As families across the U.S. gather on Thanksgiving to celebrate one of the nation’s most cherished national holidays, some educators and schools are lamenting the day, pushing back on its "colonial" roots, and incorporating diversity, equality and inclusion DEI into the holiday.
At the University of California, Davis, the California History-Social Science Project, which describes itself as "Resources & professional learning for K-12 history-social science," hosted a Zoom event called "Decolonizing Thanksgiving in the Classroom."
"We will discuss reframing classroom practices and rituals about Thanksgiving," the event description explained. "Centering perspectives from Turtle Island (a name for North America used by some indigenous people) will help us decolonize Thanksgiving and spark new conversations about how to authentically make meaning of this holiday with our students."
And so forth and so on, blah, blah blah. This rebuttal by PJ Media’s C.A. Skeet is worth printing in full:
Another Thanksgiving is upon us and, with it, another round of performative art from the left in the form of howls and shrieks about “stolen land” and “celebrating genocide.” Being conservatives, most of us simply don’t have the time to repeatedly engage in unproductive debate with these leftists, seeing as we have jobs to perform, kids to raise, spouses to love, and homes to maintain, the responsibilities of which consume hours too precious to waste trying to reason with a brick wall with no ears and a loud mouth. However, since being graciously hired by PJ Media, I’ve amassed a loyal following of readers whose numbers are approaching double digits, and hence I feel driven by ego and greed to keep that rolling snowball amassing weight.
So for the umpteenth time to the cheap seats on the left: Conquered land is not stolen land. And even if it were, there isn’t an inch of inhabited land on this planet that wasn’t “stolen” from someone else at one time or another. If you oppose Europeans wresting land from Indians, surely you also oppose Indians wresting land from other Indians, as they did for centuries before Columbus landed? Or does that inconvenient unpleasantry not warrant a land acknowledgement statement from the university DEI hire?
Yes, we did fight wars against the Indians and we did drive them from the land. But war waged for territory and resources is not the same thing as genocide. Voluntary assimilation, which is what most Indians chose to do, is also not genocide. And as I’ve said before, if you oppose wars of conquest, and if you support returning every “indigenous” population to their questionable “original” homeland, then this standard needs to apply across the board.
You’ve undoubtedly noticed that those screaming the loudest on Thanksgiving about “stolen land” conveniently ignore the fact that, at the time of the first Thanksgiving in 1620, land was being wholesale stolen from Europeans in a pattern that had begun almost 1000 years prior by a schizophrenic warlord in western Arabia, and was later compounded by bloodthirsty megalomaniacs on horseback from central Asia. If Europeans are expected to “go back to where they came from,” then it would only be morally just if those who have invaded Europe, North Africa, and the Holy Land also “go back to where they came from.”
But that’s not what the left wants, is it? Because if everyone on the planet “went back to where they came from,” do you know what would happen? Europe, Japan, the Asian Tigers, and a Muslim-free Mediterranean (as well as a Muslim-free Persia, India, and Byzantium) would positively flourish. The rest of the world would sink even deeper into peripheral irrelevancy. And that would only further illustrate the resounding triumph of free market capitalism, cultivated and upheld by the Judeo-Christian ethic, in contrast to the dead end secular hedonism of the 20th Century’s bloodiest ideologies and the tribalist ignorance of societies who, before they were “colonized” by the West, had literally not yet discovered the wheel.
Attempts to denigrate Thanksgiving by rewriting or ignoring its history are simply a larger part of the left’s attempt to destroy our shared culture. The left depends on segregation and permanent grievance to divide and conquer. But this is just political strategy. What’s underneath the politics? What is really driving leftists to embrace such nihilistic, cultish, and logically indefensible views? If you truly espouse tolerance and diversity, why not celebrate the most significant holiday in our lexicon that is based on the historical day when two diametrically opposed cultures and peoples put their differences aside and feasted together in a spirit of friendship and brotherhood?
Because the politics are a smokescreen. Underneath the yard sign philosophies of love and tolerance lie the ugly, twisted faces of bitterness, envy, resentment, and spite. You know the incel who gets rejected by a woman, and then he hates all women and blames them for all his problems? This is the left across a broad sociopolitical platform. The left is that spurned virgin, unappreciated for his supposed talents and abilities, lashing out at the both the women he feels belong to him by proprietary right, as well as the men who have proven themselves the more dominant wolves in the pack.
It's the oldest story in human history. It’s Cain killing Abel. Because if Cain can’t have the adoration, then nobody can.
Resentful, bitter people will never be thankful for anything. And they’re downright offended that we celebrate this holiday, the entire purpose of which is to humbly express gratitude for what we have been given. It flies in the face of their entire worldview. It has nothing to do with Indians and land. It has everything to do with the fact that most leftists are, unequivocally, hands down, the most utterly and pathetically miserable people ever stillborn into unwanted being in the history of lavish, overindulgent civilizations. And misery loves company, especially when that company feels the pressure of civility to not “get into it” at the Thanksgiving table.
But being naturally more tolerant and less confrontational than your leftist relative doesn’t oblige you to sit there and swallow their woke drivel in the name of “keeping the peace.” If little Braeden and little Madison home from college try to slip in some passive aggressive swipe about Thanksgiving, call them out on it. Stand your ground. Enforce your boundaries. Present the historical facts as they are. Don’t let them pivot. Don’t let them deflect. Keep bringing the conversation back to their original snide “gotcha” remark. But do it while staying cool, calm, and collected. Let little Braeden and Madison be the ones who get in a tizzy about it. Let them be the ones who make the scene.
You literally have to treat them like a child throwing a tantrum which, at the end of the day, is exactly who they are. It might ruin an otherwise good Thanksgiving, but it will prevent future occurrences if the child understands that the adults in the room will not tolerate their feral behavior.
And who knows? Maybe by this time next year, they will have had a run-in with some actual adversity that knocks them off their perch. Maybe they will feel that strange, new, hitherto unrecognizable feeling deep in their bosoms. Maybe they’ll be ready to express some sincere thanksgiving.
And so is this:
Washington DC, October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.
By the President: Abraham Lincoln
UPDATE: Aha! The assholes have come up with their own tradition to replace that of the oppressors
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