This Thanksgiving in the New Normal

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world. This special Thursday edition marks Thanksgiving for our American friends

Happy Turkey Day

1. Grocery Gaslighting?

Have you noticed that groceries have been getting steadily more expensive for years?

Well, you’re wrong. They haven’t.

In fact, according to a report from NBC…

Thanksgiving dinner is historically affordable this year

Apparently the cost of a family feast this holiday season is the lowest since 1984*.

*After adjusting for inflation, and not including Covid-hit 2020.

They cite a new report from the American Farm Bureau Federation, which claims that the average price of a family dinner for ten people this Thanksgiving is $58 (£45). Just about 6 dollars per person.

That’s insane. You can maybe get a turkey for half that in the UK, if you go as cheap as possible.

But it gets even dumber. To quote the report…

“If your dollar had the same overall purchasing power as a consumer in 1984 … this would be the least expensive Thanksgiving meal in the 39-year history of the AFBF Thanksgiving survey, other than the outlier of 2020,”

Which is technically true I suppose…only, your dollar doesn’t have the same overall purchasing power as it did in 1984 does it?

Its one of the few ways our current world doesn’t resemble 1984.

The purchasing power of the dollar is what makes things cost what they cost. Food hasn’t got more expensive because apples are rarer or turkeys have unionised and demanded fairer wages.

“If food were cheaper dinner would cost less” is up there with the dumbest sentences ever reported in the news.

2. Bird Flu Season

And while we’re on the subject of food being expensive, let’s discuss one of the reasons for that ever-increasing cost of living: Bird flu.

Or rather, fake bird flu pandemics trying to scare people into going vegan and massively inflating the cost of poultry and eggs. The terrifying H5N1 bird flu – which has infected fewer than 1000 people in the last 30 years – is back in the news this week, just in time for the holidays.

You can expect a longer-form piece on this in the coming week but, for now, let’s limit ourselves to the Thanksgiving-related content.

The Sacramento Bee is asking…

Is it safe to eat turkey this Thanksgiving amid bird flu outbreak?

…before grudgingly answering “yes” after about 900 words on the danger of bird flu.

The San Francisco Chronicle goes the same way, headlining…

Bird flu is spreading in California. What does that mean for your Thanksgiving turkey?

…and again concluding, “Yeah it’s fine.”

WebMD does the same thing

There are a ton of these articles out there, and none of them need to exist. People don’t need to ask these questions, it’s just so much cultivated anxiety.

It makes me sad. People just want to have a nice day, and they are being bombarded with fear porn for no reason at all.

3. Divide and conquer

Having successfully campaigned to divide society along race, gender, and orientation fault lines, the powers that be are moving to divide families along political lines.

The trend on social media – especially among liberals – is to publicly declare that they are “cutting off” their wrong-side-voting family, and refusing to invite them to, or accept invitations from them, for thanksgiving dinner.

Too many outlets to name are fueling this fire (here’s one, two, three, four, five for a start). It’s a familiar method – this is not a trend being reported on, it’s a trend being manufactured by pretending it already exists.

I’m old enough to remember 2021 and 2022 when the undesirables at Thanksgiving and Christmas weren’t Trump voters, but the unvaccinated and “Covid deniers”.

The messaging was the same, only the labels were different.

Disagreements are final. No discussion. No agreeing to disagree. No compromises. Anyone who doesn’t share your values and opinions to the last syllable is irredeemably evil.

No happy families. Families are bad.

BONUS: Cranberry Bye Bye

An old story with a new Thanksgiving twist. we’ve reported, many times, on programs in the UK and the US that pay farmers to “rewild” farmland in the name of saving the environment.

Well, this year the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is launching a scheme that will pay farmers millions in government grants to convert cranberry farms back into wetlands in order to mitigate the “climate crisis”.

What We’re Thankful for…

So, with all the bad stuff going on in the world, what is there to be thankful for?

Personally, I’m thankful for my cat. He’s sleeping next to me as I type this with dumb little paws up in the air. I’m thankful for the home that keeps me warm and the family that keeps me company.

I’m thankful for memes that make us laugh:

I’m thankful for Kamala Harris’ first video since losing the (s)election, and I’m thankful to the person who made this edit of it…

Kamala Harris finally breaks her silence after election loss 😂😂

pic.twitter.com/hw25v3c1XY

— Sean (@Xcellent78) November 27, 2024

I’m thankful for great art that entertains and inspires, like our weekend movie recommendations A Man For All Seasons (1965), The Edge (1998), and Barton Fink (1991)

And, last but not least, we’re all thankful for our readers and supporters.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

*

All told a pretty hectic Thanksgiving week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the carbon footprint of your dinner or how sweet potato pie is a symbol of black resistance.

There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.