Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 78

Face Of The Day

A turkey sits in a barn at the Willie Bird Turkey Farm in Sonoma, California. An estimated forty six million turkeys are cooked and eaten during Thanksgiving meals in the United States. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Thank God, Or Not

Emma Green contemplates why “secular, Thanksgiving-flavored gratitude seems so fuzzy”:

Religions from Christianity to Hinduism to Wicca all emphasize the importance of thankfulness, especially as a form of prayer. This is because they rely on the premise of an other, some sort of non-human being that has some sort of control or influence in the world who you can thank for the world and the good things in it.

“One of the things that’s really interesting about the human mind is that we seem to want to see agency in the world, almost intuitively,” said Michael McCullough, a psychologist at the University of Miami. “The mind really craves an explanation for the good and the bad, in terms of agency.” By “agency,” McCullough means something along the lines of “a force that can act in the world and cause events to happen.” In crude sociological terms, people give thanks to the forces that act in the universe—God, or god, or gods—as a bid for cosmic benevolence, whether that means making it rain or preserving a loved one’s health or bringing a baby into the world. But these thanks are also an implicit metaphysical claim: Humans owe their existence, their longevity, and perhaps even their daily fortunes to a being beyond ourselves.

While expressing gratitude for the good in her life, Kate Cohen confesses that “as an atheist, I don’t ever ascribe these gracious gifts to God; I never believed a supernatural being to be the source of the bounties that I enjoy”:

And yet, like any other lucky soul, I am still “prone to forget” my many blessings and “habitually insensible” to my own good fortune. I can use a day set aside now and then to make myself remember.

I could — with apologies to the Puritans — keep Thanksgiving, but leave God and prayer out of it. Just because it began as a day of prayer doesn’t mean mine has to be. Atheists don’t have to thank God: they can thank their hosts (or welcome their guests), toast the cooks, and enjoy the food.

Maybe that would be enough for me if I didn’t have kids. But even though I don’t want my children to believe in God, I still want them to believe in blessings. Beauty. Wonder. Good fortune. Grace.

Map Of The Day

Megan Gambino unearths the first map to bear the name “New England,” published by Captain John Smith in 1616:

In his new book, A Man Most Driven: Captain John Smith, Pocahontas and the Founding of America, [Peter] Firstbrook argues that historians have largely underestimated Smith’s contribution to New England. While scholars focus on his saving Jamestown in its first two harsh winters and being saved by Pocahontas, they perhaps haven’t given him the credit he deserves for passionately promoting the settlement of the northeast. After establishing and leading the Virginia Colony from 1607 to 1609, Smith returned to London, where he gathered notes from his exploration of the Chesapeake Bay and published his 1612 map of Virginia. He yearned for another adventure in America and finally returned in 1614.

When Smith was mapping New England, the English, French, Spanish and Dutch had settled in North America. Each of these European powers could have expanded, ultimately making the continent a conglomerate of similarly sized colonies. But, by the 1630s, after Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony were established, the English dominated the East Coast—in large part, Firstbrook claims, because of Smith’s map, book and his ardent endorsement of New England back in Britain. “Were it not for his authentic representation of what the region was like, I don’t think it would be anywhere near as popular,” says Firstbrook. “He was the most important person in terms of making North America part of the English speaking world.”

So, Friendsgiving Is A Thing

Kay Steiger explains that she and her pals inaugurated a tradition of non-family get-togethers “because we all thought we could make better versions of Thanksgiving food and it’s more fun to get drunk with your friends anyway”:

[F]or all the cleverer recipes and the fancier food, what actually matters is getting everyone together for another year – which was the point of the family Thanksgivings we all either couldn’t or didn’t want to go back to our hometowns for. We aren’t related by blood, but we’re still a family.

The idea of Friendsgiving isn’t particularly unique to us, but it is quietly radical in its way …. The conservative view is that your second family starts with a marriage between one man and one woman, preferably long before the ages we all our now – and, until then, your original family Thanksgiving should take top priority. But creating – and celebrating – families with the people you like rather than the people you might feel stuck with provides a lot of people more reason to give thanks.

But not everyone is so Friendsgiving-friendly. Foster Kamer insists it’s “the ne plus ultra of dumb, idiotic, made-up, fake holidays created exclusively for the most middlebrow human beings intent on perpetuating middlebrow, capital-b Basic culture”:

[T]his is where Friendsgiving is supremely annoying: The core idea here is the implication that, as opposed to Friendsgiving, a regular Thanksgiving must be spent with family, and not friends; should be stogy at best; and if not boring, then at least tense and uncomfortable. Friendsgiving hinges on the idea that Thanksgiving is mediocre.

