Thanksgiving; Harvest of Shame

It will be light blogging for the next few days.  All the Chomstein aunts, uncles, cousins, and second-cousins are meeting at Grandma's house in Tacoma to celebrate the Thanksgiving Harvest of Shame, so I'll be visiting the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas.  I'll try to blog on the road, but I will have a full review of the facilities for you when I return.

To tide you over, here's a little history lesson concerning the upcoming holiday. 

As we know, the tradition of Thanksgiving began when the Mayflower landed on Malcolm X, near what is present day Cape Cod, Massachussetts. Fed up with the hegemonic stranglehold the Church of England held over their lives, a small band of progressive Christians sailed across the Atlantic to establish a New Eden in the New World, where gays could marry, women had a Right to Choose, and the only form of currency was Love.

Indeed, the pilgrims had finally found their Utopia, a place where they could experiment with conscience-expanding drugs and enjoy casual sex without being glowered at by judgmental old fuddy-duddies.  Unfortunately, they spent so much time exercising their newfound freedoms that they didn't get any planting done, and had no food reserves for the approaching winter.  Without a Patient's Bill of Rights, thousands died from hunger and disease, and hundreds more from the lack of affordable health care. 

The indigenous peoples took pity on the pilgrims and brought them bushels of maize, berries, and deer turds, but the natives' strictly vegetarian diet didn't agree with the bizarre, meat-eating Europeans. Faced with starvation, the colonists unanimously agreed to eat the Indians.  For the next six months, they ate the Patuxets, the Narragansetts, and the Erectorsets almost to extinction.  They justified the hideous crime by convincing themselves that the dark-skinned savages posed an imminent threat, and had arrows of mass destruction. This pleasant fiction lasted until the NicNacs and the Paddywacs banded together with the Mohawks and the Pompadours, exacting revenge on the pilgrims and inflicting severe casualties.   

An ignorant baboon with a short temper, Capt. Myles Standish exploited the pilgrims' fear of another Indian attack to impose a fascist theocracy on the colony.  Backed by a junta of gun-toting puritans, Standish enacted the highly controversial US Mayflower Pact, rescinding all civil rights and granting the Church power to inspect a colonist's library records without a court order.  Standish spent the next four years waging an illegal war for gravy, alienating our Nez Perce allies.  But it wasn't until Chief Iacocca ordered the Pontiacs and Cadillacs to drive the pilgrims out of Dodge that the cannibalistic orgy of death was brought to an end.

So when your naive, pasty-faced brats come home from school this week wearing their cute little construction paper pilgrim hats, gently take them aside and explain the truth about this evil holiday: Thanksgiving dinner is not a reinactment of a bountiful harvest feast shared with friends, but the symbolic consumption of a murdered Indian's flesh to celebrate the cannabilistic genocide of the indigenous peoples.

Comments

[aelfheld]

Symbolic? We have a traditional Thanksgiving meal in my household. Nothing like roast suckling Indian with cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, and candied yams to make you thankful our ancestors made the trip.

That's what annoys me about you d----d liberals; always ready to chuck traditions out the window with no thought to what they commemorate.

BTW, where do you get off calling native Americans 'Indians'? That sort of language is reserved to reactionaries like me.

[Bad Commie]

>>> "ignorant baboon with a short temper"

OMG, W WAS THERE!

[Moonchild]

Wow! Those pilgrims sound like the commune I lived in for a brief time during 1971. Just like the pilgrims, we had utopia for a time, but the lure of fascism ruined it all. (Ziggy got a taste for power. He demanded that we all weed the garden and threatened to withhold the vegetables if we didn't. Just because agriculture was his bag didn't give him the right to threaten us with starvation if we didn't submit.)

Unfortunately, I think this proves that Sting was wrong when he sang that "History Will Teach Us Nothing", but he also sang "Russians". So, I guess it balances out.

[bahabuddha™]

Lar, in your review of Thanksgiving history, how could you leave out the Mormon Wars? About how the Wright brothers provided air support, flying their plane on a thimbleful of corn oil. Singlehandedly won us the civil war, it did.

[Travis Lee]

MMMMMMM...

Indians!

