Reflections on Thanksgiving

"We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented,disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so." - Oscar Wilde

When I was thirteen I spent a wonderful summer with cousins living and working on a large dairy farm in northern Indiana just outside the small town where my father was raised. I am thankful for that summer, but one momentary experience of that visit still causes me difficulty around Thanksgiving Day.

My cousins (first cousins/once removed [the adults] and second cousins [the kids]) were wonderful, god-fearin', country folks, and at some point the elders shared a bit of their homey religious philosophy.

"Tommy," they said, " if there is no God and you don't believe in Him, when you die you just go into the earth. If there is no God and you do believe in Him, when you die you still just go into the earth. If there is a God, and you don't believe in Him, when you die you will suffer in hell for eternity. But if there is a God, and you do believe in Him, when you die you will enjoy heaven throughout eternity. So! Obviously you should believe in God!"

As I remember, at thirteen I believed in God. Whatever I am now, I was officially Catholic at that time, a fact which may have nudged my Protestant kin to offer a word of wisdom toward my salvation. In any case, the argument was made with wholly good intentions; I just saw something in it that they had never noticed.

If a "supreme being" were so stupid that a thirteen year old boy could "con" him, then how supreme could he be and why should anyone believe in him? As far as I could see, God would be pissed off with me for kissing his butt just to get what I wanted; for "pitching" an arbitrarily assumed attitude just to curry favor; for proclaiming true allegiance to God Inc. simply to finagle a golden parachute. So, every year around Thanksgiving time, when we hear and read about what people have to be thankful for and inevitably encounter, "I'm so thankful to live in this country," some of the same issues that struck me forty-three years ago near Kendallville, Indiana, pop up again.

Certainly it is better in many ways to live in this country than in other countries. Most women, children, minorities, domestic workers, and other second-class citizens fare better here than in, say, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, or Peru. But should they be thankful?

Well, here's how the argument goes: "Second-class Person," they say, " if you believe that our system is wrong in its treatment of you and you resist it, you will be ignored, punished, or killed - depending upon the degree of your resistance. If you believe our system is wrong in its treatment of you and you don't resist, you will, of course, suffer the daily mistreatment you have come to expect, but you will escape the additional suffering heaped upon those who resist. If you believe our system is correct in its treatment of you but you resist it anyway, you will be ignored, punished, or killed - depending upon the degree of your resistance. But, if you believe that our system is correct in its treatment of you and you accept it, you will, of course, suffer the daily mistreatment you have come to expect, but you will escape the additional suffering heaped upon those who resist, and you have the opportunity to convince yourself that - although you deserve mistreatment by the system - eventually, at least some of your descendents (somewhere down the line) will share in the advantages presently held by those who insure your second-class status. So! Obviously you should believe in the system and be thankful you live in this country!"

I don't find this exercise any more convincing than the one urging belief in God. Both lean on how we can make the best of a bad situation by claiming to believe things we might otherwise not believe just to escape punishment and receive a dubious future benefit. If we are to believe in God, it must come from personal experience in the world. It must come from faith, without regard to personal loss or gain. Faith cannot be established by threat or bribery.

Being thankful for living in the USA likewise must come from one's personal experience here, but that doesn't stop those on top from promulgating their self-serving propaganda. Of course we've all heard the usual drivel about "welfare queens," "laziness," "bad schools," "single parents," "drugs," and "crime," causing the significant differences between the haves and the have-nots. Everywhere we turn we hear the victims of our system being blamed for bringing it upon themselves. Denying the system's involvement in and responsibility for our country's social disparities seems to be a high priority of those in charge.

The disparities serve the purposes of those on top, and maintaining those disparities is seen (incorrectly, I believe) as serving the interests of the elite. Wouldn't it be nice if those who suffer for the prosperity of their "betters" would just accept their situation? Indeed, wouldn't it be the best of all possible worlds if, every November, they could give Thanks to God and country for their suffering and pain?

Robert Fulghum has said that everything we ever needed to know we learned in kindergarten: share, play fair, don't hit, put things back, clean up your own messes, don't take things that aren't yours, say you're sorry, hold hands, and stick together. Personally, I'm thankful for kindergarten. Unfortunately, most of what we learned in kindergarten was drummed out of us by eighth grade.

In kindergarten we Americans loved one another. By puberty, others' self-serving arguments based upon our supposed self-interest had perverted that love. Share? Play fair? Don't hit? Clean up your own messes? Don't take things that aren't yours? Say you're sorry? Hold hands? Stick together? - With everyone?

Oh, yeah, right!!!!!

Well, I'm thankful for kindergarten and for young people who can still care and love, but I'm not going to believe in God or country under threat of coercion or in expectation of reward. I am not yet thankful that I live in this country. Faith cannot be established by threat or bribery.