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Happy National Day of Mourning, fellow Americans!
As a naturalized American, and out of curiosity about recurring public rituals, I decided to spend some time this morning to research this holiday. The historical parts, what with it being rooted in Anglican religious tradition and carried over by early English settlers as early as 1610 make for a charming story: I imagine a group of people, all unfamiliar with the new land they've settled, and right on winter's doorstep, giving each other support over a feast. Forgiving past grievances, reaffirming existing friendships, renewing familial ties--all in an age when cold, hunger, and even minor accidents lead to death, death, death.
This spirit resonates with me despite my utter disbelief in any higher power. There's something very potent and healthy in expressing gratitude, though I can't quite put my finger on it.
However, my curiosity turned into bafflement, then into distress upon getting to the Criticism & Controversy part of the wikipedia entry.
The way I read this and other parts of that section is that modern day Americans should, instead of giving thanks, focus on exploring their guilt and practicing atonement for the wrongs done to Native American nations. In other words, Thanksgiving should revolve around guilt instead of gratitude.
It's utterly baffling to me. Why should I feel guilty for anything as a newly-minted American? What part did I take in any of the violence that happened centuries ago? In the same vein, why should the majority of contemporary Americans, whose families immigrated here hundreds of years after these sad events took place, feel any guilt?
(I'm not very well versed in history, so perhaps I'm wrong, but it appears that the great immigration period ("After 1820, immigration gradually increased. From 1836 to 1914, over 30 million Europeans migrated to the United States.") began at the tail of the great Native American termination this appears to have fizzled out around 1850 (eg. Trail of Tears))
All this guilt has to me a definite, Old World flavor: Christianity. The original sin, the sin that one cannot cleanse oneself of, the sin that one must regularly and harshly atone for. What's baffling is the paradox that this reactionary agenda of mourning and atonement for the actions of one's ancestors is pushed by left-leaning individuals that would often identify as progressive and usually want to have nothing to do with religion or tradition.
Once, at work, when I raised my point, I was rebuffed by a coworker who stated, more or less, that White Americans should be guilty because they benefit from the fruits of the violent extermination of Native Americans. But isn't this a slippery slope? Who decide where this stops? Should I also feel guilt about Roman conquest? Or, going farther, the many petty conflicts that occurred between the Tigris and Euphrates?
All in all, this whole line of arguing for guilt seems not only like a sloppy argument, but also an inelegant weaponization of guilt to exert control. I'm sad that in my professional circle of East Coast tech workers, even wishing "Happy Thanksgiving" is frowned upon.
But enough sadness. Here's what I'm grateful for right now: the opportunity to share this unique virtual space with so many people whose opinions are so radically different than my own, and who adhere to an uncommonly high bar of discourse. Being here is intoxicatingly challenging and mind-expanding.
Tonight, at dinner, I'll drink a quiet toast to you all.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Wokeism is christianity with queer BIPOC trans bodies as God's Chosen People. We will always have with us the humorless, hectoring, moralistic scolds. Sackloth and ashes, purity through suffering, the story of Job. Maybe we could also have a nice guilt-party on every other holiday too. Maybe we could make the flag just a big black square with the words "We Suck" on it. Maybe we could change the national anthem to Beck's "Loser".
I'm full of ideas, university presidents. Send me ten million in grants and I'll write your political program for you. We're gonna look to eastern wisdom next year and reify the caste system.
I only accept payment in Rai stones. Money is white supremacy.
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This is confusing to me. Americans seem, and this seems to have been true from the beginning, to be an especially religious group of people. Protestants may be on the back foot in America, but European Christians would love to have something so well organised at the grassroots level (the Catholic Church is obviously well organised, but their moral authority in daily life or at the governmental policy level has all but collapsed). To give an example, in Ireland's referendum on abortion in 2018 the pro-life campaign depended greatly on donations from pro-life Americans.