Taste like chicken!

[marty]

My personal Thanksgiving favorite is rosemary-rubbed Native American kabobs, pan-seared, then roasted with chestnuts over an open flame, served with a delicious mint aioli over a bed of warmed antiwar protesters.

Mmmm. Mmmm.

Any leftovers (as if!) would become stew.

[jtb-in-texas]

I'm going up to the reservation for Thanksgiving... but not for "the other red meat" since the only one I know is a deacon at my church and his family have a lot of guns and besides he is the only one brave enough to deep fry turkeys at his house (though he does it on a concrete pad 30 meters from the actual house)...

I still like the idea that Thanksgiving is really about remembering that all of the good things we have are from God... even the things we don't usually remember like air, water, and our senses... even the things we don't currently see as blessings like the trials that make us stronger...

I'm actually a "loud-mouthed jerk" (according to some) most of the time; but this holiday season, please consider praying that God will forgive our sins, heal the US, and let us have peace.

[Pile On®]

My favorite part of thanksgiving is the traditional passing of the peace pipe. We usually use my grandma's single hit water peace pipe. Kinda slow that way but it give you something to do while crazy Aunt Mary is saying a prayer or something.

[JannyMae]

I laughed through the whole thing, but this line really got me rolling on the floor: "But it wasn't until Chief Iacocca ordered the Pontiacs and Cadillacs to drive the pilgrims out of Dodge"

[War=Terror]

Larry, this quickie history refresher course reminds us all how "the more things change, the more they stay the same". The similarities to today are eerie. It seems like Americans would learn from their long, brutal history, but we are uniquely unable to look at past events and draw logical conclusions.

There are also parallels to Nazi Germany -- they also had a demagogue who rose to power on charisma, while mangling the language. He exploited the economic depression in order to impose a fascist dictatorship, and used religion to smash the freedoms of the masses, launching the greatest war in the history of the planet while exterminating entire classes of people (i.e. homosexuals, the intelligentsia, etc.). History is repeating itself all over again.

[Bruce Wood]

Larry, will your full review of the facilities include the ladies room as well as the mens?

Woody

[lauraw]

Marty, I think most Native Americans wouldn't mind if Rosemary rubbed their kebobs.

I'm just sayin.'

[dougrc]

My goodness,War=Terror, that must have been a bad batch of blotter acid. Pull your head out and take a real look at what is happening in the world. This is not the 1930's, and we are not the oppressors. A fascist religious movement declared war on our country in the 1990's. We, regretfully, thought they were an annoyance rather than a threat and as a result we lost 3,000 plus citizens in a single day. We had and still have a choice; continue to keep our heads up our kazoos and hope they just kill us in smaller numbers, or take the war to them.

We have a President and leadership in our nation's capital now that refuse to allow the Islamic fascists to use our citizens as target practice. The "War on Terror(ists)" is necessary. It is not pretty, but is effective, and be thankful that on this holiday those that mean to do you and your country harm, are hiding like prairie dogs when the coyotes are on the hunt. May they all meet their maker sooner, rather than later.

I thank God for our country, and all of its freedoms, including the one that encourages the free flow of ideas. Without hearing the weak and oppressed cry out, the strong and powerful cannot exercise compassion and charity. Those old Pilgrims started something that I hope will never end. We hope that peace will be our legacy, and liberty always be our standard.

[dougrc]

By the way Larry, at the William Jefferson Blythe-Clinton Presidential Library, or as we call it here in Arkansas, the "The Great Double-wide in the Sky", when you tip the attendant in the bathroom, realize that they don't have an attendant in the bathroom. Back out of the room slo-o-o-wly...

[Pile On®]

Doug, I see you have bought the neo-con propoganda hook line and stinker. War never solved anything, you can't engage in conflict resolution with dead people. War never was the reason for the......uh....sorry lost my train of thought dude. Anyways, we have to look at the root causes of why these people hate us so much they will strap bombs to their children to blow us up. Do you think people would do that without a darn good reason? Heck no, now pull you head out of the sand and smell the ganga.

[marty]

lauraw--They may like it, but Rosemary has rubbed me the wrong way of late. I don't have the thyme to get into it, but I think she's suffering from PEST.