I resent that implication. I resent the idea that I should have two meals, because one of them just isn’t supposed to be fun. Why else would you need an ostensibly unconventional, wacky and neat alternative?

Melia Robinson differs, reflecting fondly on the Friendsgiving she held last year:

Friendsgiving isn’t perfect. There were hiccups. One roommate scratched her eye after slicing an onion and experienced such searing pain, we thought we were going to have to take her to the hospital. (She’s fine now.) We kept realizing we forgot to pick up needed ingredients; so by the second unplanned trip to the grocery store, I invested in a six-pack of Woodchuck to preserve our sanity.

But there was no screaming, no awkward interactions with relatives you see twice a year, and no tears (besides the onion incident). Just old jokes rehashed and new memories made between people who love each other.

If you’re going to spend Thanksgiving with your relatives, have a Friendsgiving, too. Celebrate both your families, no matter how weird one is.

Ellen McCarthy is on the same page. Meanwhile, in McSweeney’s, Chris Brotzman narrates “The First Friendsgiving.” It all began, he says, with a group of Millennials in 2008:

With the Thanksgiving holiday soon approaching, decisions needed to be made. Plans needed to be laid out. And so they began to wonder.

“Welp. I can’t afford a plane ticket home for Thanksgiving,” said one Millennial to another.

“Me either,” she replied.

A third chimed in. “Fuck it. Let’s have Thanksgiving here [in LA]. It’s way warmer than in the Midwest anyway.”

They began texting other Millennials of their remarkable idea! A feast just for them! No adults! No annoying family members! What a celebration!

Like a miracle, one of the Millennials had a friend in graphic design who was pretty badass at Photoshop and willing to design a logo for the eVites and the Facebook page. It’s even been told that the name “Friendsgiving” was coined by one of these Millennials who worked as an advertising copywriter, but that’s yet to be confirmed by Wikipedia.

“The more the merrier!” it said right there on the Facebook event page. But they all knew it. “Merrier” was just a façade. They knew this whole thing was merely a coping mechanism for their own, deep-seeded unhappiness: lost in a strange place, much like the Pilgrims of the first Thanksgiving, starving for acceptance from strangers. The main difference, of course, is that the original Pilgrims were also literally starving. Like, for food and medicine and stuff.

But do not be fooled. The Millennials had it rough, alright. For it is no easy thing to come to grips with the idea that life isn’t easy and can’t be handed to you.

Mental Health Break

Finally, a “Thanksgiving Carol” made especially for short attention spans:

The Upside Of Being A Downer

Though ’tis the season to give thanks, Mariana Alessandri maintains that voicing dissatisfaction isn’t all bad:

The 20th-century Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno didn’t recommend banishing the negative emotions or “keeping on the sunny side of life.” In “The Tragic Sense of Life” he described his anxiety over the prospect that there might be no afterlife, adding that he failed to understand people who had not once been similarly tormented by this or by the certainty of their own death.

Unamuno believed that a life worth living consists in communing with others, and that this happens most genuinely through negativity. In “My Religion,” Unamuno wrote: “Whenever I have felt a pain I have shouted and I have done it publicly” in order to “start the grieving chords of others’ hearts playing.” For Unamuno, authentic love is found in suffering with others, and negativity is necessary for compassion and understanding. If we try to deny, hide or eradicate the negative from our lives, we will be ill-equipped to deal with people who are suffering.

Divided We Thank

Kenneth C. Davis credits Lincoln with issuing “the first two in an unbroken string of presidential Thanksgiving proclamations,” but notes that “the elevation of Thanksgiving to a true national holiday [was] a feat accomplished by Franklin D. Roosevelt.” He reminds us that Americans initially found Roosevelt’s holiday politically polarizing:

In 1939, with the nation still struggling out of the Great Depression, the traditional Thanksgiving Day fell on the last day of the month – a fifth Thursday. Worried retailers, for whom the holiday had already become the kickoff to the Christmas shopping season, feared this late date. Roosevelt agreed to move his holiday proclamation up one week to the fourth Thursday, thereby extending the critical shopping season.

