Veterans, Voting, and Victimhood: Why Gratitude Is the Antidote

For over a hundred years, Americans have paused every November 11 to express our gratitude for the millions of men and women who have served in our nation’s armed forces. This is an appropriate and godly response to the many sacrifices made by military personnel and their families, who endure deployments, frequent moves, and low wages – not to mention the dangers of combat – to serve our country, defend our freedoms, and keep us safe.

Sadly, our veterans are not receiving the attention and care they deserve. Thanks in part to a rise in anti-American sentiment in modern culture, as well as government inefficiencies and healthcare shortfalls, many vets are left feeling hopeless, invisible, and even resentful toward the country they signed up to serve.

This phenomenon points to a more profound problem plaguing the American people today: the absence of gratitude. Among all the human beings who’ve ever walked the face of the earth, American citizens living in the 21st Century have the most to be thankful for. We are richer, safer, freer, better-fed, and more educated than any people at every time and place have ever been. But we’re also more anxious and angry, more insecure and insolent, more mentally ill and malignant than we’ve ever been.

Why? In a word: Ingratitude.

Just six days ago, every single American had the right to do something that 99.999% of people in history could only have dreamed of doing. The privilege of expressing one’s power at the polls in a free and fair election represents an extraordinary step forward in the human story, most of which has been marked by the tyranny of kings at the expense of the common man. The right to vote is a sacred privilege which many brave souls paid the ultimate price to preserve.

Still, more than one-third of eligible voters in America chose not to cast their ballots last Tuesday. Perhaps the only thing more alarming than the number of Americans who don’t vote are those who do but, when elections don’t go their way, they proceed to lose their ever-loving minds. We saw one example of this on January 6, 2021, when some of President Trump’s most ardent supporters stormed the Capitol, and many of them behaved like petulant children.

But this toxic reactionism cuts both ways. In the aftermath of last week’s election, I’ve seen passionate Harris voters on social media and in mainstream media fear mongering, threatening to leave the country, and urging their fellow progressives to go “no-contact” by cutting off all communication with family and friends who had the audacity to vote for the other guy.

This phenomenon hit close to home for me this week, as two people I once considered friends texted to bid me farewell – not because I used my platform to endorse Trump (I didn’t), but because I “failed” to publicly endorse their candidate of choice. After informing me that we are no longer friends, one of them encouraged me to flee from my idolatry. The irony! 

A recent article in The New Yorker suggests that “Family estrangement—the process by which family members become strangers to one another, like intimacy reversed—is still somewhat taboo. But, in some circles, that’s changing.” A young woman named Amy, whose loving, conservative parents were concerned about changes they’d seen in their daughter, recently made a decision that is likely to change her life for the worse and is certain to break her parents’ hearts:

“The topics that it felt safe to talk about just got smaller and smaller,” she told me. Amy recalls that they often argued about Donald Trump; she was upset when Brett Kavanaugh joined the Supreme Court, and more so when her brothers celebrated. On visits home, she took to filling a coffee mug with alcoholic cider. “Things were tense,” she told me. Her parents had already noted a shift when they wrote to her university, concluding their letter, “I don’t have the language to tell you how much we miss her.” Like many others, Amy would eventually go ‘no contact’.

Don’t get me wrong: there are times when going ‘no contact’ with certain friends and family members is a fine idea. When a family member abuses you, for example, or when someone selfishly takes you for granted or neglects you altogether without remorse or repentance. But abandoning your family and friends because they cast their vote for a candidate you detest is objectively insane.

How did we get here?

First, I want to be clear that I feel nothing but compassion and sorrow for people who are so deeply grieved by last week’s election that they’ve decided to cut loved ones out of their lives. I believe their pain is real. It must be real, because their gut-reactions are so extreme. I’ve watched and listened to over a hundred videos posted by outraged people on Facebook, X, and TikTok, and all of what I’ve seen and heard can be traced back to one word: Fear.

These people aren’t just upset. They are genuinely afraid about what this election will mean for them. They are afraid of the future. Afraid of what this all means for their country. Their fear is no different from the fear I saw in the eyes of the men and women who stormed the Capitol almost four years ago.

The Bible is clear that fear is Satan’s favorite weapon to use against us. “Do not be afraid” is the most repeated command in Scripture. More than anything else, God wants His people to resist the power of fear. Why? Because fear chases faith away. And in the absence of faith, people lose hope. And without hope, we make selfish, stupid choices like choosing politics over the people we love.

Gratitude is the antidote to what ails most Americans today because the habit of thankfulness organically gives way to faith, which lends itself to hope. Taking time to express gratitude for God’s provision yesterday inspires us to trust that God will get through today, too. And our faith for today will give us hope for tomorrow!

So no matter what life throws your way, stay grateful. The Lord has been good to us in the past. He is with us now. And He is faithful forever.