Lockard has a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Northern Iowa (1994) and has continued classes at the Writer’s Workshop in Iowa City. She writes regularly for "The Courier", a regional newspaper, and has published several short stories and poetry. Amy and her husband live in Cedar Falls, Iowa with the youngest three of their eight children.
This week, on Thursday, our nation will celebrate—no, not Black Friday’s Eve— but Thanksgiving Day. Traditionally most of us have considered Thanksgiving a holiday created to celebrate our heritage, revolving around the pilgrims and Native Americans and the first Thanksgiving feast, a day centered around food and family.
But the impetus for the Thanksgiving holiday was born of something much deeper. It was a national call from three of our greatest presidents for our citizens to pause and give thanks, a proclamation at critical times in our history, which reflected their own psyches and their hopes for our country.
These presidents: Washington, Lincoln and (Theodore) Roosevelt, not coincidentally three of “Four of Mount Rushmore” were each instrumental in creating and maintaining Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Despite their individual reputations and high standing, they felt it necessary that they, and we, humble ourselves and give thanks for our country. They believed thankfulness an essential component of a strong individual, as well as of a strong nation.
George Washington originated the idea, with his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789, declaring a day of public thanks to be observed in November of that year. Our first president thought it essential we pause for reflection, to ask for guidance for our new nation as it established itself after the Revolutionary War and to give thanks for victory.
Subsequent presidents let the states decide when and if Thanksgiving would be celebrated, until our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, reinstated it as a national tradition in 1863. In the midst of the Civil War, at the helm of the worst internal conflict in our country’s history, he deemed it necessary to give thanks for “peace preserved with all (other) nations, (that) order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except the theatre of military conflict,” and set the date for Thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November.
Our twenty-sixth president, Teddy Roosevelt, assuming the presidency after McKinley was assassinated, when there was a “keen anxiety for the country” (sound familiar?) issued Proclamation 822 in 1908, establishing the fourth Thursday of November as a day for thanksgiving and making it a national holiday. He wrote, “The things of the body are good; the things of the intellect better; the best of all are the things of the soul; for in the national as in the individual, in the long run it is character which counts.”
Each of these great men personally possessed the “golden” character trait of thankfulness. They knew gratitude could pull citizens from the cynicism or despair of their times by shifting the focus and each was instrumental in shaping our nation’s spirit, reminding us how essential it is to be thankful for our country and its providence.
The “gratitude thing” is now a commercially popular concept. There are dozens of gratitude journals and books, podcasts and shows, vying to teach us to be grateful and promoting the powers of daily positive thinking as a recipe for happiness. Tailored to every segment of the population and ranging from religious to scientific, all encourage us to cultivate an “attitude of gratitude.”
However, gratitude is, obviously, not a new concept and many of these reflections miss a bigger point. Recording our personal victories and wishes fulfilled has value, but in a larger sense we who are lucky enough to live in this country have already hit the jackpot, and very often without recognizing it. Without working to maintain our standing through appreciating it, we have the propensity to turn our tremendous fortune into misfortune.
However expressed in each of us, this quality of thankfulness is bigger than any of us. It is a necessary element in happy individuals and a critical part of the make-up of a vibrant nation. It is the fount of every blessing, the wind in our sails, the center of our joy. Thankfulness is the calm middle in the whirling dervish we call life, the ability to see not what’s wrong, but appreciate what is right, even the impetus to right the wrongs.
Call it then Gratitude. Or Love. Call it God or our Higher Power or the Better Part of Humanity. Call it Joy or our Song or Blessings. Or Good Fortune.
But call it; and do all you can to keep it. Call it Thanksgiving.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.