Lucky White Girl

Thanksgiving: Day of Thanks, Day of Mourning

Today, in the U.S., we celebrate what is possibly the most conflicted holiday on our calendar.  Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving has a pretty horrible history.  It was originally the celebration of one massacre that became part of a larger genocide that came with the colonialization of this country.   It's morphed into a day to spend with friends and family and "give thanks for all our blessings".  That's its contemporary more "P.C. version" if you will, but the roots are pretty bloody.

I live in DC and this year, like last, I went to the National Museum of the American Indian on the mall.  I didn't intend this to be a major political statement or anything.  (If I did, I might not choose NMAI; the place is good but I know some believe it's too cautious/conservative; its emphasis is on celebrating contemporary and past Native American cultures and not-so-much on memorializing a tragedy of unspeakable proportions; compare it to the Holocaust Museum also in DC).  I go mostly because the cafe  there (the only museum cafe to be Zagat-rated) is really good and I like their exhibits.  Also on some level, knowing what we did to native peoples here, I suppose I just feel it's an appropriate place to be on a "Day of Mourning".

I was wondering though about this new ritual of mine when a friend who heard about it seemed disturbed by the idea.  She suggested it might not be appropriate to be "celebrating" while being literally surrounded by the historical context.  Maybe I should do my celebrating of Thanksgiving at home and focus on the contemporary meaning of the holiday: "being grateful, "counting our blessings" etc. 

Maybe so.  Does being in the museum bring together things that shouldn't be brought together: celebration with tragic history?  Perhaps, but obviously I'm not celebrating genocide any more than you sitting at home are.  If anything, being at the museum makes that history more present for me. And that counts. A lot.

We could try to distance Thanksgiving from having anything at all to do with Native Americans in order to avoid that tragic history but I think we don't gain anything by forgetting or glossing over the past, even and especially if that past is painful.  Over the past five years I've written tons of stuff on this blog about taking responsibility for our actions, not just as individuals but as groups too.  Owning up to our history in order to create a better future.  Europeans, as a whole, committed terrible crimes against humanity when they colonized the Americas. We brought stolen people from one part of the world over to our stolen lands in another. We set in place economic, social and political systems that benefited ourselves at the expense of non-Europeans who paid dearly with their lives, their freedom and their dignity.  The legacy of those actions are still with us today.  The past matters.

I didn't used to think this excursion to the museum on Thanksgiving was anything more than ever-so-slightly political, but thinking about my friends' reaction to it, made me realize it really is.  Going to the Native American museum on Thanksgiving Day is an act that so clearly connects two dots that we don't have want to connect: genocide and gratitude.  And we realize that the holiday really is historically about something we don't want it to be about: Gratitude for genocide.  Going to the Native American museum on Thanksgiving Day makes the hypocrisy and history of the holiday inescapable, which makes us uncomfortable.  Like lots of things from our ancestors its meaning is deeply offensive and "in poor taste".  But I think it's the holiday that's in poor taste, not my pointing it out by going to the museum.

I could be wrong, but I think there's no getting around the bloody history of the holiday.  Given the scope of the crime against humanity that European Americans committed back then, maybe it's time to bury Thanksgiving at Wounded Knee, along with Dee Brown's heart and have a National Day of Mourning instead.

Democrats strike Faustian deal for health care reform

The health care debate just got (even more) personal for every woman in the country.

To get some critical Blue Dog votes for the House's version of health care reform, H.R. 3962, The Affordable Health Care for America Act, apparently the Democrats agreed to vote on an amendment offered by pro-lifers Bart Stupak, D-Mich, and Joe Pitts, R-Penn. which would bar any public health care plan from covering abortion and bar people getting subsidies from buying ones that cover abortions (and most currently do).

In other words, your body, their choice or you don't get health care reform!

They need 218 votes to pass the bill.  They think they're gonna get it.

What's happening is that Blue Dog Democrats are using women's health as a bargaining chip for health care reform.  Deny poor women the option of getting abortions if -god forbid- they need one or you don't get health care reform.

I can't tell you how cold that makes me feel.  I want health care reform so much.  But I don't want it at the expense of poor women in this country who would lose the right to make that choice themselves because of some religious zealots who want to impose their ideological beliefs on the rest of the country.  This is bullshit.

Their plan worked.  The bill passed with 220 votes (including 1 Republican)

The new Republican post-modernists

I like watching and studying social movements. Understanding how people organize to take political action is exciting stuff!  It's democracy in action.  I love it!  So lately I have to admit the Tea Party Patriot movement has me at a loss.  I keep trying to figure out this small but very vocal minority.   Why do they think like they do?  Death panels!  A "government take-over of health-care"!  Obama is a socialist! (I wish!)  Their claims are so outrageous, I wouldn't think most people would be gullible enough to fall for them but they do; at least a small number of them (including many members of my birth family) are.

Then I had a revelation today.  It occurred to me today that these people are post-modernists.  They don't see the same facts the rest of us do.  Seriously.  Reality is completely subjective to them.  They get these chain emails that say stuff like "Page 425 of the Health Care Bill says that everyone on Social Security... will go to MANDATORY counseling every 5 years to learn and choose from ways to end your suffering (and your life).  Health care will be denied based on age... etc".  I am not making this up.  This is quoted verbatim from an email my mom sent me.  And it doesn't matter that there is no "Health Care Bill" and no page 425 of any of the current proposals out there says anything like that.  They believe it anyway.  You can tell these people anything!

Part of it is just not being educated.  For one, they don't really know how the legislative process works.  They might've learned in high school but they have forgotten a lot apparently when they talk about "the President's health care bill".  The President doesn't write or introduce bills in Congress.  Legislators do that.  There can't be any President's anything bill. 

They don't follow legislation on any subject enough to know that Congress would never, ever name anything something as plain as "Health Care Bill"!  It's gonna be The Renew America and Create Opportunities for Everyone Act or The Universal Hugs and Kisses for Puppies and Kittens Everywhere Act.  (Somewhere it must've been written into the rule book that all titles of proposed legislation must consist only of any combination of about 200 positive-sounding adjectives.)  So the fact that the email talks about "the Health Care Bill" doesn't make them at all suspicious.

And they certainly don't have any idea what socialism is.  They just remember the Cold War and the evil Soviet Empire.  To be a socialist is a very, very bad thing.  Obama is a very bad man so he must be a socialist!  Of course!

All of this is making me very discouraged and worried.  A democracy depends on having a mostly educated public making decisions (and electing smart people to make other decisions).  What does it mean that so many people either don't care enough or are too lazy to get all the facts about important national debates?  

I don't mean to slight postmodernists or post-modernism with this somewhat tongue-in-cheek lamentation.  Anyone who's read enough of this blog knows that I love post-modern epistemologies and I don't believe in absolutes, but I'm also a materialist.  Postmodernism is fine for abstract concepts but for the material world (the tangible world)... well, maybe I'm an Empiricist after all because I do believe there are certain things that either exist or they don't and "page 425 of the Health Care Bill" as quoted above doesn't exist. 

But I sure as hell don't know how to convince my post-modern mother of that!