Re-Membering Thanksgiving
Gloating and Gluttony Then and Now
by pattrice jones
Originally published 2004 on various IndyMedia sites.
Revises 2003 essay originally published by Press Action.
Thanksgiving, 2003 — Bush the executioner grins and pardons a turkey before flying to Iraq. He’s earned that self-satisfied smirk. All over his United States, citizens celebrate conquest over platters of flesh. Too full of turkey to think and too full of themselves to question, they let out their belts and watch TV. Tomorrow they go shopping!
November, 2004 – Homophobia hands GWB four more years. Seizing the day, he orders his Conquistadors to take Falluja. US troops blockade the city, announcing that any man under 45 who remains will be presumed hostile and that no man under 45 will be permitted to leave. Any man having the audacity to have been born in a city the Americans want to occupy is about to discover what the original inhabitants of the Americas learned long ago.
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“Body parts are everywhere!” That’s what one US soldier had to say about the saddest city in Iraq, according to an AFP report. It’s also an apt description of the state of US dinner tables during the festival of gloating and gluttony known as Thanksgiving.
This year, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving in the wake of the taking of Falluja. Waving “drumsticks” and fighting for “wishbones,” complacent Christians will gorge themselves without fear, safe from the threats of gay marriage and Iraqi self-determination. Stuffing themselves beyond satiation, they and their children will partake of the proud Puritanical tradition of ruthless, reckless expansion.
Colonization is nothing to crow about. When Columbus blundered into a hemisphere populated by 70-100 million people and countless unique species of flora and fauna, he set into motion a chain reaction of repression and rebellion that continues to this day.