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Herb Basil Parsley]

Sage advice, people! Happy Thanksgiving!

[Cassandra]

Indeed, the pilgrims had finally found their Utopia, a place where they could experiment with conscience-expanding drugs and enjoy casual sex without being glowered at by judgmental old fuddy-duddies.

Ahhh... but could they use profanity?

I thought not.

- Cassandra

[Pile On®]

Cass, there is never a time when hate speech is acceptable, we learned that lesson from the Native Indegenous Indian Americans.

[spd rdr]

Aw, shappap and eat.
Happy Thanksgiving people.

[Heavy B]

bwaahaaa(splurp)!!! Anybody got any tips on cleaning turkey stuffing and cranberry sauce off an LCD monitor?

[dougrc]

Pile, ol' bud, you are correct 199%. War never solved anything. Winning the thing though, will solve a hell of a lot. You cannot resolve a conflict with a religious zealot. In the eyes of the Mujahadeen, everyone else is an infidel. Just the act of sitting down at a table with you would defile him and cause him to be shunned by his fellow Muj.

Their life is hell because of what they believe, not because of economics, social position, or anything else that we can relate to. Their only hope for pleasure and a relief from the burden of their religion is to leave this life by destroying as many infidels as he can.

Until you have seen someone go from being a normal person to a radial islamist, you will have a hard time understanding. I've witnessed it and it is a terrible thing to see. 'Nuff of this...it is a downer.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! May you all run out of appetite long before you run out of stuffing! Sure do love this country, no matter who thinks they're running it.

[Barney Boo]

Amazing entry :D

[Stalin Lives In Boston]

bush is not hitler and america is not nazi germany in the 30's. hitler did not rise to power through charisma, he rose to power through the promise of strengthening the nonexistent german economy and military strength (that was sapped from the accords of the first world war). and bush couldn't have handled 9/11 any differently than hitler and the reichstag bombing. hitler (and stalin too) used the tragedy to impose a fascist rule that banned all firearms in germany so that dissenters couldn't uprise. bush has not taken away our guns, in fact, he has allowed the assault weapons ban to expire. so really that is a moot point too because now the citizens are even more armed than before this administration. and bush has not started the greatest war in the history of the world, nor has he exterminated entire races of people. nor has he even referred to muslims as the Great Scourge. hitler wasnt even religious, he only paid minimal lip service to christianity publicly, but left volumes of spiteful rhetoric towards it as well, referring to christianity as "another jewish-invented joke". really the bush/hitler parallel is shallow at best and ignorant all together.

a closer parallel would be between bush and the president with the lowest approval ratings in all of american history: abraham lincoln. lincoln was blamed for creating an unflinching, violent divide between americans. he was blamed for taking a hardline stance against american traditions that he did not think were moral. he was accused of shoving his self-righteous beliefs upon the population and was assailed with vile, hateful propaganda to remove him from power. but he persevered, he never apologized for any decision that he made (no matter how tough or devisive), and he stuck with his guns, never wavering, until his dream took america into a new age of prosperity and unity. and in true heroic form, he was martyred for his radical beliefs.

and just for the record, the voice of southern dissent was lead by democrats who felt that it was in their best interests to protect the "labor unions" of the south.

btw, pass the bong and the patchoulli.

[Friend of USA]

Do you get good mileage with those Dougrc ?
And how is the wet-pavement adherence with a
" radial islamist" ?
Typo - humour , I never said I was good at it!
I make typo all the time...You'll get me later...

But on a more serious note ;
Some of you may have seen those black and white films the US army did when it got to the shores of Japan during world war two.
They show Japanese mothers - after they had killed their own children - jump to their death over cliffs...

Why ?

Because their own government had told them that american soldiers would rape and torture and kill them all...
But some Japanese who took a wait and see attitude are alive today to tell the story ;
read it in " The Japan we never knew" by David Suzuki.

So anyway , those who think you need a good reason to strap a bomb to yourself or drive an airplane on an american target...

Well... all you need is good misinformation or propaganda.
If it works in america with Michael Moore disciples , imagine how well it works in countries where most people can't read ! ! !