BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | NOV 26

This Thanksgiving occurred in an unusually negatively-charged atmosphere. It seemed harder for some to open the chest cavity and let the heart breathe, tell friends and family you love them, pause long enough to be thankful, forgive and forget.

Not even for a day. This condition was particularly acute near the epicenters of American politics, where people seem more entitled to be angry and righteous in their indignation against others.

If you opened a newspaper this holiday—your first mistake—the news was normal, biased, and bad. The commentators couldn’t seem to let go of their hostility long enough to squeeze out a little brotherhood, civility, or old fashioned kindness. The papers were full of advice on how to prevent fights over Donald Trump at the Thanksgiving table. I wonder if the pilgrims, who survived their first year at Plymouth, and Chief Massasoit and his 90 Indian braves fought over frontier politics at the first of these dinners in 1621.

Fortunately, back in reality world, beyond the influence of the East Coast power peddlers, in places like Kansas and Minnesota and North Carolina many families gathered, texted, emailed, Face Timed and employed that ancient art of phone calling to celebrate their lives and their love for each other. There were fires in gas fireplaces, children with smiling faces buried in electronic devices, and grown-ups sitting down to football. I doubt there were many fights over Trump.

For the fast majority of us civility ruled, simple politeness prevailed, and mutual respect transformed itself into smiles not frowns, kind words not jeers. The only baring of teeth was to a drumstick about to be dissected and devoured.

But back in politicalville, where people who tell you to stuff it aren’t referring to a turkey, there is need for a holiday redo.

A very respected and dedicated public servant, Congressman Luke Musser of Indiana, the kind of human being who has gravy running through his veins, wrote his constituents just before the holiday about a concept ideally suited for Thanksgiving—Gratitude Attitude, a phrase he picked up at his children’s first grade school play.

Gratitude attitude is good.

If you spend a minute reminding yourself of the policeman carrying the dead body of a young boy off of a beach in Greece or the young girl, with a dirty face and torn clothes staring into the disbelief of where life has taken her in strife-torn Syria, a place where millions like her have died, or are homeless, or sick or imprisoned by terrorism or wandering the Middle East and Europe; if you think about millions of children in this country who can’t get a decent education or three squares a day or someone to fix a cut or cure an infection, whose parents are afraid to walk out on the street at night for fear of being shot; if you think about seniors in America working the check-out stand at the local grocery store because they have nothing on which to retire and less than nothing to leave behind to their children; a gratitude attitude suddenly has some appeal.

If we think that way, maybe the idea of Thanksgiving could last us into the Christmas season and serve as something more than a cheap doormat for a shopping spree on black Friday and Saturday and Sunday.

Unfortunately for some, Thanksgiving is not the behavioral reset it should be. It seems not to inspire an attitude of gratitude much anymore. Over the holiday students at Loyola University of Maryland forced the removal of what was to them an offensive theme for their senior celebration. The deplorable theme? Party in the USA. Student leaders apologized for their insensitivity.

It didn’t do much either for the student at Oklahoma Wesleyan University who said he was victimized by a homily delivered by the school chaplain on the subject of love. The student complained to the University President that the homily made him feel bad because he does not show enough love and the school should not make students feel that way. President Everett Piper didn’t rush the young man off to a safe place for therapeutic solitude, but wrote him and the student body a nice letter about self-absorption and narcissism.

Elsewhere during the holiday two were killed and four wounded in a senseless shooting in Louisville. A teen was gunned down in a Washington, DC housing complex. Members of the New Black Panthers placed a fake bomb in a school with the intent of ambushing police when they came to defuse it, according to Birmingham, AL police. Rosie O’Donnell spent the holiday spreading rumors on the Internet that Donald Trump’s 10-year-old son has Autism, ignoring the “children are off limits” credo. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Elijah Cummings called for a Federal investigation of chaos in the Trump transition. A New York Times Columnist called Trump a slimy charlatan and a fraud. Protestors across America continued beating up each other, destroying property and spewing epithets across the length and breadth of the political spectrum.

More candidates for a gratitude attitude transplant.

We are constantly lectured about our rights under the First Amendment to express our beliefs in harsh, vulgar and personally demeaning terms. It’s okay for high school students to walk out of school without punishment to protest the election of a President, sometimes violently. That, we are told, is the true exercise of our liberty. Really?

The First Amendment secured those rights. Yes, indeed. But the First Amendment does not abrogate the responsibility of citizenship that goes along with them. More important to the survival of our freedom and liberty, in fact, is the courage to speak not of division, but of unity, to speak not of conflict, but of compromise in our political life and civility in our personal lives and to exercise mutual respect rather than resentment and anger. Our survival depends upon our ability to govern ourselves, not behave like bullies. You have to wonder whether a civility March on Washington would draw more than three nuns and a Salvation Army bell ringer.

Thanksgiving should be a holiday that brings out the better part of our human nature, and I don’t mean finding the best sale price on a Craftsman drill. And Thanksgiving should be a holiday that gives human character an extended life, not just a few hours on either side of a meal, but for days and weeks and months beyond, at least long enough for the Christmas spirit to take over.

We are letting ourselves down when we do less. We are surrendering to forces all around us that can only prey on the darker side of our nature and cower under the light of civil behavior and discourse.

An attitude of gratitude is a good remedy for what ails us.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.