The Other Side of the Thanksgiving Coin

I suspect that the vegetarian movement was started by turkeys -- the gobble gobble kind, not the jive-ass kind.

This, of course, must have happened around Thanksgiving time. Turkeys aren't exactly dolphin-smart, but after 100+ years of population reduction during autumn, they finally caught on that Americans had a holiday devoted to eating turkey-kind. Quite frankly, to turkeys, Thanksgiving borders on an annual massacre. For us, a delicious, gravy-soaked massacre. Mmmmassacre.

Thanksgiving, however, is not just about eating turkeys. It is, of course, about giving thanks. And it's also about remembering the generosity of the indigenous people who shared food with strange immigrants and refugees from across the Atlantic Ocean. Indigenous people who were later also subjected to population reduction and then forced to relocate to small plots of land that were eventually cultivated into fields of slot machines and craps tables. Thanks for the turkey and corn. BANG! C'mon, lucky seven!

In that light, isn't Thanksgiving a holiday reminding us to lull our "friends" into a false sense of security before betraying them? Think about it: The pilgrims enjoyed the hospitality of the natives only to enslave and try to wipe out those natives in the coming years. The first Thanksgiving was about identifying the marks and beginning the set up to one hell of a con. $24 of arts and crafts crap for Manhattan -- enough said.

Now, I realize that it probably wasn't the very same Bob Pilgrim that ate some sweet corn and then led dozens of clearing raids a few years later. But shouldn't that turkey-eating Bob Pilgrim have said, "Fellow buckle-hats, these natives are our friends. Let us give them thanks by not killing them." That's a pretty effective way to say "thank you" in my book. In fact, today I held a door open for a lady leaving the grocery store and to thank me she gave me a kindly smile, opened her wool coat to reveal a holstered Glock, and said, "you won't be meeting Mr. Hollow Point today." You're welcome, ma'am!

Granted, this is a pretty negative view of the holiday, but it's not like I made up the (key) facts. I'm just not looking at Thanksgiving through rose-colored glasses, mainly because those glasses are put away for a few months since we're in autumn, the season of decay. Why do you think the leaves, sustainers of life through oxygen, turn brown and fall off of trees? Apparently it's because Mother Nature learned how to express her gratitude from the pilgrims.

Happy Thanksgiving you jive-ass turkeys!

If tofu could talk, it would encourage you to eat turkey.