Posted on 11/24/2005 9:15:16 PM PST by weegee
The bitter truth, as we feast on the bounty of the empire -Our myth of Thanksgiving warps a history of genocide
ONE indication of moral and intellectual progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day with a National Day of Atonement.
Indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. But the thought of changing this white-supremacist holiday is hard to imagine, which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire.
It's not news that all the world's great powers achieved "greatness" through brutality on a grand scale. That those same societies are hesitant to highlight this barbarism also is predictable.
In the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin — the genocide of indigenous people — is of special importance today. It's now routine — even among conservative commentators — to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured.
One vehicle for taming history is patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. We hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 after the Pilgrims' first winter.
Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening land for the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 percent and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated.
Simply put:
Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was blessed by those we hold up as our heroic Founding Fathers.
In 1783 George Washington said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape." Thomas Jefferson — president No. 3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" — was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them."
As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president No. 26) defended whites' expansion across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway."
How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures held these views? Here's how "respectable" politicians, pundits and professors play the game:
When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand-wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. But when one brings up facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable, suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, "Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?"
This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant world power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of U.S. benevolence, making it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures — such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq — as another benevolent action.
History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.
As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects on the day's mythology on our minds.
Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of "The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity." He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
According to Jensen, the United States was "just as guilty" as the hijackers in committing acts of violence. Jensen wrote that the Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center The Pentagon "was no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism...that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime."
I guess for us to enjoy our own lives is the best revenge against him for saying all these things...you know that will drive him nuts.
Gaussian distribution...
Well unless that nitwit hands over his house keys to an apache and he takes the next boat back to what ever land his ancestors spawned themselves from, he can have a nice big 'ol glass of STFU.
But then, that would complicate the matter by showing a pattern that was started long before the white man showed up on this continent. Before there was a federal government to give you a place to live, you had to go out and do it yourself.
"Because of the bounties placed on scalps, the taking of people of all ages and sexes soon became something of a business on the frontier. In some cases the colonists - or, later on, the Americans - offered bounties on Indian scalps, but the greatest trafficking in scalps came as a result of the wide range of bounties placed on them by the British."
"Because different age and sex scalps brought different prices, the scalps had to be marked for proper payment to be given. Such bundles of scalps ordinarily were shipped in large lots of eight to twenty bundles, comprised of eighty-eight to one hundred scalps per bundle, or no less that seven hundred scalps per shipment."
"Scalps taken for British bounties were ordinarily shipped in these bundles to the governor of Canada in Quebec. Each scalp was stretched on a painted willow hoop and further painted on the inside of the skin. The colors and markings were used in a wide combination so that all of the necessary information about any particular scalp could be had at a glance. The basic hoop and scalp markings denoted the following:"
If that is the case, then why does he feel comfortable with condemning the United States, but not Al Qaida? Clearly, he thinks we are worse.
I have asked myself this question many times, but I'd like to throw it out for general discussion:
Why do people like this, who hate America so much, stay here at all?
I know the standard answer, money, but why would people who apparently loath the USA with every breath not just leave? And why doesn't somebody ask them that question?
Bump
Robert Jensen at UT is a Texas treasure. Once we have totally discredited Liberalism and converted or driven every last Liberal from the state of Texas, Jensen is the leading candidate to remain here as a reminder and warning to future generations about a warped and repugnant philosophy from long ago. I expect we’ll poke him with a stick every once in awhile to rouse him from his alcohol-induced stupor and laugh at what he utters or writes. Some will look on in pity and pray under their breath, “There, but for the grace of God…”.
Find me a nation older than 300 years without a bloody past. Point out a pacifist civilization that helped humanity stagger out of the wilderness. Show me a vibrant culture that has neither strength, nor the will to use it.
You can't.
Anyone that is alive today had ancestors that butchered their enemies. Trying to feel guilt over that is absurd and illogical.
Trashing Thanksgiving is especially bizarre, considering that it's a holiday that basically says 'We wish things had turned out different, and we had been friends'. This article speaks more to the insecurities and bias of the author than of society. A nation composed of Robert Jensens lacks the fiber needed to survive, and will be absorbed by the first invader to show up. Watch France's rapid cultural annexation by immigrants who believe in their own customs and history, and are not ashamed to admit it.
There is no future for those that deny their history. If you don't believe in your own way of life, you'll eventually be conquered by someone who does.
Let's all switch to a properly Native American holiday, where we all perform human sacrifice on a ten year old.
"People from all over the world have made much of the Anasazi, a Navajo word for "ancient ones’ or, some say, "ancient enemies," believing them to have been deeply spiritual. But what if that peaceful image is wrong?"
"The Pollyanna image of a peaceful people has been cracked - some say shattered forever. The reason is the publication of Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest, by Turner and his late wife, Jacqueline. It is the first detailed account of cannibalism and violence on a regional scale in the prehistoric American Southwest, especially in the Chaco Canyon area."
"The title of the book comes from the Aztec word tlacatlaolli, a "sacred meal of sacrificed human meat, cooked with corn."
In a sense, that gives him more credit than he is due. He is a blow-away anti-American ala Ward Churchill, whom he wholeheartedly supports.
If you dwell on things that happened hundreds of years ago, you get the Balkans and their endless conflicts.
He's perfectly free to go back to Europe anytime he wants. Of course, soon it will be run by Muslims anyway.
"Indigenous peoples" and their quaint rituals were covered in detail in Frazer's "The Golden Bough." A sampling (not for the squeamish):
http://www.bartleby.com/196/103.html
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