{"id":45666,"date":"2020-11-26T23:59:43","date_gmt":"2020-11-27T04:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=45666"},"modified":"2020-11-27T22:45:28","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T03:45:28","slug":"happy-trump-rat-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/happy-trump-rat-thursday\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Trump-Rat Thursday!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always disliked Thanksgiving<\/a>. Good holidays involve gifts, costumes, and\/or fireworks<\/a>. Thanksgiving has none of those. What does it have? Dysfunctional family behavior; mandatory binge eating; football (ooh, racism and brain damage!); and a feel-good spin on the fact that white Europeans sailed to another continent, said, “This is ours now,” and decimated the people who lived there<\/a>. WTF? Take away the kindergarten-level propaganda and imagine this happening on an individual level. It’s like if AirBnB guests rented a single room from you, then claimed the whole house for themselves and took up arms when you fought back. Or the Christmas episode of Family Guy<\/em> in which Brian and Stewie’s attempt to help Santa deliver gifts turns into a home invasion.<\/p>\n

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At least they meant well. Click for the clip.<\/p><\/div><\/center><\/p>\n

The history is far more complex than the “Pilgrims and generic Indians feasting together and agreeing to lasting peace” fairy tale we were taught. The problems start with the very concept of “Indians.” As history professor David Silverman told Smithsonian magazine last year<\/a>, “There were no \u2018Indians\u2019 when the English arrived. Native people didn’t conceive of themselves as Indians \u2014 that’s an identity that they have had to learn through their shared struggles with colleagues.” People had been living in the Americas for at least 12,000 years when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, and the long history of intertribal politics outweighed the mere century of bloody skirmishes the local tribes had already had with white Europeans before the English stepped off the Mayflower. <\/p>\n

Silverman — the author is of This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving<\/a><\/em> — said that while Ousamequin (also called Massasoit), the leader of the Wampanoag tribe, did seek an allegiance with the latest arrivals, it was because he saw the English as potential allies against threats from the Narragansetts tribe. Other Wampanoags opposed this strategy and wanted to join forces with the Narragansetts to wipe out the English colony. The tribes came together in 1675, after Ousamequin died and Metacom — his second eldest son, also called by the English name Philip — united with the Narragansett, Nipmuck, and Pocumtuck tribes to take a stand against years of English encroachment on tribal land. During what became known as King Philip’s War<\/a>, the allied tribes fought furiously, but by 1676, they were defeated by the English, who were assisted by the rival Mohegan and Mohawk tribes. The English offered amnesty to some tribe members, only to sell those who surrendered into slavery. In addition, after Metacom\/Philip was killed, his head was placed on a spike and displayed at Plymouth colony for an astounding two decades<\/a> — a detail that I’m sure has never been shared with little ones creating hand-turkey art<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for the Thanksgiving feast, that “tradition” was invented 149 years after it was supposed to have happened. It was 1769 when, according to Silverman, “a group of pilgrim descendants who lived in Plymouth felt like their cultural authority was slipping away” and created a story designed to boost tourism. Like the national anthem being played at sporting events<\/a>, it was all a marketing gimmick that gained a patriotic luster through repetition. That’s why in 1970, when Mayflower descendants wanted native people to join them in celebrating the myth of Thanksgiving, the United American Indians of New England refused and instead declared Thanksgiving a National Day of Mourning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With all of this in mind, I was happy to help create an alternative to this year’s abbreviated Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade<\/a> by parading the 16′-tall, inflatable #TrumpRat down Central Park West with the activists of Rise and Resist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s still a balloon parade today on Central Park West. pic.twitter.com\/kVajYjcLlG<\/a><\/p>\n

— Jeff Coltin (@JCColtin) November 26, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n