admitted to the hospital? To these fine folks, science is suspect when it comes to the vaccine but completely trustworthy when we are sick. Got an infection? Give us an antibiotic. Bleeding excessively? Bring on the transfusion. Got diabetes? Yay for injectable insulin.

What the anti-vaxxers conveniently ignore at these hearings is the fact that each of those advances was made through science by scientists we trusted. Did we know those scientists? No, but it didn’t matter. When we get that vial of insulin, do we ask to see the science behind it? I doubt it. And when it comes to vaccinations of any sort, do we actually understand all the steps completely, or do we just assume that the smallpox vaccine is infinitely preferable to smallpox?

Honestly, if anti-vaxxers are so well-read about the science behind the COVID vaccine, why didn’t they share that with the Assembly instead of screaming at them?

Same works for masks — anti-vaxxers seem to believe that masks work in the operating room but not the movie theater. How silly is that?

So yes, despite the fact that I am not normally a big fan of politicians anywhere, in this case I am a fan of any person sitting on a board or council anywhere who can keep their temper when being slammed by people whose last science class was in high school and they didn’t do well in it.

Sometimes it seems as though our country is held together with duct tape and hair pins. It feels like it could not be more fragile. Which is why maybe what we should be most grateful for this Thanksgiving is that we have a country at all. Despite the attempts to pull us apart, we have managed to stick together. That is definitely worth a toast. We should all be grateful that we still have a country despite uprisings and pandemics. We came closer to losing it than we will ever know. Maybe you can toast this miracle with people — maybe even family — who think differently than you do. Or maybe we shouldn’t go off the rails here and try for the impossible. Maybe we should go at this one baby step at a time.

So this Thanksgiving, I am going to be grateful for people willing to serve their communities in often thankless positions and hope that next year, we can all toast a time when we treated each other with a little bit more respect. It may never happen — but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Elise Patkotak is an Alaska columnist and author. Her book “Coming Into the City” is available at AlaskaBooksandCalendars.com and at local bookstores.

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