As someone who takes great inspiration from American ideals I'll try to steelman this and say that the origin of your country cannot be disentangled from its present state because the norms, laws and values of today are merely developments on those of the past. If people who honestly believed in the values of the American revolution sanctioned genocide, then, insofar as there is continuity between the society of the present and the past, that should worry you, as it shows that the values of the American revolution are no guarantee that your society won't sanction genocide.
To stereotype, it's like the German's authoritarian streak, or the Russian society's susceptibility to tyrants, it's not going to go away just by ignoring it, and even attempts to have a deep reckoning (like the Germans' relationship to their authoritarianism) often miss the mark. To give another example of how problems persist through the centuries, I don't think sectarianism has gone away in Ireland just because people no longer go to church, and I fear that because of this a united Ireland might end being used as a means of crude cultural victory rather than of coexistence.
What's the Anglo version of this (to lump you in with that other North American colony)? What ugly trait is likely to resurface eventually if it is not rooted out? I'll have a go (this is far easier with the Germans): Willful blindness when the time calls for it.
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Being partly descended from people who lived in America before there was an America, my attitude toward native American grievances is: "Sucks to suck, git gud, gg no re." Black and brown BIPOC bodies of color can get in line right behind every other conquered/defeated people with a sob story. This is the Law of the Jungle. And this slimy conniving chipping away at the edges to guilt your oppressors into give you free shit is just pathetic. We need more Geronimos and fewer Charlene Red Bird Lovitz-Smiths, at least that sort of direct action is heroic and inspiring.
So I feel zero guilt about First Peoples (who were First, except for you know those other tribes that were First-er but got genocided before the white man made it ashore) and their ridiculous revanchism. You lost, get over it. And you're welcome for building one of the greatest nations the world has ever seen using the land we wrested from your ancestors so that we can today provide for their descendents. Would Imperial China or Czarist Russia have been so generous had they arrived first? I doubt it.
And yeah, one day, after the U.S. fractures and gets invaded by Greater North Korea or the Second Mexican Empire or the People's Republic of Canada, well, sucks to suck, we lost, that's the way of the world. Turn about's fair play, nothing lasts forever nor does it have a right to.
Minor historical point first, on your traducing of Russians' treatment of conquered peoples. It was by far the least harmful to those they conquered of any European power. The thing to remember about Russia is that it's a European country with its entire imperial possessions still 90% intact, and attached contiguously as the country streches east from its European heartlands. To see what would have befallen American indigenes under Moscow's cruel fist, look at Kamchatka today. People who are not ethnically Russian are a majority of the population east of the Urals, and their relative position to the dominant ethny is inestimably better than that of American indigenes, who are a sad and broken people.
Notably among Europeans, Germanics (of whom Anglos are a subset) have the taste for genocide in conquest. Spain, France and Russia tended to integrate conquered people to varying degrees, and the Dutch kept them entirely separate to the point of weird indifference.
Second important point: a huge tension you don't seem to have noticed here:
Okay, fair enough, but then:
"All's fair in love and war". If you're claiming groups that lost out historically should just accept it, how can you consistently criticise graft against your own group today? Either all conduct is fair or it isn't. "Oh no, using disease and a much higher population to swamp natives was great and mighty when Euro colonists did it back when, but it's pathetic and underhanded when other groups use the same techniques against us". How the hell can out-diseasing and out-breeding indigenous Americans be kosher, but non-whites doing, what, lawsuits and subversion of your institutions is verboten?
Considering you were ostensibly opposing whining, "it's not fair when they do it to us" sounds a lot like, well...
The Circassians would beg to differ, as would all the peoples in the westernmost part of the Russian Empire, namely, Poles, Balts and Ukrainians. This is only referring to the Russian Empire, not including the Soviet Union, which I suppose could be classified as a Russian empire. The reason why the natives east of the Urals were largely unmolested is that they didn't cause much trouble (as the Circassians did) and that the Russians were not particularly interested in the freezing tundra where the main industry was reindeer herding.
The title of "the least harmful to those they conquered" easily belongs to Austria. Again, referring only to the Habsburgs, not, ahem, any other empire controlled by an Austrian.
