Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
Luke 2:14 KJV

While I haven’t seen the kind of mobs that result in injuries and deaths (because I hate shopping and avoid that scene like it’s the black plague) I did see complete disregard for one’s fellow man at my local grocery store three days before Thanksgiving. There was one person with his two children who were polite – everyone else, in every aisle, in every checkout lane, and in the parking lot, behaved like they were landed nobility in medieval Europe. Oh, sure, Wal-mart has added “crowd control,” but that’s not the root of the problem. What has Wal-mart done to narrow the gap between rich and poor that causes such madness in the name of saving a couple of bucks on goods made for pennies in Asian sweat-shops? Not a damned thing – but it’s all good, since they’re still profitable, right? Usually, when I’ve pointed this out to friends or family, I’ve been told they have nothing to do with it, they’re just trying to live on a budget. Well, maybe it’s good for the checkbook in the short-term, but in the long-term? Bah-humbug!

These are often the same folks who have nothing to say until a holiday like Thanksgiving, and then post something like this on Facebook:

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and a special thanks to our troops who give us all the opportunity to be with our family when they cannot be with their family.

Exactly what threat did the countries we’re occupying present to families gathering on Thanksgiving anyway that keeps the military overseas for years at a time (away from their families!) with no clear strategy? Oh, right, if we weren’t making resource grabs for oil we wouldn’t have cheap gas to drive to our relatives for dinner. This isn’t support of the military, it’s a thoughtless perversion of “patriotism”. Maybe these folks prefer the New International Version of the above bible verse that reads:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.

The ironic thing is those who hold this bizarre view of the world also tend to hold a strong desire to experience the world’s ending as described by John of Patmos’ hallucination – as if they will all be members of the 144,000 sealed servants.

I am thankful for those who post more thoughtful insights like this instead:

Watching planes fly over, and seeing stores open, on what was such a reverent recognition of the hard work EVERYONE put in over the past 12 months, I wonder if our country will ever be able to UNITE in celebration of anything ever again.