Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving is a shining example of what Howard Zinn calls "American exceptionalism", a concept that states that by the sheer goodness of our nation all its deeds are acceptable and necessary, regardless as to how atrocious. This exceptionalism is the erroneous mindset that allows us to ignore our centuries-long history of genocide toward Native Americans and instead celebrate our fictitious "brotherhood and cooperation" with a national holiday, and in fact is the same belief that allows us to think that we will be "greeted as liberators" upon invading a sovereign nation. It is similar to the "divine right of kings" endorsed by monarchical Europe that similarly led to genocide and fearsome oppression. Howard Zinn describes "American exceptionalism" as it relates to Thanksgiving by recounting the events of the Plymouth settlers (whom American school kids learn incorrectly to call "Pilgrims") and the Pequot tribe (known similarly incorrectly as "Indians") just one year after the first Thanksgiving. From "The Power and the Glory", in the Boston Review:

The notion of American exceptionalism—that the United States alone has the right, whether by divine sanction or moral obligation, to bring civilization, or democracy, or liberty to the rest of the world, by violence if necessary—is not new. It started as early as 1630 [one year after the first Thanksgiving] in the Massachusetts Bay Colony when Governor John Winthrop uttered the words that centuries later would be quoted by Ronald Reagan. Winthrop called the Massachusetts Bay Colony a 'city upon a hill.' Reagan embellished a little, calling it a 'shining city on a hill.'

The idea of a city on a hill is heartwarming. It suggests what George Bush has spoken of: that the United States is a beacon of liberty and democracy. People can look to us and learn from and emulate us.

In reality, we have never been just a city on a hill. A few years after Governor Winthrop uttered his famous words, the people in the city on a hill moved out to massacre the Pequot Indians. Here's a description by William Bradford, an early settler, of Captain John Mason's attack on a Pequot village:

Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword, some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and the gave the praise thereof to God; who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.