This Thanksgiving season couldn’t come at a better time, as our government drives us to fury and our economy drives us to…well, name your coping mechanism.  This is the most negativity I’ve sensed from the American public in my adult lifetime.  Folks are struggling, angry, and don’t have a lot of hope about what’s going to pull us out of partisan standoffs and economic malaise.  Even back in my childhood and teen years of the Vietnam War and race riots, there was a sense of hopefulness amid the rancor.  People really believed the war would eventually end and that racial equality would one day arrive.

However, this time around, I don’t hear many hopeful words about government problem solving nor economic resurgence.  We’re in the dumps with nothing to look forward to but uncertainty.

So why is this a great time for Thanksgiving?  Because, in the aggregate, things are rarely as bad or as good as we perceive them.  We’re down now not just because of objectively tough times, but because we’re angry, frustrated, and getting burned out, too.  Thanksgiving gives us a chance to briefly stand back from the accident scene and be thankful we’ve survived.  This is also our chance to remember that life is about more than the economy and government.

Thanksgiving is about the steadfastness of family and friends, as the institutions around us are reeling.  It’s about surviving life’s toughest challenges with resiliency, kindness, and empathy.  These qualities are in abundant supply in our world and provide many reasons for being thankful.

I’m personally thankful for a family that has consistently accepted me for who I am and encouraged me to follow my instincts.  I’m thankful for a tremendously supportive audience that encourages me every day and cares enough to offer valuable critique that I can use to improve.  I’m thankful for an employer that’s driven by the mission of both informing and bringing together Southern Californians to honestly face our challenges.  I’m thankful for a dynamite “AirTalk” producing staff that goes well beyond the norm in its devotion to making the best possible program for listeners.

I could go on and on, but I’d rather hear what you’re thankful for.  In the comments below, please let me know what’s going well in your life, what challenge you’ve successfully faced, who’s making a difference in your life, or what the best thing is that’s happened to you this year.

I’ll share some of these thankful postings on Wednesday’s “AirTalk,” to help ease us into the spirit of Thanksgiving.  Remember that the more succinct your posting, the greater the odds that I can do justice in sharing it on the air.  Thanks for sharing your thanks with all of us.

At least for now, there won’t be any tents at the park where Occupy Wall Street has been protesting for two months.  Other sites are being considered, but it’s not clear what form the protests will now take.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck says he’s moving toward shutting down the City Hall camp.  The future of local protests will, similarly, be in doubt.

For me, the bigger question is whether this movement can connect with the larger portion of the “99-percent,” who don’t find the Occupy movement culturally familiar or attractive.  A huge portion of the country shares the anger, frustration, and critique provided by Occupy, but sees it as a liberal, not populist, movement.  If Occupy is going to catch fire, I think it needs to tap into that populist sensibility.

However, it’s not clear to me that participants in Occupy have a cultural affinity for, or knowledge of, working class residents in the heartland.  Those are the voters who decided the elections in favor of both Bush and Obama.  They weren’t comfortable with John Kerry, but responded to Barack Obama’s message of hope.  They’re angry with Washington, don’t feel they have a voice, and will most likely again decide next year’s election. Once we better know the demands of the Occupy movement, we’ll also have an idea whether they coincide with fixes that significant numbers of Americans will support. 

Though Republican leaders claimed that the Tea Party’s election victories last year were a national referendum on the size and power of government, they were, instead, targeted localized victories that added up a Congressional surge.  The Tea Party doesn’t represent most Americans, but has still become influential.  However, we’re seeing its limits in the Republican Presidential race, where a non-Tea Party Mitt Romney is the frontrunner. 

For now, Occupy has garnered considerable attention and support.  Whether it will translate into a political movement remains to be seen.

Monday morning on “AirTalk,” we opened with the non-detailed allegations by three unidentified women that GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain had sexually harassed them during the time he headed the National Restaurant Association trade and lobbying group. 

Our focus was on how, despite the reports and Cain’s initially poorly prepared response, he was still getting significant support in polls of GOP voters.  This didn’t seem surprising to me, given the vagueness of the allegations and the range in seriousness the claims could represent, even if they were true.

However, this morning’s news conference with Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred and her client, Sharon Bialek of Chicago, significantly raises the challenge for Cain.  Regardless of the truth of her claim, her specific recounting of his alleged effort to grope her and push her head onto his lap now creates a mental picture that the other allegations didn’t.

To combat this image, if it’s fabricated, means Cain’s team has to find a way to create a competing visual image of what the job-seeking interaction truly was between the two.  If they can’t do that, either because the account is correct or Cain doesn’t remember his interaction with her, I don’t see how he can overcome this hit.

If you’re like me, you’ve asked yourself many times how we functioned before the Internet.  It’s true that some things were better before we became tethered to the online world.  Nevertheless, most of our jobs are constructed in a way that now requires digital contact at all times.

I was reminded of this Wednesday morning when KPCC’s Internet connection was lost just minutes before “AirTalk” began.  Not only did we lose our ability to gather important last-minute information on our guests and topics, but we also lost the ability to create our daily “AirTalk” page that features each of our segments.  Without the updated page, we had no ability to take listener comments or questions, apart from phone calls.

Though our online component for listeners started just a couple of years ago, I felt as though I’d lost an important way of connecting with listeners.  It is funny how quickly we not only adapt to a new normal, but how that loss hits us.

Fortunately, our Internet connection resumed after about fifteen minutes.  All was back to normal and we were able to take online listener comments.  However, it forced us to consider what we would do with a longer outage.  Now that we’re so Internet dependent, it would be significant challenge.

That’s the gist of a conversation we’re planning for Tuesday morning’s "AirTalk."  As a former Biblical Studies major in college (before getting my degree in psychology), I’m particularly interested in this topic.  I’ve encountered many guests over the years who are convinced that their interpretation of the Bible is correct.  I’m looking forward to hearing what our upcoming guests have to say about how they discern a Christian position on aid to the poor.

Speaking of aid to the needy, I appreciated hearing the voices of numerous patients and health workers at the just-concluded free clinic at the L. A. Sports Arena.  It was impressive to see all the volunteers who provided expertise and time to this worthy cause.