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Notes -
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.
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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