… thee thanksgiving reader

The United States has a particularly blood-soaked history. By some measures, the country has been engaged in wars for 93.5 percent of all years between 1775 and 2018. The Founders explicitly regarded the country as an “infant empire,” and its early history was marked by an annihilationist conquest of the land’s native inhabitants. Beneath rhetoric about how the “country we love” is “clear-eyed,” “big-hearted,” and “optimistic that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word”—in the words of an Obama State of the Union address-lies power, backed by violence.

“Much that passes as idealism… is disguised love of power,” Bertrand Russell said. Indeed, U.S. history can be traced along two parallel tracks: the track of rhetoric, appearing in newspapers and presidential speeches, and the track of fact, as experienced in the lives of the victims. In every age the press is full of pious statements. Meanwhile, beyond the annihilation of the Indigenous population, the U.S. conquered the Hawaiian Kingdom and the Philippines, seized half of Mexico, intervened violently in the surrounding region, and (since World War II) extended its resort to force throughout much of the world. The number of victims is colossal.

— Noam Chomsky & Nathan J. Robinson / The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World

. . . These kinds of events were called battles, then later—sometimes—massacres, in America’s longest war. More years at war with Indians than as a nation. Three hundred and thirteen.

After all the killing and removing, scattering and rounding up of Indian people to put them on reservations, and after the buffalo population was reduced from about thirty million to a few hundred in the wild, the thinking being “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone,” there came another campaign-style slogan directed at the Indian problem: “Kill the Indian, Save the Man.”

— Tommy Orange / Wandering Stars

We distinguish ourselves from the “terrorists” by pointing to the fact that when they shoot civilians, they do so intentionally, whereas we and our allies only ever do so inadvertently. Our victims are “collateral damage.” Of course, this explanation doesn’t make much difference to the victims. But also: Does it matter whether one who drops a bomb on a village intends to kill the villagers or just to flatten their houses?

The application of a double standard (or rather, the aforementioned single standard, namely that we can never be malevolent by definition) results in extraordinary intellectual contortions. If Fidel Castro had organized or participated in multiple assassination attempts against the United States president, or tried to destroy livestock and crops, he would be the very symbol of barbarian evil. Yet we claimed the right to do just that to Cuba. We also took it for granted that we had the right to put missiles in the Soviets’ backyard. But when they tried to exercise the same right, we nearly started World War III. The inconsistencies are barely noticed.

— Noam Chomsky & Nathan J. Robinson / The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World

All the Indian children who were ever Indian children never stopped being Indian children, and went on to have not nits but Indian children, whose Indian children went on to have Indian children, whose Indian children became American Indians, whose American Indian children became Native Americans, whose Native American children would call themselves Natives, or Indigenous, or NDNS, or the names of their sovereign nations, or the names of their tribes, and all too often would be told they weren’t the right kind of Indians to be considered real ones by too many Americans taught in schools their whole lives that the only real kinds of Indians were those long-gone Thanksgiving Indians who loved the Pilgrims as if to death.

— Tommy Orange / Wandering Stars

To ask serious questions about the nature and behavior of one’s own society is often difficult and unpleasant. Difficult because the answers are generally concealed, and unpleasant because the answers are ugly and painful. But we must engage in the exercise, because the danger of maintaining our delusions continues to grow.

In 1999, political analyst Samuel P. Huntington warned that for much of the world, the United States is “becoming the rogue super-power,” seen as “the single greatest external threat to their societies.” A few months into George W. Bush’s first term, Robert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, warned that “in the eyes of much of the world… the prime rogue state today is the United States.” Yet Americans find it difficult to conceive of their country as aggressive or a threat. We only ever engage in defense.?

Whenever you hear “defense,” it’s usually correct to interpret it as “offense.” The imperial drive is often masked in defensive terms. . . 

— Noam Chomsky & Nathan J. Robinson / The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World

On the train ride back to Oklahoma, I saw the bones of buffalo piled up as high as a man for miles. I’d heard that this was happening. The Buffalo Wars, they called it. I’d heard about why they were doing it. Every buffalo dead was an Indian gone. But seeing all those buffalo bodies piled up like that, and the swarms of vultures and other such scavengers circling all that death, it did something to me, ate away at some last part of me, and though I couldn’t look away from the sight of it, I wanted to close my eyes, not have to see any more of the old world so dead before it was gone.

— Tommy Orange / Wandering Stars

There is an alternative path to the one we have pursued, namely to take stated ideals seriously and act on them. The United States could commit itself to following international law, respecting the UN Charter, and accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the World Court. It could sign and carry forward the Kyoto Protocol. The president could actually show up to international climate conferences and take the lead in brokering deals. The U.S. could stop vetoing Security Council resolutions and have a “decent respect for the opinion of mankind,” as the Declaration of Independence mandates. It could scale back military spending and increase social spending, resolving conflicts through diplomatic and economic measures rather than military ones.

For anyone who believes in democracy, all of these are mild and conservative suggestions. They are mostly supported by the overwhelming majority of the population. They just happen to be radically different from existing public policy.

— Noam Chomsky & Nathan J. Robinson / The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World

What I’m Listening To:

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum
Of challenge and danger

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin
Leaving the carcasses to rot

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes

Thanks for the American dream
To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through

— William S. Burroughs / “A Thanksgiving Prayer”