Listen: repackaging the Pilgrims as well-meaning white folks with pointy hats, buckled shoes, and a turkey craving trying to escape religious persecution is some of the best marketing this country has ever done. The Pilgrims, and later groups of Puritans, didn’t colonize this part of North America for freedom. They didn’t travel across an ocean because of an idealistic investment in religious pluralism. No. The Puritans came here to establish a supremacist religious theocracy: full stop.