Some states stuck to the traditional last Thursday date, and other Thanksgiving traditions, such as high school and college football championships, had already been scheduled. This led to Roosevelt critics deriding the earlier date as “Franksgiving.” With 32 states joining Roosevelt’s “Democratic Thanksgiving, ” 16 others stuck with the traditional date, or “Republican Thanksgiving.” After some congressional wrangling, in December 1941, Roosevelt signed the legislation making Thanksgiving a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday in November. And there it has remained.

Josh Zeitz elaborates:

Though Republicans were louder in articulating their opposition, the split between Thanksgiving and “Franksgiving” states was not strictly partisan; rather, it was ideological.

Among those states that shunned Roosevelt’s designated holiday were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Texas, home of Vice President John Nance Garner, split the baby and recognized both dates as a holiday. While Georgia did adhere to FDR’s decree, the editor of the Warm Springs Mirror—effectively FDR’s hometown paper when he wasn’t in Washington—echoed the criticism of conservative Democrats when he suggested that the president move his birthday “up a few months until June, maybe … I don’t believe it would be any more trouble than the Thanksgiving shift.”

Were people angry, as some editorialists suggested, that the president was ruining collegiate football (after all, most of the big rivals had long before scheduled their Thanksgiving games, and for many schools, the season ended entirely the Saturday following the holiday)? Perhaps that was part of it. But mostly, it was a shifting political ground that gave conservative opponents of the New Deal from both parties greater confidence to criticize and ridicule a widely popular president.

Meanwhile, Stephen L. Carter surveys a history of political friction during the holiday. Citing James Madison’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1814 – delivered during the War of 1812 – he urges Americans to “put aside our divisions and to approach our blessings with gratitude and humility”:

We’re a divided nation in so many ways. In our responses to everything from the Affordable Care Act to Ferguson to climate change, we’re constantly at one another’s throats, treating those who disagree as enemies to be derided rather than fellow citizens who are part of a common project. College students are being taught to ban speakers whose messages discomfit them. Political parties, egged on by talk show hosts, are raising money through raising fears of diabolical conspiracies. …

We’re an imperfect country, and always will be. The “distinguished favors” and “precious advantages” of which Madison spoke may not always be equally distributed, but they are what mark the nation as distinctive. We can do no greater honor to our forebears than adopting an attitude of respect and humility across our differences, as we give thanks for the remarkable project that is America.

The Best Of The Dish Today

As bad as your wintry travels might get this Thanksgiving, be grateful you’re not these guys:

What you’re seeing:

A UTair flight froze to the ground at Igarka airport in Siberia on Tuesday, and passengers had to get out and push the 30-ton aircraft to get it moving again. One of the men in the video is heard saying: “Real men can plant a tree, build a house, and push a plane,” according to the Siberian Times. The temperatures in the region above the Arctic Circle hit below 52C, and the brakes froze because they used the wrong kind of grease.

We’re staying in by ourselves. It’s cocoon weather.

Today FTW: the surprisingly good politics (so far) of Obama’s executive action on immigration; why “last year was an all-time low for killings of police and a 20-year high for killings by police“; the cosmetic “make-up trajectory” of women; and the meaning of our tatted, inked body culture.

The most popular post of the day was What To Make Of Ferguson? Next up: Will Michael Brown’s Death Be A Turning Point?

Many of this week’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here. You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 22 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here – and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. Gift subscriptions are available here. Dish t-shirts are for sale here and our new mugs here. A final email for the day:

Consider this a dispatch from deep in Blue America (I live in the most Democratic precinct in Portland, Oregon). I often chafe at your analysis of the lefty mind and currents in lefty thinking, but I totally agree with the thrust of the thread on Chuck Schumer’s revisionist history and magical thinking.

There was something about the election of Barack Obama that defied reason – and I mean literally. Both sides imagined he was somehow all-powerful. We know the ways in which the right reacted, but the left was just as crazy. The view that Obama somehow squandered an opportunity to remake the country as Sweden is not only universal, it has hardened into rancid resentment. I think it may well explain the midterms; after the unreasonable hopes of 2008, everything looks like desolation. Liberals around here don’t talk about politics anymore – less than any time in my adult life (I’m 46). They voted, but bitterly.

So many liberals look backward and see nothing but coulda-beens. It takes an ignorance of history combined with a lack of sophistication about the political process to see this man as anything but one of the most significant forces for liberalism in US history. And yet now, when we should be flush with excitement and optimism, liberals know only dissipation.

In one key way, the GOP should take pride in this. Their strategy of governing nihilism has indeed had a massive effect. That even a Senator who was in Congress at the time misremembers this history is evidence of how bad things are among the Dem base. It’s been a weird six years.