Austria is Germanic, as are the Dutch who you yourself mentioned. The German Empire was generally more brutal overall, though the only notable genocide they committed was the one in Namibia. I'm not aware of any genocides in the British Empire (overseas), unless you count the ludicrously one-sided battles against natives.
Spain and France both had highly assimilatory policies, which their subjects were not generally keen on; see, for example, the ETA and the Algerian War. Forcible assimilation is also referred to as "cultural genocide" by, for example, the Canadian government. The only empires with a policy of integration rather than assimilation were Austria (though not Hungary) and the UK (excluding the British Isles, where their policy ranged from cultural genocide to genocide full stop).
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There's no tension at all, you're reading that into what I'm saying. You can simultaneously believe "all's fair in love and war" and "I find this particular tactic cowardly and dishonorable." Pearl Harbor was simultaneously a distasteful sneak attack (IMO) while being totally "fair."
Maybe the confusion is in the meaning of the word "fair" in "all's fair in love and war?" To me it means everything is possible, not that everything is morally equivalent. In fact, people seem to mostly invoke the phrase when does something shocking and morally dubious.
If your point is that American settlers did fair but dishonorable things at some point in the multi-century settlement of north America, then, well, yes of course, the number of people and the length of time mean that the odds were very high that things like that would happen. When American settlers pretended to give blankets as a gesture of goodwill that were actually carrying contagious diseases, or when they broke treaties and suddenly attacked peaceful natives, they were acting dishonorably and disgracefully. But most of the conflict was not like that. Hostilities were often open and direct.
Re. Russia's treatment of indigenous people, is that really a fair comparison? I don't think Russians want to live in, settle, develop, and convert Kamchatka into a core part of Russian civilization. Most of the Russian Far East seems to me to still be much more like a territory than actual "Russian land." It's a similar contrast as that between, say, Massachusetts and Alaska. Alaskan natives seem to be doing a lot better than the tribes of New England, many of whom no longer even exist. I think you'd need to look at how indigenous people who lived in Western Russia were treated.
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Czarist Russia did arrive first in one part of America, no?
There's a reason why recently re-elected native Alaskan rep Mary Peltola (featured a few times in Finnish media due to her obviously-Finnish surname - it comes from her husband, she has no Finnish roots herself) belongs to the Orthodox Church...
And Greenland Danes founded L'Anse-Aux-Meadows, but like the Russians their interactions with the natives were brief and limited enough in scope that I don't think it's fair to extrapolate from them what the Czar of Russia or King of Denmark's policy woudlve been towards the Cherokee or Iroquois.
Russian Alaska was a rather more extensive project than Danes at L'Anse-Aux-Meadows. 5 % of Alaskans are Orthodox, and my understanding is that this due to conversion work among the natives, at least.
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Why only White Americans? If we assume, for the sake of this discussion, that there was "violent extermination of Native Americans" (I personally think it was a bit more complex than that, but let's not argue that and accept it as a premise) and it, in whatever ways, produced substantial profits, Black Americans and Asian Americans, those that live in America, may have profited by it too. Surely, for example, Black Americans profited less, since many of them were enslaved, and received little economic benefits at all back then, but many White Americans also did not receive direct benefits, and if we talk about indirect benefits, such as using the resources to develop the economy, using the lands to build and resources on the land, etc. - then at least some non-White Americans benefitted from it also. Surely, one can argue that non-White Americans, due to various factors, benefitted less, proportionally - but they still did, even if unequally. If we accept the premise of every economic transaction somehow connected to something that can be traced back to Native Americans being tainted by guilt, then no American, regardless of the race, will escape the guilt. Then, we either have to add a new, openly racist, premise, that the guilt only ever attaches to certain races, but not others, or give up on the "White" part.
