I’ll publish a tribute to the pilgrims on Thursday in honor of Thanksgiving, but today, let’s check the polar opposite of the honesty, humility, and gratefulness we should celebrate this week.
Thanksgiving, of course, is a uniquely American holiday celebrating how English settlers and Native Americans overcame cultural and linguistic barriers to share a meal and initiate a worldwide model for tolerance and cooperation. Oversimplified? Maybe, but it’s mainly correct.
And it is surely more accurate than proclaiming Thanksgiving to be about murder, greed, and bigotry.
Yet in a weekend segment for — you guessed it — what MSNBC called “The Thanksgiving history you’ve never heard,” a person called Gyasi Ross shouts from a pre-written, Howard Zinn-influenced screed:
“The truth is that pilgrims did not bring turkey, sweet potato pie or cranberries to Thanksgiving. They could not. They were broke! They were broken! Their hands were out! They were begging! They brought nothing of value. But they got fed! They got schooled! Instead of bringing stuffing and biscuits, those settlers brought genocide and violence. That genocide and violence is still on the menu! And state sponsored violence against Native and black Americans is commonplace!”
I’ve heard this before. It’s not original.
I am sure Ross knows all this information because he — a rapper and storyteller from Seattle — was in the arena 400 years ago for a first-person account.
Ross’ hateful rant reminds us that not only is dangerous revisionist history alive and well in left-wing cable news, but also, no matter the topic, progressives and their media allies will always change the subject back to their favorites: race and hating America’s founding.
Related: A Conservative Thanksgiving
The Washington Post, for example, recently informed us, “Just as Native American activists have demanded the removal of Christopher Columbus statues, they have long objected to the popular portrayal of Thanksgiving.”
This crazed essay was written by their traffic reporter, I kid you not!
And yet with 2,500 words, she didn’t tell the paper’s self-loathing readers that Native Americans themselves abhor Thanksgiving or admire political correctness (recall how nine in 10 weren’t offended by the Washington Redskins’ name before white progressives forced a change two years ago), but rather “Native American activists” are angry about Thanksgiving. Activists, by definition, are regularly irate.
People are free to hate since we do not live in the left’s beloved socialist regimes where they can be jailed for unpopular views.
But the rest of us should not pay attention to whatever cancel culture crusade the banal wokesters are onto this week. They’re brainwashed, deranged, and unhappy. We Americans prefer gratitude in the face of adversity.
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