Thanksgiving: The Real Story?

As my two regular readers know the only holiday I actually celebrate is Thanksgiving. My friends and I have made it over into our own two day non-religious and non-patriotic festivity. In our observance it has little or nothing to do with the “First Thanksgiving,” It has to do with being thankful for our connections to each other, the world around us and the fact that we are all in this together. I love it. They are my two favorite days of the year.

That said, Max Sawicky, over at MaxSpeak, You Listen!, has a really interesting and quite relevant take on the “First Thanksgiving” and that which lead up to it. He has rewritten the story in a Pax Americana sort of way without the “faux peace part” spin. You know, picture Iraq! In fact, pick any other country that applies, there are a lot you know!

Here is Max:

MaxSpeak Summary: the Puritan Christian fundamentalists, of whom the Pilgrims were a subgroup, were murderous, treacherous swine who made a treaty with the indigenous people around Plymouth until they had enough forces to wipe them out. This they later did with smallpox and guns, unless they were able to sell them into slavery, all of course for the greater glory of Jesus Christ.

Wait a minute. That wasn't quite right. Let's try it again. Here's how it goes.

The Puritans in England were subject to religious persecution, lo unto death. They needed a homeland where they could survive as a people and live in peace. They tried to settle in the Netherlands, but it proved inhospitable. Only the possibility of the New World seemed to beckon. It was a land without a people, and they were a people without a land.

Upon settling around Plymouth, the first Puritans (Pilgrims) established amicable relations with the Wampanoag Nation. The Wampanoag had already been depleted by disease brought by previous settlers. They were also subject to aggression by other Native American groups, so their alliance with the Puritans became an outpost of peace and freedom in the New World.

As more Puritans arrived, they required more breathing space. The Wampanoag, like other indigenous peoples, lacked a modern system of property rights. They did not see fit to build fences, put up street signs, or establish variable-rate mortgages. The Puritans remedied these defects of indigenous culture. It just happened that the Puritans ended up owning all the property, and Native Americans themselves became classified as property.

Taking umbrage at this advance of Judeo-Christian civilization, the indigenous people reduced themselves to terrorism. Some were sufficiently maniacal as to sacrifice their own lives in order to murder innocent settlers. There was a veritable cult of death. Underlying this irrationality was a primitive religious belief system that celebrated exterminating one's enemies, as well as the consumption of locoweed and psychedelic mushrooms.

In short, the natives hated the settlers for their freedom and no longer greeted them as liberators. They meant to establish dominion over the the entirety of Europe by summoning the Great Spirit as a weapon of mass destruction.

As a matter of self-defense, the Puritans were compelled to rise to the challenge of this clash of civilizations and wage a pre-emptive war of extermination of both the terrorists and the societies that nurtured them. There was no middle ground; you were either with them or against them.

Those Native Americans who were willing to live in peace were provided with alternative living arrangements, under the protection of the new government. Sadly, they proved unequal to the rigors of modern society and eventually disappeared, although they were given the opportunity to experience democracy before their demise.

Today we, "the people who build square things," celebrate Thanksgiving as a tribute to their memory, and to the invaluable assistance they unselfishly provided for the Christian arrival to America.

Now please pass the gravy.

Once again, Max continues to be one of the other things to be thankful for. And okay, so he does use the “faux peace part” spin, but only because it is necessary to move the narrative along. Isn’t it always?

Are all economists such great storytellers?

Just asking.