On the other hand, a lot of White Americans have come to America much later than any events that can be described as "violent extermination of Native Americans" took place. And even after coming in, as fresh immigrants, they could have little influence on the events and can not bear guilt for what was happening when they just came in or long before that. The only way any guilt could be attached to them is "the overall economy benefitted, thus they benefitted". But then again, why would it only be Whites? If every person of European descent, since stepping foot on American soil, is deemed automatically and forever "benefitting", why not a person of Chinese descent stepping foot on the same soil at the same day, and all his descendants forever? Why not Black people, after all - yes, they suffered terrible injustices, which in no way ended after slavery was officially banned, but still they were participating in the economy, even if handicapped by multiple disadvantages, as as such also benefitting from better economical conditions? Should the guilt attach to them too, maybe lesser amount, but still some of it? What about a refugee who just came into America a week ago? Surely, the level of support they receive depends on economical condition - better economy means better support and better opportunities. So should the guilt instantly attach to them too - or does it depend whether it is a refugee from Ukraine, or Syria, or Honduras, or Somali?
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It's fascinating to me that "cancel thanksgiving" gets taken seriously by anyone whose job does not depend on taking it seriously. I have literally never heard of it actually happening outside of academics and professional activists in the same way their rants about Columbus day sometimes are.
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Here’s a history of the economics of the first Thanksgiving, by the late, great Rush Limbaugh. The original commune contract collapsed, and they chose an ownership economy, which prospered. But this was not a part of the mainstream American mythos of Thanksgiving Boomers and GenX grew up with, so it wasn’t one of the reasons left-aligned Americans grew to despise it.
The first time I remember Thanksgiving publicly mocked was the Addams Family Values camp scene. It’s the classic Blue Tribe borrowing the virtue of the victimized far group and insisting their outgroup, the WASPs at the time, are forever stained by the blood of genocide, so let’s mock the ignorant WASPs in the most transgressive and shocking way possible. That’s probably the most lasting public depiction of critical theory’s revision of American mythos, because it’s a hell of a meme. It was my first glimpse of the culture war. (I might even call it an act of memetic ethnogenesis, given how different the signifiers of the two tribes were back then.)
My grandmother traced our family history back to four of the Pilgrims, and also one of their white indentured servants. This is my family’s holiday. I invite you all to enjoy the bounty and come together as a community to celebrate with turkey and maize, with potatoes and ham, with apple or pumpkin or cranberry pie and be thankful for making it through this past decade of chaos alive and able to appreciate providence, natural and/or divine.
Have a happy Thanksgiving!
I think you misinterpret Addams Family and read into it something that wasn't there. Surely, they are anti-normal and in that quality they are opposed to the WASPs as WASPs are the quintessential "normal" for pre-culture-war America. Of course, this is a stereotype, because that's how satire operates. Nowdays, for such an idea you could be cancelled even if you bring it in for the purpose of mocking it. However, if you look into it, Addamses, while being anti-normal, are never at war with normies, all they want is to be left alone and enjoy their weird life in their weird ways. It is only when the normies try to aggressively normalize them, they turn their world upside down, striking into the most WASPish myth ever - not because they think it is virtuous, but because they think the normies would hate that, and they deserve it for not letting the anti-normies be in peace. That's how it looked before the culture war. The culture war changed the picture - SJWs don't want to be left alone, they want to proselytize aggressively and nothing less than turning every single normie into SJW would suffice them. Not only non-compliance is violence, silence (i.e. not being an active SJW) is violence. They don't want to enjoy their own lifestyle in their own community - they want it to be the only possible lifestyle, everywhere, and would aggressively persecute anybody who admits the possibility of any other way. Addamses would never go there.
So I think the Addams Family is not the first glimpse of the culture war, it is the last glimpse of how it was before the war. How you could diverge from the normie culture and still not try to destroy the civilization.
You’re right, the Addams family are much more like goth Looney Tunes than hardcore SJWs. There’s a reason I mentioned ethnogenesis, though: I remembered it completely wrong until I watched it again, and I bet I’m not alone.
The cultural appropriation of the Native Americans was forced by the camp counselors, so Wednesday’s faction is let off the hook for its responsibility. It also wasn’t part of the standard political correctness package until around 2012.
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If you don't mind the diversion, which branch of Christianity has this doctrine?
