Thanksgiving and Memorial

Strangely enough, even dry ol' Jersey McJones suffers from depression during the winter holidays.  Mind you, I know why I get depressed.  It's not the change of season, and I don't seek help for it or take happy pills to make it go away, because I don't want to forget why.  The holidays make me long for my youth - as it does for everyone.  I had a wonderful, lucky, happy childhood, with a big loving family, in amazing places and times.  I can't help but deeply miss that.

Meanwhile, many, many, many people are not so lucky as to deeply miss hardly a thing.

We usually set aside time during a holiday called "Thanksgiving" to remember the many, many, many who have little for to give thanks.  That's not enough.

Why don't we have a memorial day for Native Americans?

Isn't it right in the particular holiday's theme?  We should remember what we did to the original people of our country - their country.

The other day, I was having a casual conversation with a federal court officer (no, I wasn't up to no good...).  Somehow we got on the subject of the American Indian Holocaust.  He is essentially a "denier" just as some people today deny the Jewish Holocaust, as far as I'm concerned.  An older southern couple was in on the conversation.  Their compassion for the American Indian surprised me at first, and then I realized I was assuming things about southern people that I should not.  I was minding my tongue when I didn't have to.  It humbled me a bit, and so then we all had this fascinating conversation.

What we "Americans" (Europeans) did to the native population of this country is indefensible.  It's not okay to say, "It was the times," or "They didn't know any better."  We did know and we did it anyway.  To the officer it was an inevitable making-way for progress.  His moral position?  They brought it on themselves and behaved the same way among each other anyway.  A double moral equivalency.  Here we had a conservative sounding like his caricature of a progressive, justifying inestimable human suffering for something we could have without it, something no decent person wants.  It would be so ironic is it wasn't so selfishly moot to him.

Anyway, simply put:  We didn't have to kill the Indians.  We could have worked around them, and they around us.  Right???

We should remember on Thanksgiving the reason we give thanks for anything is that we're lucky enough to have something at all.  Most people work and toil and fight and raise families to protect what they have and to try to get more.  Many, many, many, no matter what they do, can barely survive.  When we are being thankful for what's our's, we should also be thoughtful of them.

JMJ