We are living in the richest time of the richest nation that has ever existed on the planet. Were we to choose not to make gazillionaires of a handful of business owners, our scratching out a living would be part-time work. Even so, there are those who keep body and soul together by dumpster diving.

We don’t believe this is an option in most of the world.

In our experience, hustling a living has always been easy for an able-bodied person. There are few restaurants that don’t need a waiter, dishwasher or pot scrubber. In other lines of work, there are currently literally millions of jobs going wanting.

So what explains our unhappiness, the vitriol and victimhood of our politics?

Speaking of the presidency, the philosopher F. Lawson Downing observed: “They’re never as good as you hope, and never as bad as you fear.”

While we reluctantly agree, it is not a family trait. We have kin who describe the current president in most unchristian terms, comparing that worthy to the contents of an unflushed toilet. This from a fellow who just purchased a home.

On the other side of the family, we have folks who are dead sure the Republicans will bring the country to ruin. Of this they’ve been sure since Richard Nixon lived on Pennsylvania Avenue. Most of that family are now pouring over Black Friday catalogs, competing to wear out their plastic cards.

Still, if those doom-sayers live long, long, long enough, they will probably prove correct, although they may not understand we all will be the responsible parties.

Is this what we do when crops are planted and harvested by machines? Is this what we do with our vastly increased longevity? Is this how we pay for prosperity?

We suggest we are long overdue from taking a deep breath, and thanking our lucky stars for how well we have it.

Thanksgiving should be more than turkey dinners, even as we share with those whose heads are doing proctologists’ work.