At least a few local flavors of Catholicism that I've come to contact with (thinking Eastern Europe, specifically).
I've just become aware that in the Polish branch of the Catholic church, the part of the confession when you ask God for forgiveness differs from a few English versions I've sampled just now. It includes a piece that goes a little something like "(...) my fault, my fault, my great, great fault (...)". I think this describes the general spirit of describing man as forever tainted.
Edit: I just realized that something I thought as core to my knowledge about Christianity may very well not be true (https://www.themotte.org/post/193/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/35768?context=8#context) and may, instead, be a distortion of memory.
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To be fair, @thomasThePaineEngine didn't say "there's no way out of original sin", he said "one cannot cleanse oneself of" original sin. Which is technically true in Christianity, one can't cleanse oneself. Which is why Christ had to cleanse us from what we can't cleanse ourselves from.
Though on the other hand, it also isn't true that one must "regularly and harshly atone for" original sin either. That has been paid for, we don't need to keep beating ourselves up for it.
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Well I'll be damned. Maybe my memory of Christian theology is not as strong as I thought. Admittedly, it's been quite some time since my teenager years when I did most of my exploration. I'll have to revisit this branch of knowledge at some point so that I don't make an ass out of myself again.
Thank you.
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Yeah, very true. And I think that is one thing that is... kind of unfortunate about the woke perspective. One of the things that (to me) makes Christianity not horribly oppressive is that hey, we don't have to try to atone for this inherent sin we can never get rid of. Not that we aren't expected to try to do right (grace isn't a license to go out and willfully sin), but the price has been paid. Good news, as the kids say.
Honestly, there are a couple of really wonderful things in Christianity that I appreciate now which I didn't as a teenager growing up in a Christian environment. I used to worry so much about sin, and whether I was irreconcilably screwing up by continuing to struggle over and over and over with the same things (like lustful thoughts or looking at porn). But the things that didn't really sink in for me then are a couple of big ones. First, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". Yeah, I am a sinner (boy am I), but so is everyone. Even the people in church who seem like they have it all together and never sin? Yeah they're sinners too. I'm not uniquely bad, and shouldn't beat myself up as if I were.
Second, "if we confess our sins, he is faithful... and will forgive our sins". That is a verse that gives me a lot of comfort now, and I wish I had found it sooner. Yes, it's bad when I sin. No, I shouldn't do it. Yes, I should work to do better. But I also should take comfort that God is going to forgive me if I confess my sins. And not only is he going to forgive me, we have reason to believe he will forgive me a whole lot of times! Even us mortals are expected to forgive wrongs done to us "seventy times seven" times, so one can safely assume that God is going to forgive at least that many times (and more likely he's going to forgive a whole lot more times than he expects us to).
So when I was a teenager beating myself up because I couldn't stop sinning in the same ways, I really shouldn't have. Because I did truly regret those things and try to stop doing them, so God is going to forgive me. And while I had those struggles, I wasn't like the worst person or anything like that. I was just another flawed human being who had, like everyone else, missed the mark and was trying to do better. And after all, if my father here on earth loves me enough to forgive me even when I make mistakes (even repeated ones), why wouldn't my Father in heaven love me enough to do the same?
That assumes that becoming Christian isn't itself horribly oppressive. I mean, you're telling me that in order to get rid of this original sin I not only need to convert out of Judaism, but I have to accept a whole bunch of doctrines that seem to be intellectual nonsense, such as transsubstantiation, the Trinity, and the doctrine of original sin itself. Then I need to accept what God says about gays, birth control, abortion, and every other issue that your church is stuck with.
Atonement would be nicer than that.
Really? The guy coming from the religion that believes in Eruv wants to criticize intellectual nonsense?
Infinity can be divided into multiple sets, so the Trinity makes perfect sense. Hanging a line around a city to try and trick God is literal nonsense. Does God believe in the rules you have for the Sabbath or not?
