Thanksgiving and why conservatives lose

So it was that time of year again.  Not the time when we're told how racist Thanksgiving is and how the holiday should be abolished while we put our emphasis on Indigenous Peoples Month. Nope.  Truth  be told, I heard and saw little of that this year.  The year 2021 seems to have been the high water mark of the Left's America hate, when that sort of thing was everywhere and around everything American.  This year it's been references to the strategically placed 'Native American Heritage and Indigenous Peoples Day', but not much else.  Which is like those atheists who post 'There is no God' around Christmas.  No clue if the election had anything to do with the dialed down level of such rhetoric this year.

No, I mean from the conservative side.  When I first became Catholic and was frequenting many a Catholic blog, most of which were right of center, I was rather taken by the posting around the first Thanksgiving.  As we went through RCIA, I remember one of the instructors saying that we Americans don't know the real first Thanksgiving, owing to our Protestant bias. Eh.  I though OK, fair call, but the holiday received is the one we received, and that's part of our shared heritage as Americans, so I don't feel I'll make any changes any time soon.  Plus, if most don't know the specifics, they are aware that Spain and Catholicism was here, it's just we became an Anglo-American society owing to the influence of Enlightenment era Protestant England and the victories and accomplishments thereof, so the traditional approach makes sense.

But that first year I realized this is not some off the cuff remark in an RCIA class.  That same approach was - everywhere on St. Blogs.  I lost track of how many blogs that year posted variations on 'The REAL First Thanksgiving' was Catholic.  And it still happens.  I don't think a year has passed that I haven't seen it on at least a couple Catholic blogs  Which, you know, is nothing other than a variant on 'It should really be Indigenous Peoples Day!'  If you think on it.

Oh, quibble all you want about leftwing agendas and the differences here, but ultimately what is being said is that the heritage we have in the Thanksgiving Holiday is flawed, and should be reframed, or rethought, or rebranded.  Which is all the Left is saying, just to other extremes.  

And that's why conservatives lose.  I've often said that at any time of the year, the Left can count on 1/3 of conservatives and those on the right jumping on board and siding with whatever the Left is pushing.  This goes way back.  One of my pet hypotheses is that America began its formal decline when we became convinced that America had no right to have a cultural and ethnic identity. That is, we could not be a WASP nation.  No matter how the nation attempted to allow others in and push equality and make sure everyone is given the same fair shake, we simply could not be a WASP nation by identity and culture and social majority.  

That was driven into me in elementary school, when I first hear the term WASP, and was taught how glorious is was that we were putting that identity behind us.  And first up on the list was not the Civil Rights legislation, or anything to do with Jim Crow.  It was Kennedy becoming the first Catholic president.  That was the wonderful chink in the WASP armor that signaled we were not longer merely a Protestant nation, we were a Christian one.  Much to the delight of Catholics then and now. 

Learning about that in fourth grade was, I'll admit, ironic, because by then we were already tossing not only our Christian ideals, but religious ideals in general, into the outer darkness and becoming a secularized, atheist state in all but church attendance.  Yet Catholics then as now cheered the idea of getting rid of that WASP, at least insofar as it meant Protestant, identity. The problem now is clear.  As I said, it didn't stop with erasing the Protestant. Nor did it stop with anything else.

Yet every year, on the Catholic internet, Catholics will join the Left in saying why Thanksgiving as we have it is at least flawed in our understanding. Most, of course, don't go so far as to say throw down the holiday and burn it in the turkey friers.  And there are those least those who are more conservative, who still celebrate and give credit to the traditional holiday and its more Protestant origins.    

But it's there nonetheless.  An 'us v. them' approach to the holiday that I've noticed the Left will always and forever condone and encourage and be grateful for, especially when done among those who otherwise oppose the Left.  Something you never see happen anywhere left of center I might add.  Which is why the Left wins.  Even amidst temporary setbacks.  Because whatever the Left doesn't learn, it will always know that in the future, conservatives will forever be bickering and dividing themselves, and if nothing else, the Left will be able to call that a win. 

Oh, and we won't even get into that odd 'the real lesson of Thanksgiving is that socialism never works.'  Not saying it does or doesn't, but the real lesson I grew up with until the rise of multi-cultural anti-Western dribble was that the Pilgrims put it all on the line and risked everything, even their lives, in this new land all because of their beliefs and convictions.  And when against hope they survived, they joined with the natives of the land and gave glory and thanks to God as the reason they survived.  Even in elementary school, we learned that.  So please stop with the 'enough of the God stuff Dave, it's about the economy stupid.'  Again, the first step in defeating an opponent is to stop helping the opponent.  Because anything that cuts through our side is always a boon for theirs.