How's that holiday combination of dead turkey and existential anguish treating you? Good? Awesome. For his final Thanksgiving message, President Barack Obama urged Americans to take a look at this whole unity concept and see what it's all about. Doing so, Obama said Thursday, will ensure that future generations are actually able to see what the "promise of America" can offer them.
"As a country, we've just emerged from a noisy, passionate, and sometimes divisive campaign season," Obama said in a special White House message Thursday. "After all, elections are often where we emphasize what sets us apart. We face off in a contest of us versus them. We focus on the candidate we support, instead of some of the ideals that we share. But a few short weeks later, Thanksgiving reminds us that, no matter our differences, we are still one people. Part of something bigger than ourselves."
As we hand the White House duties off to some of white nationalists' favorite people ever, Obama advised that we keep unity on the brain. The outgoing POTUS noted that the "gift of democracy" is also not a one-way transaction. "Never doubt, that is what makes us American," Obama explained. "Not where we come from, or what we look like, or what faith we practice. But the ideals to which we pledge our allegiance. It's about our capacity to live up to the creed as old as our founding, 'e pluribus unum.'"
So cram in those calories and then get to work. 2017 is not going to be easy.