This is based on a misunderstanding of the Eruv. In Jewish law, there are public domains that are biblically forbidden from carrying in. An Eruv does not work to let you carry in those. There are other semi-public domains that the rabbis categorized which they said must also not be carried in. Those same rabbis said that their prohibition is lifted if an Eruv is in place.
This is a little bit of an oversimplification, but if you want to take a deep dive, you might start here.
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If the rules allow you to do something, following them isn't "not believing in the rules".
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It wasn't oppressive for me. So, YMMV and all that. I mean, being raised in the faith means no culture shock for me, which helps. But on the other hand I would point out that there are people all the time who convert to Christianity and don't find it oppressive. On the contrary, they find it beautiful and freeing. So like I said, YMMV.
As far as doctrines which seem like intellectual nonsense, it really depends on your perspective. From a materialistic standpoint, yeah those things are absolutely bonkers. But... I also don't think that the material universe is all that exists. I believe that there's a spiritual component to our existence, and as such the things you mentioned aren't actually that hard for me to accept as reasonable.
Those things aren't bonkers because they're not materialistic, but because they make no sense. They are incoherent.
If you told me that ghosts could fly, I find the concept "ghosts can fly" to make sense. Ghosts aren't material and I don't believe they exist or can fly, but I can make sense of the concept "ghosts can fly"; it's false, but it's logically coherent.
Many of the things Christians want me to believe don't make sense. I don't mean I think they are false, nor do I mean they're not material; I mean that they describe no logically coherent concept.
Transsubstantiation is literally nonsense.
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The closest might be the New England Puritans
And their doctrine of original sin, though they have the strongest possible interpretation, gets me accused of being someone who see no need for adherence to the law at all when I profess it.
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The evergreen quote:
The point is not to determine true culpability, it's to humiliate you today in order to change your behavior tomorrow. It's uncanny how your anecdote is perfectly explained by this change in perspective.
I love Thanksgiving, it's my favorite holiday. I'm thankful that we actually moved, and it actually worked, and we're not dead yet. I had low expectations, despite agreeing with the necessity of the move, so I'm very thankful it has exceeded those expectations and raised my hopes that this community might live a little longer yet.
This is not a novel idea, but the overall practice of nonstop atonement for ones privilege was part of the Maoist struggle session as refined version of Marxist-Leninist self-criticism. This has similar effect as various gang initiation rituals that often consist of participating in gang activities like killing or robbing someone. This is meant to make not only the target but also the mob participants in the ritual, which makes them more prone to consistency fallacy and sunken cost fallacy methods of manipulation, with added benefit that this manipulation is enforced by those closest to you in form of snitching. This creates a false feeling that the enforced ethos and values are shared by the mob and that you are the faulty one who needs to work harder. It is incredibly insidious shit.
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At this point, just as it approaches banality to compare "wokeness" to a religion, it approaches banality to say that many progressive people are far less non-religious than they think (or, to put it another way: they are simply uninterested in the historical and religious roots of so many of their beliefs beyond some Whiggish "things were bad then they slowly got better as we became more enlightened" intuition).
This is the problem with haphazardly secularizing something: in religion, where God acts as the final arbiter who can forgive sin, cataloguing sins and constantly declaring yourself and others sinners isn't as big a deal since we're all sinners and God can provide recompense. We can pray for forgiveness because we don't necessarily get it on Earth.
Within the secular framework there isn't even the possibility of justice. What could possibly make centuries of slavery and domination and just plain snobbishness "right" in any deep sense?
It can't. So basically this secularized view condemns you to permanent guilt to no end for all sorts of things that have happened, are happening and will happen.
Conveniently, this turns you into the stereotypically obsequious, white guilt-possessing progressive who offers no resistance to whatever the spokespeople of the "victims" demand (some have just directly demanded money, and the peasants desperate for their indulgences paid!).
Making people existentially sicker as an electoral strategy...interesting move
If you're referring to irreligious people in general, and not just wokeists, then my response is that practically every group (ethnic, religious, etc.) has, throughout history, been both oppressor and oppressed. We don't need a god to forgive us: we can agree it's bad, forgive each other, and agree never to do it again.
