Giving Thanks
By P.J. O'Rourke
It's Thanksgiving, a national holiday devoted to counting our blessings. One of those blessings is that we have a national holiday that celebrates saying "thanks." It's one of the most polite things people can do.
Come to think of it, we could also use a national holiday that celebrates saying "please" and another that celebrates saying "you're welcome." Our nation could use a little more politeness after this election we've been through. But let's be grateful for what we have.
Here are 10 things I'm thankful for...
- This Election Is Over!
Maybe we can't agree whether the outcome was good, but we can agree that the choice of candidates was bad. And one of them lost! So we're all half-happy. And that's better than no happiness at all.
- Politics
After the kind of election we endured, politics may seem to be an odd thing to be thankful for. But I've always believed that politics is good for our country. America has its fair share of pretentious blowhards, self-important busy-bodies, pompous know-it-alls, and people with brains in reverse proportion to their egos, which are the size of Capitol Hill. Isn't it great that Capitol Hill is where they are? Politics gets them out of the house.
And while politicians can do a lot of damage in Washington, they could be doing worse damage elsewhere. What if the kind of people who rise to the top in politics rose to the top in business and investing? That would crash the Dow.
- Money
Of course, we're thankful if we have a lot of it. But even if we don't have much money, we should be thankful that money exists. It was one of mankind's most brilliant inventions.
Standardized coinage only dates back to about 1,000 B.C. Before then, all buying and selling had to be done by barter. Imagine spending a day at the mall with your pockets full of chickens and getting your change in eggs.
- Markets
Speaking of the world as it was not so long ago, think of living a life without markets. Think of not having any place to exchange what you have for what you want.
That's the way life was before there were cities and towns. If you grew wheat, that's what you had... wheat. You ate wheat, you drank wheat whey. You burned wheat chaff to stay warm. You wore clothes made from woven wheat stems, and you lived in a hut made of wheat stalk thatch.
A few miles away, somebody else raised goats. And what he had was... goats. He ate goat meat, drank goat milk, burned goat dung, wore goat-skins, and lived in a goat-hide tent. And boy, did he ever smell like a goat!
- Market Fluctuations
The ups and downs of the marketplace may drive us crazy, but they're a good thing. Market fluctuations mean that we have a "free market" in which everyone is at liberty to adjust the price of goods and services according to supply and demand.
The opposite would be a "controlled market." And guess who would control it? The people in power would get anything they wanted in the marketplace at whatever price they cared to pay for it. And the rest of us would go begging.
(P.S. We can also be thankful for market fluctuations because they're a good way for investors to make money – if the investors are paying attention to the Stansberry Digest.)
- Disruption
It can be hard to remember to be thankful for disruption – it's so disruptive. But all progress is caused by disruption, often by painful disruption. Literally painful, in the case of the discovery of fire. The caves of cavemen everywhere must have echoed with shouts of, "Ouch, that's hot!"
The digital revolution has caused a painful disruption in the print journalism industry where I spent most of my working life. So it's me who first and foremost needs to be reminded to be thankful for disruption – because here I am, digitally.
Nature itself reminds us to be thankful for disruption. If it weren't for a disruptive asteroid strike 65.5 million years ago, we'd have dinosaurs all over our lawn. We'd have to use a Caterpillar D11 for a pooper-scooper.
- Failure
It's necessary to success. If things that should fail just kept hanging around, you'd get (as mentioned) dinosaurs all over your lawn... Or, to take a more recent example, President Obama's 2009 stimulus package.
- Getting Old
I thought I hated it. Then I watched my teenage daughters. They can go through more emotional crises in the course of one hour of text-message exchanges than I've experienced since... since President Obama's 2009 stimulus package.
There are worse things than getting old. Being young again would be one of them.
- Family
Ironically, it's often at Thanksgiving, when we get together with our family, that we forget to be thankful for them.
There's Aunt Lucy, who always insists on bringing the wine – in a box from Chateau Ohio. There's Cousin Louie, who insists on showing you a website proving the election was stolen from Gary Johnson. There's my teenage daughter, the one who became a vegetarian five minutes ago, who insists that the main course be "tofurkey." There's my wife and my mother-in-law having a fit in the kitchen. And there's my father-in-law and me, who they're having at fit at, because we're planted on the sofa drinking beer, watching a football game, and doing nothing to help.
Bless each and every member of the family. If it weren't for them, I'd be eating tofurkey alone.
- The Stansberry Digest
This is a personal thank you. I've been contributing to the Digest for a year now, and it's been an honor and a delight. Stansberry Research readers are the best audience a writer could hope for. The writing has been a pleasure, and the reading even more so. I've learned a lot about money, investments, and economic reality.
Thank you Porter, for being a great boss. Thank you Jamison Miller, for making Stansberry get-togethers great fun. And thank you Carli Flippen, for being my editor.
Carli takes the soft dough of my prose, kneads it, rolls it, and bakes it into something palatable for the readers. Thanks!
Regards,
P.J. O'Rourke