The Duck of Minerva

Thanksgiving

by Dan Nexon

27 November 2008, 1350 EST

Rob Farley Scott Lemieux (sorry, Scott):

Somehow, this doesn’t seem like the right time for a chipper Thanksgiving greeting…

The terror attack on Mumbai certainly sucks the cheer out of Thanksgiving.

In fact, almost every Thanksgiving something terrible is happening somewhere in the world, whether headline grabbing or not. For over ten years, to take but two examples, it has been a pretty good bet that unspeakably awful (and probably non-headline grabbing) events are taking place in the Congo or the Sudan.

This is probably an inevitable consequence of a globalized world. It isn’t so much that death, terror, pain, and misery aren’t part of the landscape on any given Thanksgiving (or Christmas, or Hanukkah, or Ramadan, or whatever), but that it is easier for people not experiencing them to know about them.

One way of proceeding, then, is to say, in essence, “bad things are always happening; if I change my routine or feel guilty about having a good time, then I’d always be miserable. So just shield them out as so much noise and get on with it.” And that’s not totally unreasonable. I’d say it’s nothing more than a very human mechanism for survival, one all of us deploy nearly every day.

But I think there’s an alternative. Many religious holidays call upon us to pay attention to the plight of others, and to do what we can to adjust our daily lives in light of it. Thanksgiving, like many other national holidays, usually asks us to do that at a local level. Perhaps the “CNN effect” requires the trans-nationalization of national holidays.

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

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