See you in the morning – and Happy Thanksgiving from all of us.

Pass The Gravy, Pass On The Partisanship

Michael Brendan Dougherty recommends we avoid political squabbling over Thanksgiving:

These advice columns are becoming a genre unto themselves. The stock villain: crazy right-wing uncle, the jokes about stuffing. But I recognize them by what they unwittingly emulate: guides for religious evangelism. The gentle, righteous self-regard, the slightly orthogonal response guides, the implied urgency to cure your loved ones of their ignorance. Your raging uncle will know the truth, and the truth will set him free.

That’s a problem. Our politics are taking on a religious shape. Increasingly we allow politics to form our moral identity and self-conception. We surround ourselves with an invisible community of the “elect” who share our convictions, and convince ourselves that even our closest and beloved relatives are not only wrong, but enemies of goodness itself. And so one of the best, least religious holidays in the calendar becomes a chance to deliver your uncle up as a sinner in the hands of an angry niece.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone.

As a conservative raised in an argumentative and left-leaning Irish-American family, Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners did more than any professional media training to prepare me for MSNBC panels. But arguments like these, particularly when we allow politics to dominate our notions of ourselves, can leave lasting scars. And precisely because our familial relationships are so personal, the likely responses to our creamed and beaten talking points will be defensive, anxious, off-subject, or overly aggressive.

Lizzie Crocker presents one scenario you might relate to:

You are in a steady, long-term relationship with someone whom you adore despite her fringe politics (you are even starting to come around on her anti-vax opinions). Alas your family cannot stand her, not just because they disagree with her political views, but because they find her to be preachy and self-righteous, and because she refuses to put on “nice” clothes when they see her. (Your mother telephoned to ask if she would be wearing yoga pants to Thanksgiving dinner again this year.) But for some unfathomable reason, you really love this woman who lives in her Lululemon everything and who is forcing you to do a five-day juice cleanse with her after the holiday.

Can’t everyone open their narrow minds and try to get along? [Marriage and family therapist Jenn] Berman suggests “setting up boundaries” and warning family members who are prone to starting fights that you’ll “give them one warning if they do so and then leave if things escalate.”

Stephen L. Carter is much more sweeping:

We’re a divided nation in so many ways. In our responses to everything from the Affordable Care Act to Ferguson to climate change, we’re constantly at one another’s throats, treating those who disagree as enemies to be derided rather than fellow citizens who are part of a common project. College students are being taught to ban speakers whose messages discomfit them. Political parties, egged on by talk show hosts, are raising money through raising fears of diabolical conspiracies.

Even Lincoln, in the midst of so desperate a war, conceded that the enemy was “of our own household.” This was an enemy actually being fought on the battlefield. The very day before Lincoln’s proclamation of Thanksgiving, the Union had won its costly victory at the Battle of Cedar Creek, suffering more than 5,600 casualties, including some 3,400 dead. Yet Lincoln evidenced a belief that those who fought against the Union were not monsters, but wayward brothers.

We’re an imperfect country, and always will be. The “distinguished favors” and “precious advantages” of which Madison spoke may not always be equally distributed, but they are what mark the nation as distinctive. We can do no greater honor to our forebears than adopting an attitude of respect and humility across our differences, as we give thanks for the remarkable project that is America.

A Poem For Wednesday

“Poem of Thanks” by Sharon Olds:

Years later, long single,

I want to turn to his departed back,

and say, What gifts we had of each other!

What pleasure—confiding, open-eyed,

fainting with what we were allowed to stay up

late doing. And you couldn’t say,

could you, that the touch you had from me

was other than the touch of one

who could love for life—whether we were suited

or not—for life, like a sentence. And now that I

consider, the touch that I had from you

became not the touch of the long view, but like the

tolerant willingness of one

who is passing through. Colleague of sand

by moonlight—and by beach noonlight, once,

and of straw, salt bale in a barn, and mulch

inside a garden, between the rows—once—

partner of up against the wall in that tiny

bathroom with the lock that fluttered like a chrome

butterfly beside us, hip-height, the familiar

of our innocence, which was the ignorance

of what would be asked, what was required,

thank you for every hour. And I

accept your thanks, as if it were

a gift of yours, to give them—let’s part

equals, as we were in every bed, pure

equals of the earth.

(From Stag’s Leap: Poems by Sharon Olds © 2012 by Sharon Olds. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Photo by Ahmed Mahin Fayaz)