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Two points of contention here. First, there certain has been a strong global anticolonial movement before now: back in the 60s, when decolonisation was at its height.
Second, speaking as a right-wing European: second-wave colonialism from 1870 - 1970 in Africa was bad policy. It didn't help European imperial powers on net, and (to be generous) it helped African natives only in a very suboptimal way.
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White guilt = original sin in the Bible
Your just debating a new age Christian
One day I need to make a top level comment about uses and abuses of the term 'original sin'. Calling anything and everything bad that involves guilt a form of original sin is distressingly common, and like the 'wokeness as religion' metaphor I think it's usually a bad metaphor that tells us almost nothing about wokeness or guilt, but what really drives me crazy is that it seems to be made in almost-complete ignorance of what original sin actually is.
I realise that theological literacy is pretty low even among Christians, and maybe I shouldn't expect secularists to know much better, but if this analogy is going to be so dominant, we can at least take the time to explore it a bit further.
I'm a former missionary kid with more theological and biblical training than most pastors. What's your criticism?
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You wrote a lot (and I have theological training) but what is wrong with this comparison. You gave zero analysis of what is actually wrong with it.
Before you make a top level post you should make a basic post on why the comparison is wrong.
I would say the difference is how far you extend the concept of original sin into its Christian context before applying the analogy.
Let's say you describe original sin narrowly as follows: "When you first came into being, the weight of original sin was already upon you. It exists both prior to and independent of any moral choices that you might make."
I think that definition works in both a Christian context and a woke context. But if you broaden the scope of discussion to things like "where did original sin come from," "is there a solution to original sin," "is original sin something that is universal among humanity, or only a subset thereof," etc., then you start getting severe divergences between the two contexts, and the analogy quickly breaks down.
That said, I believe that the analogy based on the narrow definition is on point, and the surrounding differences may also be usefully contrasted.
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Original sin is both guilt and temporal consequences for sin- so people after original sin deal with guilt for Adam's disobedience, and with all sorts of imperfections introduced, both the punishments written in the bible but also disease, physical imperfection, and inclination towards evil.
This is, superficially, pretty similar to how particularly extreme wokes view "whiteness". That this view is bullshit has nothing more to do with the metaphor than whether or not all human beings are descended from a literal Adam and Eve who lived in a garden in southern Iraq 6,000 years ago. I mean there's obviously differences- original sin doesn't apply to whites only, for example- but it's not a terrible metaphor and is often used by the wokes themselves.
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Gratitude is the salience of important Goods. In our daily life we’re constantly distracted by transient cares which don’t really matter: gossip, comfort, sweet tastes, coffee, and so on. Gratitude is the stepping up to a tall hill, and overlooking our life and home in the grand scheme, and noting the real permanent Goods that we have: family, safety, and memories with friends. Gratitude is a longterm, serious, sincere attempt and recognizing the good things in our life in relation to our sum total life. In this sense, gratitude is actually not very progressive: it necessitates real values, a real telos, and the idea that people should be focused on the appreciation of this.
Anyway, I am thankful precisely that my ancestors conquered the New World. Why shouldn’t I be? They played the game according to the rules at the time, and they won. That’s one of the greatest historical feats on record (winning a new continent) and I find that awesome. I am grateful that they destroyed the Indian nations.
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Many on the far left have made no bones about regarding the nuclear family as something they want to destroy and dismantle. It should come as no surprise that family-oriented holidays like thanksgiving and Christmas are regarded with hostile and derision. As the far left has gained more and more cultural influence, I expect this to accelerate. Meanwhile if you point it out, you’ll get snide jokes about “the war on Christmas”, in the classic mode of “it’s not happening, but also it is and it’s a good thing bigot”
The War on Christmas will continue until the merchandise retreats from November.
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The amount of articles about 'How to have conversations with your conservative relatives this Thanksgiving', makes me think some of the hostility to these holidays is based around wanting to avoid familial obligations.
My impression is that a lot of that is specifically objecting to the politics they bring.
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