Rituals of Amnesia

American Exceptionalism: the blood-stained Theocracy of White Supremacy

Disclaimer:  I use the term “America” here to refer to the United States of America.  Not to the United States of Mexico, or to Canada—the North American triumvirate, or to all of the countries which make up Central and South America, who also have a rightful claim to “America”.  I have used it as the United States, for better or worse, has usurped the name, and carries it without much regard to others, and in a way, the term has now been contaminated, despite its mythic quality.

I used to love the American holiday of Thanksgiving.  As an American transplant living abroad, my truth since childhood, grabbing on to little vestiges of my sense of place, identity, was always a selective process.  And conscious.

I didn’t grow up in Suburban America, which seems to be the nation’s true essence.  What one writer described in an aptly named book, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.  No.  I was latching on to the things I felt were positive.

As an expat we have the benefit of distance.  A bit like hindsight, distance offers the present sight equivalent of greater clarity.  It was impossible growing up to not meet people who had not swallowed the American narrative wholesale.  In Latin America there are the vestiges of literal Imperialism, regime change, interference in domestic policy, and this overwhelming presence that Big Brother is a bully.

Or worse, that Capitalism itself is evil.  That Capitalism be tied to “America” as an ideal is not even a little bit strange. There is no nation which stands most side-by-side at least in the popular imagination, even if this is not matched by regulatory reality.  And in a sense, the general tide of favour/disfavour towards Captialism as an organising seems to ebb and flow with the vagaries of how America is perceived.

I’d say my most profound awakening began whilst living in Italy during my undergrad years and sharing a flat with a wealthy South American leftist.  He challenged my assumptions.  As a friend.  A very good friend.  And I admired the gentle way in which he unpicked the narrative and got me to self-examine these stories for the first time.

The seductive narrative of socialism is a powerful one.  Yet, it has been vanquished on the field, beaten by the worst of humanity—our collective inability towards charity, relentless tribalism and the “othering” which comes with it, the merciless have and have-not worldview which sees kicking down and kicking while they’re down not just condoned but expected.

It has also been vanquished as the megaphone belongs to the bully.  Might makes right.  To the victor the spoils.  The last one standing gets to tell the story.  To be rich is admirable, to be stinking rich is to be beyond question.  

These are the conditions by which American Thanksgiving has been able to take on a patina of respectability.  We leave out the rape of the land, the native blood spilled, the turning course of history.  Oh, but Thanksgiving was born from the comity between peoples which happened that first winter when the settlers were starving, people who had fled religious persecution, and the natives brought them food, taught them how to survive, showed them where and how to fish, to cure, and helped.  

That is what we tell ourselves.  What we leave out is that this was a bunch of hardened bounders, religious zealouts whose reductive view of God’s word led to the Salem Witch trials and the importation of toxic male fear of the female which underpinned it.  And on a personal note, led to the killing of innocent people, including my 12^th great grandmother, the last woman to be executed for witchcraft in the future USA.

What we have left out is that the real motivating force behind the Colonies lay in its charter, which was a “God-sanctioned” contract with a group of mercurial investors, who were gambling on this group of self-righteous thugs to rape the land with such vigour that they would provide a handsome return on capital.

• Virginia Company Charter (1606)
• Massachusetts Bay Charter (1629)

Early relations with the natives were governed by this.  What ensued, not just in what became the United States, but throughout the Americas, was a rape and genocide, a wiping out of the most extensive and richest culture known to earth of a people who had managed to live sustainably and largely in harmony with the rhythms and conditions of our planet.  Genocide.  That is what Thanksgiving stands for.

• King Philip’s War (1675–1678)
• The Pequot Massacre (1637)
• Indian Removal Act (1830)

These are not justifiable incidents, they were a reflection of bully-boy ethics mixed with greed and a sense of manifest destiny—God “gives” to those who take.  It was codified in law and enforced by the state, the “Indian” Removal Act resulted in the Trail of Tears, in short, ethnic cleansing.  And the refusal to name Thanksgiving for what it is, perpetuates the sin.

And when I think about the current tenor of the United States, the arc is unbroken.  The rise of MAGA is just another ugly face of Manifest Destiny, a Klanish cult of the great white man, gussied up on a national scale: the sanctioning of might means right and the enshrining of structural hate.  This is America.  It is in plain sight and no longer afraid of its shadow. Perfectly in keeping with the origin story.  It is simply the next chapter, but the narrative is continuous.

The silver lining is that we can see it now, can no longer deny it.

And so, as we flow from Thanksgiving into Christmas and a general spirit of bonhomie and love thy fellow “man”, let us not lose sight of the true narrative, or pretend it is anything but ugly.  And as we slip past the holidays, and to New Years, where we celebrate what has passed before leaping into the future, hearts and loins steeled for challenge and resolutions, let us make these ones.

We are all guilty

We must atone

Silence is complicity

Live the narrative that you want to be part of

Don’t just agree, do

And for those of you out there who think there is something wrong with being “woke”; who might not like the idea of calling Thanksgiving a holiday which celebrates theft, rape and genocide; and who thinks using pronouns or letting trans people pee in public conveniences which match their gender identity, shame on you.  I will see you in Hell.  I’ll be the one at the door, punching your tickets for admission to eternal damnation.  You. have the tools to look in the mirror.  You just have to open your eyes.

About the Author

I am a direct lineal descendant of American royalty, the three true founding fathers: Miles Standish, William Bradford, and William Brewster.  Together these three men represented the essence of the colonialisation project.  Military: might makes right;  Governance: the normalisation and systemisation of extractive capitalism; and Spirituality: that it is our God-given right to do this—we are the chosen ones.  

I am a Daughter and a Son of the American Revolution.  I am white.  I am a child of extreme privilege.  I went to one of most prestigious prep schools in the country, an exponent of muscular Christianity, and attended an Ivy League university whose endowment was built on the backs of slaves.  Thankfully, there was a rupture in all this perfection, the kind that let me see behind the curtain, just as Dorothy did.  Thank you for reading.

Happy holidays.