What binds Americans together as a nation this Thanksgiving?

Anxiety and worry about the future.

How about being thankful, that the worldwide financial crisis only turned into a great recession and not a great depression which would have been far more worse. I think both Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner and the whole international community did a great job avoiding the complete meltdown. It was close. And we still feel the aftershocks for example in Ireland right now. But the mechanisms to deal with this are in place.

America is still one of the largest economies in the world, i would think that makes any nation gratefull

Thankfulness that we have each other (when it comes to family and friends with different views). There are times for political talks and there are times to avoid them. I know which family members to avoid them with, so instead we talk about what’s going on in our lives instead. We don’t get to have Thanksgiving dinner with our family each year (or even Christmas dinner with our family each year), so the times we are able to get together, there are more important things to talk about and catch up on.

Nice question. I’ll try to answer seriously, but you’ll have to excuse that there may be attempts at funny.

There is so much ‘right’ about the USA that it’s hard to list them all. Getting away from the geopolitics of ‘richest economy’ and ‘defender of the free world’ and all that, we have
– Little League and Major League Baseball
– Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts
– free parking
– great scenery
– peace within our own borders and no refugee problem
– peaceful neighbors
– NFL football and youth soccer
– widescreen high-definition television
– decent internet speed and cable
– free long distance
– pretty good highways, to enable me to drive over 1000 miles in 18 hours with only one warning for speeding.

And turkey, homemade baked beans and bread, and succotash.

Gluttony and consumerism. Just like christmas and the rest of the year.

Our affinity for seasonal celebrations, which humans have been doing for a long time. Everything else is just added in and is usually quite meaningless, to me at least.

What @ragingloli said. Food. But there is the family aspect too, so it’s not all greed.

Clean water, sanitation, shelter and more than enough to eat.

Ritual sacrifice.

Clean water, plentiful food (for most), free speech, gas prices that seem too high to us – but are much lower than in many other places in the world. Love.

I was unaware that we as a nation were, in fact, bound together. I thought we were divided up into camps that were suspicious of each other at best, and overtly hostile at worst. Maybe I’m thinking of something else, I’m not generally a reliable source.

@jimmy001 Actually you are now in so much debt America doesn’t belong to Americans anymore but have fun believing that.

@Trillian It only seems that way, especially in the wake of the recent elections. The average American feels bound to other Americans, regardless of political beliefs.

@Zyx – It is mostly Americans owning America now, FWIW.

You guys beat me to just saying, “Food,” which would’ve been correct, anyways.

Rose-colored glasses.

I’ve never quite understood the antagonism towards some holidays. Every Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years Eve there’s a handful of people argueing that the real purpose of the holiday has been lost, or that it should simply not be celebrated. Holidays, seemingly similar to all things in this world, change with time, they adapt to fit the shifting values of a culture and society.

Thanksgiving was founded on shaky history, there’s little doubt about that, but in this modern age it has become a time when people group together with others to eat, drink and take a moment to appreciate life. Yes, it’s as much a celebration of capitalism as it is of the “human spirit” (or whatever else Hallmark cards can come up with), but capitalism is as much a part of our culture, and as much a part of us as our friends and family. If it’s really became such a major element of our celebrations then I say, so be it. We were raised by many entities in this world and though we should never permit ourselves to be blind to their flaws, neither should we refuse to acknowledge them as being an intrinsic part of who we are.

In answer to the question, I would suppose that Americans are bonded together today by the notion that an entire country of people can do more good than an individual if applied correctly. Atleast, that’s the basic idea of it i’ve constructed based upon the perspectives of Americans i’ve discussed the matter with.