Ignore Spoiled Children Spreading Misery about Thanksgiving
Whatever the motivations of divisive clowns, it's best to focus your attention elsewhere
I offer Thanksgiving blessings and greetings to all my fellow Americans.
In addition to my gratuitous platitudes, I offer up a small example of what has gone wrong in our social body over the last few years, and a suggestion on how to take steps towards fixing it. Anyone tuning in for what passes for the news last night would have - if they were unfortunate enough to stumble onto MSNBC - encountered this slice of meanspirited bile from a woman named Joy Reid who spends her time on-air trying to tell Americans how much we should hate one another. Instead of a benign “Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans,” listeners would have been “treated” to this odd harangue.
“It is a holiday riddled with historical inaccuracies, built on this myth that the indigenous welcomed their colonizers with open arms and ears of corn. A simplistic fairytale interpretation of a 1621 encounter between indigenous tribes and English settlers that erases the genocide that followed.
“It is the truth that Republicans want banned from our textbooks because here is the secret they want so desperately to keep: We are a country founded on violence. Our birth was violent.”
This is the kind of boring crap every family who struggled to find the cash to send their darling child off to Harvard has to endure at the Thanksgiving family dinner. Only a spoiled child decides to ruin the family holiday by whining about events that happened in the past that no one can change. I’ll return to that in a second.
But first, what bizarre claim is this lunatic making that “Republicans” want to ban “the truth” from our textbooks? Really. What on earth is this brat talking about? Have you ever had the experience of speaking with a really convinced member of a cult that you are not a member of? They will state things as self-evidently “obvious” that rational people find utterly absurd or insane. Herewith I am sure all of Joy’s “really fun” pals from Harvard would nod in agreement with this weird idea that “Republicans” want to keep the complexities of the historical record “a secret.”
Just how would these nefarious “historical truth secret keeper Republicans” go about doing this? It is no secret that the encounters between colonizing societies and colonized societies often were less than peaceful. This part of the historical record is quite literally common knowledge. Yet Joy wants us to believe that something any high school student can tell you about the European encounter with the Native Americans is some kind of “big secret” that only she and some “Republicans” know about. Maybe someone reading this can leave a comment or otherwise communicate to me what on earth this twit means, but I’ll just note my complete bafflement at what she thinks she is talking about.
Only a spoiled child thinks that she has “discovered” the fact that humans have been, are and will continue to be awful to one another. Further, that said spoiled child is going to get some kind of nasty-spirited ego boost by trying to ruin her family’s celebration by focusing not on the annual celebration of national unity - however imperfect - starting in 1789 when George Washington first proclaimed it, but on some long-ended historical details, some positive, some negative. Her ego has been stoked so high for so long, she has moved on from being a buzzkill at the family feast (or maybe they’ve had enough of her crap and disinvited her this year) to attempting to be a national buzzkill by lecturing the entire country on how “awful” we are for taking time to enjoy a national holiday focused on family and gratitude for the immense blessings attendant on being a lawful citizen of this nation.
Her negative attitude is a luxury product. Life for so many is so hard that psychologically the only thing to do is to maintain a positive attitude. This whiny stream of constant complaints about historical details that cannot be changed is the kind of thing you get from an 18-year-old who did his or her (that are no other options) first American History seminar in college with a professor who told them that George Washington and the cherry tree story is not factually true.
Foundation myths act as a cohering statement for a group about “who we are.” The important lessons of telling the truth (George and the tree) or of the importance of getting along with new neighbors (the First Thanksgiving) are valuable moral lessons in and of themselves. To take an example from the religious life, in large measure, the “details” in terms of factual “veracity” are irrelevant to a given story’s societal value. Religious Jews and Christians can believe the universe is 5,783 years old, and equally religious Jews and Christians can believe the time narrative in the Torah is metaphorical more than literal in terms of time units, so can happily discuss billions of years of geological processes without altering their faith in the unitary creator god. How they live their lives in relation to their families, society and proper behavior is not changed one iota by their understanding of the Creation stories laid out in Bereishis/Genesis.
Only a child would believe any nation was not “founded on violence.” Does this obnoxious woman Reid have an example of a nation which was “founded” - whatever that means; I am going to take it to mean when borders were drawn and a national identity declared - in another way? Is there a nation on earth - or has there ever been one - that has no conflict in its early history?
Humans are violent apes. Always have been and I don’t see much evidence of the ape changing its ways.
As I always tell my junior staff, “Don’t bring me a problem if you have not given any thought to a solution.” Another aspect of spoiled children is that they bring you their problems, toss them in your lap and expect you, the adult to solve them.
It is another way you know that Joy Reid is a spoiled brat. After her nasty little rant designed to make - who? ‘white people in the suburbs,’ I’m guessing based on her consistent pattern of racial profiling - people feel bad about enjoying our national celebratory meal and family gathering, what does she offer up as an alternative? OK, Joy, so you want to focus on the occasional violence that occurred in our nation’s development. What is your answer? Do we get rid of Thanksgiving? Is that your plan? Or do you want your Marxist Brigades to invade every American’s home on Thanksgiving to lead Historical Struggle Commissions? What would be the outcome of those struggle sessions? Everyone must beat their breast, “confess” their moral failings and their “responsibility” for actions taking by people who died centuries ago? Followed, I bet, by some kind of “reparations” given to some portion of the population deemed “victims?”
I mean, to sum up all my criticisms, what is her damned point?
Also, to go back to the beginning of this holiday message, my suggestion for healing the pointless societal rifts created by nasty nattering nabobs of negativity like Joy Reid is to ignore the natterers. If you happen to be a friend or family member of the negative spreader, gently remind them life is hard, has always been hard and whatever you focus on is what you become. Gandhi put it really well:
Based on the evidence of her words, Joy Reid’s beliefs and thoughts are clearly bitter, unhappy, aggrieved and nasty. I assume that is a massive bummer for her. There is nothing any of us can do to force another person to change their beliefs, thoughts and actions. All I can do is encourage positive behavior and words in those around me by ignoring the negative and feeding the positive.
Maybe if everyone around Joy looked away and picked imaginary lint off their arms when she starts in on the racist, divisive negativity that is her stock in trade, she’d change. That includes changing the incentives for the executives at MSNBC who pay this woman to spew lies, hatred and nonsense on their airwaves. Anyone tuning in for a helping of her nastiness is feeding the negativity.
Whatever your political leanings, this Thanksgiving try to focus on what you like about being an American. I am not saying you need to have a rosy-eyed vision of human history, but I am saying your life and the future direction of our nation quite literally relies on how each and every one of us focuses our attention.
Happy Thanksgiving.