One of the most entertaining traditions of American Thanksgiving is the yearly deluge of posts, articles, and videos that, in a tone of outraged, puritanical virtue, inform everybody that the pilgrims and the natives were not all warm and fuzzy with each other, history textbooks and Thanksgiving stories don’t communicate “The Truth,” and “this country started with murder.”
Of course, “invented traditions” lie at the basis of every nation-state on the planet and there is no country that avoided bloodshed in the process of coming into existence, but these pesky little facts don’t flatter the American sense of exceptionalism. Turkey and sweet potato pie go down so much better when one can imagine oneself as the baddest baddie of all baddies.
Clarissa's Blog 
And the green bean casserole too!
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The really creepy thing is stuffing. I could never understand its purpose.
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Hey, it tastes good — don’t analyze it, just eat it!
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One surefire way to find if someone is a complete fucking tool is if they post ‘A Thanksgiving Prayer’ by William Burroughs anywhere on social media.
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I don’t even know what that is. And I’m wary of finding out.
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William Burroughs was an old man — even older that I am –who was one of the original 1950s “Beat Generation” in America (predecessors to the not-very-original Beatniks, who all wore goatees and trench coats and used clever expressions such as, “like yeah,” every other sentence.)
They were mostly harmless idiots — like Buroughs, who wrote terrible poetry while he was addicted for life on heroin, and a was pathetic hater of the American welfare system that sustained him.
The hippies that followed in the 1960s were much worse. At least the beatniks took baths occasionally, and made some effort to contain the venereal diseases raging in their crotches. The hippies — scared into existential shitlessness by the threat of being drafted in to the Vietnam War, exposed the lie that the “greatest generation” who had saved the world in WWII could even do a decent job of raising children.
Well, the Baby Bratter generation is starting to reach retirement age now. We’ll see how well their entitled children take care if them!
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“… the Steely Dan III from Yokohama …”
Of course, few people remember what the actual “Steely Dan” was supposed to be, let alone who came up with it … 🙂
[… sure, he’s a jolly roger, until he answers for his crime …]
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Actually, very little of his output was poetry, and he did have some relevant things to say about like in this country:
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Oh, it’s that Burroughs. My brain is on the fritz today.
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Buroughs, who wrote terrible poetry while he was addicted for life on heroin, and a was pathetic hater of the American welfare system that sustained him.
Welfare system? I think Burroughs was supported through his life by a family trust fund. His grandfather invented the Burroughs adding machine.
His inheritance was spread out, so that he received a stipend every month. Enough to allow him to travel the world and inject things into himself, without having to worry about gainful employment.
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“I think Burroughs was supported through his life by a family trust fund.”
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He was basically what used to be called a “remittance man”‘ which is where a family would use trust funds or another source to pay somebody monthly to live abroad and not embarrass the family at home. They were very common in the pre-WWII Shanghai of my mother’s childhood, as American and other European citizens enjoyed extraterritorial rights, which meant they could only be tried in courts of law(which existed for Americans, English, etc. over there) for breaking the law/s of their natal land. As my grandfather explained it, “If you kept your nose clean, you would be left to yourself.”
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