Gratitude or platitude? You decide.

Writing, for me, is easiest from the confines of a small, dark room. When I was younger I preferred a view, but now we live on a river where an unidentified bird or duck glues the binoculars to my face. It’s hard to care about rotating Trump buffoonery when a green Heron is standing in stealth, watching his breakfast have its last swim.

Writing columns for a national audience I’ll never meet can feel isolating, but it is ultimately an act of hope. Sussing out man’s inhumanity toward man (and animals) is an expression of shared humanity, an understanding that we are capable of evolving, that eventually we will do better.

In particular, writing about the intersection of politics and law during this tragic time in American history is difficult. Watching leaders act with malice toward innocent victims can cause lingering psychological harm, while experts tell us that gratitude can reverse the damage. So for this Thanksgiving, from a shabby worn recliner shoved sideways into a dark closet, I’m determined to find and share my heartfelt gratitude. This year I’m thankful for:

· The ethically compromised Roberts Court, for liberating all of us from the rule of law and teaching me that 30 years in federal litigation was for naught. Alito and his rightwing band of zealots threw out the constitutional right to abortion not because science or legal precedent had changed, but because they finally had the political power to do it. Now that I understand how Constitutional law is mutable and contingent on who is in power, I, too, am untethered from it. If my advocacy in resisting a corrupt government exceeds legal bounds, who cares? Next year, or the year after that, the legal boundaries will change depending on the High Court’s mood. Or religion. Or the weather.

· Fox News, for teaching me that repeated false propaganda, no matter how preposterous, works. Murdoch and his aligned fossil fuel interests will do whatever is necessary to preserve big oil, and thereby their own wealth. If that means lying constantly to defraud their viewers into putting a huckster in charge of the country, on his promise to drill, baby, drill, that’s what they will do. They have taught Democrats that to win in this media environment, we need to start lying, the more outrageous the lie, the better. They have also freed us, once we realize the jail door is unlocked: it doesn’t matter what we say or do, Fox will gaslight viewers and falsely accuse us of Trump’s own nefarious crimes, so it’s time to earn the accusation.

· Elon Musk, for teaching me that all the money in the world can’t buy happiness. When someone as wealthy as Musk, with the literal means to solve world hunger, decides instead to use that money to harm, defraud and manipulate as many people as possible, it’s a reflection of profound unhappiness, not to mention mental illness. I’m sorry Elon feels hatred for his own transgender daughter, and that he tortured her for being gay while growing up, but hatred, in the end, always consumes its host.

· Christo-nationalists like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, for spewing such ignorant venom in the name of Jesus Christ that Christ returned to his empty tomb, just so he could roll over in it. The original woke hippy, Jesus said we should love each other and consider the lilies. He said we should wash the feet of homeless people, feed them, and treat everyone with dignity, the way we’d like to be treated. I’m not a religious person but Jesus is credited with saying the most beautiful, loving things, only to have these freaks invert his words into weapons of hate. It makes me hope there really is a vengeful god, sitting on a pearly throne, waiting to open an Old Testament can of whoop-ass on these anti-Christ “Christians.”

· Donald Trump. On this day of giving profound thanks where due, I am most grateful to Donald Trump, for helping me overcome my imposter syndrome. Like too many Americans, I hail from poverty, domestic violence, and repeated cycles of trauma. You name it, it happened, if not under our roof, in the basement of the house next door. Whenever I succeeded later in life, no matter where I went, my past always accompanied me, uninvited. First as a Governor’s Fellow, then as General Counsel, then as candidate for US Congress, my imposter’s syndrome wouldn’t shut up. You don’t belong here anyway, it said during business dinners, so have another martini. Your clothes aren’t as nice as your colleagues’, it said, so don’t bother going to their parties. Your parents wouldn’t be welcome in this room, or at this table, and any minute now, you’re going to drop an F bomb during a public debate and everyone will see what a fraud you are.

Well…. Trump silenced that loud and incessant inner voice of self-doubt. For good. If a man with six bankruptcies can market himself as a business expert, if a man with 34 felony convictions can hold the most powerful office in the world, if he can grab women by the pussy and still get their votes, I’d say there’s no such thing as an imposter. We are whatever we claim to be.

Perhaps next month I’ll be an astronaut, and for that simple paradigm shift, I will spend this Thanksgiving day in Trump’s debt, feeling a simple, ‘thank you’ in my heart.

And now, with the bread laid out to get stale for the stuffing, I can get back to watching Sandhill Cranes migrate over Chicago.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.