Christine M. Flowers: Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for what we don't have

BEING A BIT of a contrarian (what, you're surprised?) I tend to approach Thanksgiving week in a slightly unorthodox way. Instead of tallying all those things that I'm grateful to have, I ruminate on those I don't. This is not to say that I engage in some Occupy Depression mentality, where I long for things that belong only to the 1 percent (including Demi Moore, Michael Moore and Ivana Get Moore). No, it's more of an attempt to remember why life is so good in my part of the world by thinking about how much worse it could be.

For example, we don't have a Congress or president who seem to be able to get along on the most basic issues, including health care, the deficit, immigration and our military preparedness. It's a bit of a challenge, as we saw earlier this week when the guys in Washington failed to resolve the budget crisis. But imagine that we lived in North Korea, Iran or, as it now turns out, Egypt. We wouldn't have any of those silly problems that come from democracy, in which all voices - including the rather crazy ones - are heard and all ideas vetted. No, we'd have a Supreme Commander who'd force his advisers (that's a joke) to do what he told them to do or else. The "or else" involves a veto, the kind that separates your head from your torso. Or, we might have a military junta that gets fed up with some unruly protesters and sprays them with bullets, not pepper spray.

Which brings me to another thing I don't miss: a Fourth Estate that takes its cues from the government. Sure, there are some conspiracy theorists out there who think the press is owned by either the Koch brothers or George Soros. Some also think that the atheists pose a substantial threat, making sure that the mainstream media purge God from the public square. But, even though they try, they're pretty ineffective propagandists. Whether they like it or not, God is here to stay.