Saturday, November 23, 2019

Thanksgiving Should Be America's Day of the Dead

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, There lived a group of magical white Christians called the Pilgrims. After growing weary of their King's discrimination against witch trials and buckle-hats, they climbed aboard a magic ship called the Mayflower and sailed the deadly Atlantic on a quest for religious freedom and laissez-faire capitalism. They found a wild, mysterious and sparsely populated New World and quickly busied themselves building the foundation of the exceptional American Dream. When they came face to face with pestilence, they graciously excepted agricultural advice from an unwashed horde of noble savages, who were intern thanked with an invite to a grand feast of Thanksgiving.

Well, there's the official national fairy tale, here's the open handed bitch slap of reality. The sainted Pilgrims were a clan of puritanical Christian wack jobs sent by King James as a sort of glorified death squad to wipe out the Native Peoples of Turtle Island. There was no multicultural feast. That was another Christian tradition scalped from the Pilgrims original pagan victims back in the old country, where a successful fall harvest was celebrated with a tribal village feast. The first Thanksgiving was a work of fiction propagated to pacify the citizens of this country during times of great social upheaval, first during the Civil War, then revamped in it's current form during the Great Depression. It's a fable designed to unify an empire, not around family and community, but around the state that robs us of both and fucks us until we bleed. The very same state that systematically butchered the native peoples of this continent, only to use their distorted memory as token props for the pageantry of American Exceptionalism.

But history ain't a straight line, my dearest motherfuckers. It's a circle and that circle is coming back around again. After the "savages" coexisted relatively peacefully on this continent for thousands of years without the modern perversion of the state, the righteous, enlightened, Europeans have managed to burn out after just a little over two centuries of rabid over expansion. America and Western Civilization as we know it stand on the brink of collapse. It turns out all that raping and pillaging isn't a particularly sustainable model for economic solvency after all. With bases on every fucking continent and a bloated military apparatus that would make Darth Vader wet with envy, the American giant is coming apart at the seams. A morbidly obese, blood spattered glutton, drowning in debt, endless war and staggering economic inequality. To many this fate is terrifying, after all, the fall of Rome was followed by a Dark Age. But as a bluntly anti-American anarchist, I see this coming upheaval with a devilish glint of hope. The Dark Ages came about when Europe fell into denial over their failure to control the world. If America can boldly face the truth that the empire is not only dead but deserved to die, this could be a new beginning. An opportunity for hope.

This is where Thanksgiving comes back in. Many on the far-left have argued for simply erasing the holiday from the map or changing it to a day of mourning, but to be perfectly politically incorrect, days of mourning are a fucking bummer and nobody learns shit from a national bummer, just ask 9/11 if you don't believe me. But if the pagan harvest can be appropriated by the state then why not repossess that bitch for a new generation of savages. I say we declare the fourth Thursday of November America's Day of the Dead. In Mexican peasant culture, the Day of the Dead is a day to remember those we lost, not with sorrow, but with joy and celebration. Americans could learn a thing or two from these wise wetbacks before we build a wall around them.

We should use Thanksgiving to celebrate the untold millions of native people who were slaughtered for proudly resisting this toxic nation and give thanks that that very nation is damned to the same fate. We should have representatives from all the tribes teach people of all races who currently occupy what was once their territory about the culture and history of the lost and how they could inform our post-state future. Since their numbers have tragically dwindled, these tribal representatives could dress us up in a mix of traditional tribal garb and corpse paint and together we could wander the highways like the prophecy of Chief Seattle and haunt suburbia by candlelight. The red man's ultimate revenge could be the conversion of pale face against the empire itself. We can all gather at traditional Indian burial grounds and build great wicker-men in the tradition of our own pre-imperial European pagan heritage, designed to resemble Pilgrims and Conquistadors, then take our candles representing all the lost tribes and use them to burn that fucker down as the surviving Indians drum and chant.

 Finally, at the stroke of midnight, we will change costumes from the tribes of the past to the tribes of the future. Every individual can create their own pastiche of leather and war paint, with their own flags for their own tribes. Black Shiites, Lesbian Bikers, Odinist Drag Queens, Paraplegic Syndicalists, Mormon Communists, Hasidic Mutualists, joined by the surviving tribes of Sioux, Navajoes, Apache, Amish, Cajuns and Mennonites, and together in our radical diversity we can give thanks for the coming fall of the American Empire by jubilantly moshing around the fire and embracing the wild democracy of our lost inner savage. Then we can go home and eat stuffing, because even imperialist rituals can be fun in the proper context.

I know, not exactly politically correct. But can you think of a better way to celebrate genocidal karma? Didn't think so. Your move Elizabeth Warren.



Peace, Love & Thanksgiving- Nicky/CH



Soundtrack; Songs that influenced this post

*  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Indigo Girls
*  The Navajo Know by the Pixies
*  Willows Song by Paul Giovanni
*  London Calling by the Clash
*  Party at Ground Zero by Fishbone
*  Two Step by Throwing Muses
*  Crumblin Down by John Melloncamp
*  Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me- But I Have It by Lana Del Rey

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