Thanksgiving is a holiday when Americans celebrate their family in the least political way possible, by cooking a big meal and relaxing in front of a football game or maybe a parade. Naturally, the left hates this with a white hot passion.
Perhaps you think I’m overstating things? I give you Salon’s Chauncey Devega:
In many ways, Thanksgiving is a celebration of gluttony, sports, nationalism, militarism and waste. While some of the poor and homeless may be fed for a day, the institutions and structures that create income inequality and joblessness remain untouched. The day after Thanksgiving is called “Black Friday.” It is a festival of consumerist excess and greed. It is one of many moments throughout their lives when the American people are told the lie that “freedom,” “capitalism” and “democracy” are interchangeable. In reality, the gangster and casino capitalism of late 20th and early 20th century America is incompatible with a true “We the People” democracy.
At base, the left hates Thanksgiving because it is a holiday built around a sense of contentment. Not an absolute contentment. Thanksgiving is not a statement that all is well with the world; it’s actually much smaller than that. Thanksgiving is a day off to count blessings, to remember either verbally or more informally some of the things we have going for us as families, as Americans, as people living in a glorious time with many benefits in terms of health and happiness that previous generations could only dream about.
If Christmas is defined by the nuclear family and the joy of children opening gifts, Thanksgiving is the more adult spectacle of extended family spending casual time together outside the usual limitations of work or the daily routine. It’s a time to catch up with people we don’t always see but who played a role in our lives nonetheless.
The left’s response to this has been entirely predictable. A political party that thrives on crisis to demand change does not want even one day wasted on giving thanks for what we have. So, of course, they seek to make this holiday just one more opportunity for leftist agitprop. In what has become a new holiday tradition, the Democratic National Committee and other like-minded websites put out Thanksgiving talking points aimed at turning the holiday into a scene from an Aaron Sorkin TV show.
These pre-scripted lines are always framed as a defensive action to guard against a conservative onslaught, but “your Republican uncle” is a boogeyman created to scare the insecure and immature into becoming the aggressors in the left’s endless cultural war. Again, here’s Salon’s Devega:
On Thanksgiving, the American people should, instead of being thankful for what they have–and by doing so playing along with a tired mythology of American genocide and slavery–should inaugurate a day of political activism and resistance.
No, they should not do that. On the contrary, the very best thing Americans can do in the face of the left’s attempts to politicize Thanksgiving is to utterly ignore them. Turn on the parade or the game. Have a beer. Tell a joke. Remember how much you have in common with your extended family. And when you reach for that second helping of your favorite dish, be thankful.
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