Those big holidays never quite turn out like you expected. Your aunt, despite her best efforts, did not ignite a tinderbox with political comments. The turkey was surprisingly tender, the champagne underwhelming but effective. Pleasant surprises and silver linings are all too welcome in this age of clouded uncertainty.

Something like that. But here's the dark meat:

Whatever your memory of this Thanksgiving feels like, no matter the bitterness or bliss, imagine this instead: for the first time in your life, there was no Thanksgiving dinner. No bickering family, no champagne to take the edge off. No warmth, no shelter from the elements at all.

Some people spent last night on the edge of hypothermia. If they slept by some divine mercy, they fell asleep uncertain if they would–or if they even wanted to–wake up the next morning. Among us are those who invite shivering souls into soup kitchens, who procure and prepare nourishment for the hungry on days deemed to be holy by religious and/or governmental authority. Obliged to kindness beyond the everyday, one or two days of the year.

Given the current state of human development, the fact that anyone volunteers time any day of the year to feed and share warmth with the destitute is miraculous. Yet there exists a small group within the population who serves the destitute every day, tirelessly. Tens of thousands of people fall into this charitable group of samaritans. On its heaviest days, this group will never weigh in over a whopping twentieth of a percent of the American population. The rest of us pay lip service at best. 

We are a modern nation. The most modern, some might argue. They would cite the relatively progressive character of our politics (a citation that will expire on 20.1.2017,) the might of our military, the behemoth that is our economy. 

Reality is, though, that we share a common thread of destitution with every nation we put to shame in so many other categories of development. This is a glaring inconsistency of priorities in the direction of our vast resources, capital and financial. Despite our ability to provide assistance and resources, we leave so many out in the cold at home and abroad.  

Yesterday was a warm day for me. I'd been out in the cold, metaphorically. A friend, a family took me in and showed me what family looks like, what warmth tastes, smells, and feels like. Laughing until our faces and bellies ached.

The Thanksgiving holiday is one marked by celebration of family and gratitude, and appropriately so. But today my belly is empty save for the fresh memory of fullness, and I cannot help but think of those people for whom a warm meal, family, and laughter are distant memories–if they are memories at all. 

The families with whom I spent this third Thursday left their mark. They carved love into the layer protecting me. The next morning I awoke sober, mind full of the hunger felt by 42.2 million Americans and more than 700 million humans. The yin to my holiday's yang, the acid bath for my metal surface. This mordant bites deeper the longer I am exposed, emboldening the pattern. If you pressed me like a die against the world, my surface would leave a relief depicting what I grew to know on November 24th of this year. 

Below are the final five paragraphs of a paper I wrote in the Spring of 2015. I wrote this for an English class while interning at a social justice nonprofit in London in the midst of the UK's parliamentary election. A party called the UK Independence Party had formed with a platform very similar to that of our President-Elect; what I discovered by researching and writing this paper haunts me even more chillingly after the results of our election. 

----------------------------

            According to polls cited by Robert Ford at an October 2014 British Academy conference titled “Immigration and Politics of Britishness,” 86% of Britons born before 1945 define “British” identity by accent alone, while just 63% of those born between 1945 and 1964 agree. However, those born after 1964 are split down the middle on the importance of accent with 40% emphasizing civic loyalty as “British,” up from the pre-1945 poll participants’ 13% and 1945-1964 born participants’ 35% opinion on the importance of civic loyalty (Ford, 2014).

            Crucially, those born after 1964 are five times more likely to express a completely different idea of British identity than pre-1945 and twice as likely as those in the middle demographic born between 1945-1964 (Ford, 2014). Taken together, these statistics suggest that the oldest, whitest members of British society (those most likely to support UKIP) also have the least flexible ideas about what makes a person “British,” regardless of country of origin. It can also be inferred that younger Britons approach British identity from a more open and rational perspective. Rationally, an accent can be acquired in fewer years than UKIP would deny an immigrant worker rights to public benefits, and civic loyalty is most likely a reciprocal for respect and protection offered by a reasonable civic authority.

            All these factors combined, from the nostalgic appeal of imperial Victorian England to the unsound rationale of UKIP’s platform and even less sound rationale of its supporters, indicate that this blight on the UK’s political landscape is a new sort of phenomenon. UKIP and its supporters discriminate indiscriminately; their irrational repulsion and ethnocentrism are symptomatic of system-wide distress manifesting in the behaviour of people least aware of the economic and geopolitical dynamics of the modern world.

          Globalisation, the grandchild of empire and spitting image spawn of capitalism, determines the current flow of peoples across borders. Frances Webber, another speaker at the 2014 “Immigration and Politics of Britishness” conference, identifies a distinct pattern: Global capitalism and free trade deals stop countries from protecting interests of their people in favor of business. As a result, food prices rise in developing countries, people revolt, governments suppress, impoverishing and uprooting millions. Those millions are forced to migrate from underdeveloped to developed countries such as Britain (Webber, 2014) where they are consequently blamed for economic woes that, in fact, began with the global capitalistic policy-making of governments and/or large corporations. 

            Given the pattern described above, the UK’s celebrated imperial history, and the desperation of ignorant and prejudiced citizens in capitalist Britain, the emergence of an ideology such as UKIP’s was inevitable.. Even if its policies are never realized, UKIP’s DNA requires careful analysis for the sake of all developed nations. Human bodies are designed to combat malignant foreign and internal threats, but certain maladies and genetic coding can induce the body to attack its own healthy cells.
As a descendant of archaic, racist Victorian ethnocentrism, UKIP’s indiscriminate discrimination emerges as a new strain of an old disease. This malady ails Britain and other developed national organisms that indignantly suffer economic and civic woes which are actually traceable to their own policies. Proper treatment will require accurate and humble analysis of the new strain, unrestricted by prejudices or nostalgia. Any inoculation must be devised for the longevity of humanity as a living, breathing, beautifully imperfect, wildly diverse organism.