By Triandous Hobson

Reporter

  It’s only a couple days until Thanksgiving so you know what that means? It’s Christmas time. 

  Just kidding, it means that it’s that time of year to give thanks for each of the things that we are grateful for. 

  So in honor of this celebrated holiday, here’s a list of things I’d like to share that I’m grateful for.

  Let us all be grateful for Vine shutting down last year and hope that the same happens to Twitter, so that we finally won’t have to endure the expense of Twitter happy fingers.

  Let us be grateful for how often we hear about collusion by our current administration. Yet, every day, we get a new report of collusive behavior operated by people in our government with zero repercussions.

  Let us not forget to be grateful for capitalist days of observance such as Black Friday, in which everyone gives in to the demand of big corporations in the hopes of saving on gifts, a month before Christmas. 

  Retailers took in $3.45 billion last year on Black Friday, according to the Adobe Digital Insights statistics. 

  That’s a lot of money when you consider the trillions of dollars of debt our country is in, and rising, but we have only material things to show for it. 

  There are cities that lack clean water, have populations of homeless people that are much too high, and an indifferent attitude towards helping those in need.

  Of course, we should feel grateful for the opportunity to spend our money and walk around, because the day before we’ll have eaten so much that we’d feel guilty if we didn’t! 

  In fact, we have people in our great country that want a wall to prevent people the opportunity of potentially bettering their lives. 

  According to the New York Times article, “Border Wall Could Cost 3 Times Estimates, Senate Democrats’ Report Says,” by Ron Nixon, “An internal report by the Department of Homeland Security said the wall could cost about $21.6 billion, not including maintenance.” 

  Let us be grateful for football, which most of us watch as a pastime, to see men destroy their bodies and brains for our entertainment. 

  But no one listen to the issues they’re trying to bring awareness to. That’s not what people want to see.

  Let us be grateful for entertainment and by that, I mean, thank you women and men that are speaking out against those who have harassed, harmed, or even threatened people. 

  It has been entertaining to see people get what they deserve. 

  I’m just sorry that so many people had to go through what they did to finally have one speak up.

  Finally, let us be grateful for Thanksgiving itself. A day in which we celebrate a time in our country’s history where people of different cultures came together and broke bread with one another. 

  Although, we all know what followed when natives’ land was robbed, and their people experienced a genocide from a combination of infections and attacks by the Anglos.

  It is almost comical how we turn a blind eye to Native Americans, when last year the government wanted to push the Keystone Pipeline through the Sioux land and was met with resistance. 

  The very concerns with the pipeline was the risk of hurting the environment, and just a couple of days ago, Keystone pipeline leaked over 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota, near a water reserve. Ogallala Aquifer, one of the worlds largest underground deposits of freshwater in the whole world. 

  But let us come together and remember that we live in a society that promotes wealth over health, entertainment over free speech, and gluttony before the hungry. 

  Let us give thanks to having a day to celebrate an American holiday, that might actually be offensive to Native Americans.