As Americans Celebrate Thanksgiving, Obligation to Remember Our Real History

Mural replica in Silverton, Oregon, of one of Norman Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" paintings,  at Wikimedia Commons

It's not Thanksgiving the world over, of course. But for us Americans, who tend to be self-focused, in any case, this is a day on which I suspect many of us think the whole world stops along with us to revel in "memories" of an iconized, mythologized American past that never really existed — at least not in the way we want to recall it. And to the extent to which it did exist, it meant a heap of misery for a lot of people who were mere adjuncts to the main narrative celebrated in our national icons, a narrative of happy native Americans sitting peaceably with grateful colonists, genocide and plunder of land nowhere in the mythological picture. Our iconic picture of American Thanksgiving is an equally fabulous (emphasis on root word "fable") picture of happy (always white, white, white) families, grandparents, parents, children, sitting thankfully and amicably at a long table eating bland foods devoid of herbs, spice, garlic, chili, nary a quarrel or disagreement (or thought?) in sight.

Trump and the Civil War: "Belief That the Civil War Could Have Been 'Worked Out' Reflects the Influence of the White Supremacist Neo-Confederate Movement on the Republican Party"

Susan Rice says #Trump is trying to create smoke to 'distract or deflect' from #trumprussia. It is a threat to our institutions & democracy. pic.twitter.com/0V8bUs4Rb8

— Jonathan Beeley (@foreignpolicy77) May 1, 2017

I think Susan Rice is correct: the current president is seeking in every way possible to create smokescreens to deflect our attention from the probe into his probable knowledge of an probable collusion with Russia in that nation's project to subvert the electoral process in the U.S. in 2016. The video above is embedded in a tweet by Jonathan Beeley that says, 

Why I Keep Asking Where Francis Effect Is for Marginalized Catholics: Pretending Is Never Way to Build a Healthy Anything

When I keep asking where the Francis effect is for various groups of marginalized Catholics (like the black Catholics about whom Anthea Butler writes with first-hand testimony, or survivors of childhood clerical sexual abuse, or Catholic women and millennials, or native Americans, or divorced  Catholics, or LGBT Catholics), I'm not blaming the pope for these problems. They're problems with and within the Catholic church in the U.S. I'm simply stating that talk about the Francis effect that is pure media spin, disembodied hype that overlooks the real-life situation of American Catholics in all their diversity, will hide those problems, pretend they do not exist, compound them — and pretending is not what we need.

It's never the way to build a healthy anything.

The photo of Pope Francis on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, 28 January 2014, is by Stefano Spaziani.

The Francis Effect: Putting Rhetoric Together with Reality on Eve of Pope's Visit (3)

For parts one and two of this series, see here and here.

The Francis effect? Anecdote #1: in a National Catholic Reporter article published yesterday, Joshua McElwee reports on a forthcoming book from the Catholic Women Speak project. The book, entitled Catholic Women Speak: Bringing Our Gifts to the Table, will be published by Paulist Press before the October Synod on the Family begins. It gathers essays from Catholic women in various places in the world.

Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches Over the World: "Words or Songs Are How the World Was Created"

I've just finished reading Linda Hogan's memoir The Woman Who Watches Over the World (NY: W.W. Norton, 2001). It's a painful, moving account of the struggle of a woman of Chickasaw heritage to find a way in a world that has sought to obliterate her heritage.