Let's Give Thanks, That GOP Tribe Was Not at First Thanksgiving

[Don Davis]

http://satiricalpolitical.com/2010/11/24/thanks-for-gop-not-at-first-thanksgiving/

[DCKit]

1. As I recall, many of the first settlers died of starvation...

because nobody wanted to do the "hard" work.

Sounds like the same bunch to me.... they ended up bringing in immigrants.

[zbdent]

2. There's a guy who gets his LTTE published in the Akron Beacon Journal

who keeps claiming those dying settlers died of "socialism" ...

as I thought about it, I thought the fact that them landing in the northeast in late fall, and lack of a lot of today's niceties (and the horrendous practices of the day), including good shelter, probably had a bigger role to play in their demise than "socialism" ...

[Igel]

3. The way the story is presented is humorous.

By both sets of True Believers.

Granted, the colonists were learning new practices with new crops. So problems with crops were inevitable.

And the colonists came from culturally different areas--as much as we like to believe that "Europe" has a single culture, in fact most "ethnicities" were riven, until recently, by a fair amount of strife. You should have heard my half-brothers grandmother rag on her compatriots from the next province over. She wasn't concerned with other countries, those differences were too huge to be relevant. But now she'd be construed as having essentially the same culture not only as those she ripped but those two or three countries away. Telic idiocy. Still, the inference is that the colonists experienced hunger being of cultural intolerance.

So the RWers call what they had "socialism" because they didn't have private land and didn't work primarily for their own good but the good of the collective.

And some LWers call it "capitalism" because the place was run like a business, and intended to make a profit off the labor of those who contractually obligated to provide labor while using corporate-owned "facilities."

Liberal theologians point out that the Pilgrims weren't capitalists, but instead were progressives because they endeavored to "have all things in common" as good early Xians would have. While others on the left claim that the early Xians, because they had all things in common, were adherents of a philosophy that arouse some 1800 years later. This somehow makes them Good People and presumably martyrs.

It somehow doesn't matter that the distinctions so important now arose a posteriori and utterly immaterial since the colonists continued their practices even when faced with a very predictable shortfall of food. Modern folk stand on their definitions. Seldom do they bother to wipe them off their soles and insist on tracking them all over the place like civilized people would. Why?

Becaue few dispute that when the individuals started working for their own things altered. Perhaps they grew accustomed to new crops. Perhaps to new neighbors. Perhaps to working among those of similar hue with more tolerance.

Meanwhile some point out how crucial the role of the Native American were. While the question arises how much of what the Native Americans taught was actual local knowledge or imported, whether from other Native American cultures or, well, from near the Spanish-Portuguese border.

Your conclusion determines both the dataset and the reasoning. Fortunately, there's nothing especially probative in this bit of historical self-"fallacio" practiced by others so I permit it to amuse me.

[Dr.Phool]

4. But they were.

It sez right in the history books that they had turkeys!