No Thanks Given
For some reason I cannot relax and enjoy the Holidays. Something chafes my innermost sensibilities, and I stare at my fellow Americans with an awful expression on my tired face. I am incapable of considering only on segment of history. History is now. Right now. Atrocities from centuries back exist vividly in front of my eyes even as I walk the streets of 1993 Ann Arbor. There is no erasure. Memory comes up through the chest. I want to vomit on your feast.
What is called "Thanksgiving" grates against my heart. Given our national heritage, I feel that this would be the most appropriate way to celebrate: invite me to your house and I'll slaughter a steer in your living room. Then we'll beat each other up, get shitfaced drunk, go outside and shoot anything that moves, then drive around recklessly in a stolen car without a muffler.
Because like it or not, we killed and thieved our way across this continent, from the very earliest settlements to the present day. It's not only America--this kind of behavior can be found all over the world, throughout history. But right now I'm speaking for and to Americans.
Read William Carlos Williams' In The American Grain, a series of reflections on American history from Erik the Red to Abraham Lincoln. Read aloud over dinner the chapter dealing with Ponce de Leon. It begins with the words: "History, history! We fools what do we know or care? History begins for us with murder and enslavement, not with discovery." Later in the text, the awful scene: "Next morning when women and children came down to the shore to fish--fine figures, straight black hair, high cheekbones, a language--they caught them, made them walk in bands, cut them down if they fainted, slashed off breasts, arms...we are the slaughterers. It is the tortured soul of our world."
The Thanksgiving feast should consist of blood sausages, blood pudding, and, if at all possible, human flesh. If you are proud of the history of your country, say to each other across the table: j'accuse! Then, as you lift the dead and murdered meats to your lips, say to yourself and to the spirits which lurk around you during this important ritual: mea culpa.
Obviously I am a radical vegetarian (of some 22 years) and on top of that I've got some bones to pick, so to speak, with myself and everyone around me. This is not a history to be proud of, not without gut-wrenching misgivings. But it is a season of charades, and if you must dress the school children up as "Pilgrims" and "Indians," then grant us some accuracy. One of the little boys, dressed in Puritan drab, is designated as Cotton Mather. He selects a girl and declares her to be a witch, whereupon the "Pilgrims" pretend to burn her alive.
Net, the "Pilgrims" present the "Indians" with blankets which are full of smallpox. (This is all from history, folks). We can finish this delightful history lesson by treating all the children dressed as "Indians" to a one-way bus ticket to Oklahoma. As they board the bus, hand each one of them a half gallon of sour mash whiskey. Oh, we are a great nation with a legacy worth crowing about. Where are the Seminoles? Not in Miami.
Now, what makes me so embittered, and why drag the kids into it? Must've been something I lived. On November 22d, 1963, I was in first grade. (Now We Are Six--The word for today is: assassination. Can you spell that? Sure you can). Ever since that day I have been unable to trust my own government. And I cannot enjoy Thanksgiving because all I see is Oswald being shot in the stomach, over and over again.
Meat is murder. And murder is some people's meat. The first time I read the Warren Commission Report I was old enough to know they were lying when they said that Jack Ruby had "no discemable ties to organized crime." Sure! He was a teary-eyed patriot. Right. If you read "Contract On America" by David Scheim of the House Committee on Assassinations, you discover that Ruby's first paying job was running errands for Al Capone in Chicago!
But that's the tip of a dirty iceberg, and I'm sure most of us would like to sail on by. Oliver Stone's movie has glutted us with controversy, hasn't it. What a thrill it was to hear the complaints even before the film was released! My favorite complaint was that you couldn't tell the factual information from the fabrications. Which is exactly what we've been living with for 30 years! Don't you get it? And when a recent issue of U.S. News and World Report ran a cover story promoting a new book ("Case Closed") which desperately argues in favor of the lone nut theory, I howled with delight because there's so much information to the contrary!
There's a radio program which airs on WCBN 88.3 FM, Fridays from 6 to 7 pm called "Hear and Now," hosted by local DJs Ben Reading and Juan Tunow. Their description: "Hear the news behind the news; we air tapes of independent researcher David Emory and others, rending the veil of fascist-corporate media-instilled illusions. This fall we present 'The Guns Of November,' an in-depth analysis of the JFK murder and coup d'etat in America."
Emory is based in Santa Clara County, California. His "Archives On Audio" series is available on cassette tapes. Write today for a catalogue: Archives On Audio, P.O. Box 170023, San Francisco, California 94117-0023.
But honestly, it's Autumn in Southeast Michigan, and I should lighten up. Feasting together in a spirit of love right before Winter sets in is a good idea. People of these latitudes have been doing it for as long as anybody can remember. If you can feel some genuine humility in the face of so much horror, then I'd like to invite you to feast the way I do: bake a Hubbard squash stuffed with rice, nuts, olives and vegetables. Take into account your entire legacy; some of it is glorious. The rest is emetic. If you've got an informed conscience, and know that everything is not okay, then you'll be able to eat with dignity and integrity.