2 minute read. Content warning: Colonialism, genocide, systemic oppression, animal exploitation
chatGPT Summary: Kay critiques the colonial myth-making surrounding Thanksgiving, reflecting on the tension between personal nostalgia and historical truth, the role of education in shaping narratives, and the complicity of tradition in upholding systems of harm, while imagining how future generations will judge these practices.
That fucked-up time of year again—where I reflect on being a brainwashed colonizer, the childhood gatherings that framed plenty and achievement as moral virtues, and the slow, gutting realization of the truth. The betrayal of being deceived. The willful ignorance of those I love, who continue the recent colonial “tradition” as if nostalgia could justify harm.
I think about education—not as learning, but as an excuse to manufacture moments of revelation, to forge crucibles of experience, to say I know better and charge a price for it. I think about restorative justice, the balancing act between accountability and grace, between recognizing mistakes and refusing to excuse harm. I hold judgment while knowing it’s not mine to cast, especially not on Indigenous and marginalized families who gather with love and care without needing to justify themselves to anyone. Certainly not me.
All these thoughts, swirling, as the Turkey Trot happens on the island. A parade of felted bird carcasses bobbing on heads, people laughing, running. Humans are weird.
I imagine how our cyborg descendants will describe this millennium:
They were meat people who consumed meat to excess, accelerating their own demise along with the planet’s, indifferent to the suffering of the beings they devoured. They celebrated a villain who did not discover but took, a man whose name endured not through merit but through the writing of history. Even when everyone knew, they clung to the lie, insisting that to stop the tradition would unravel everything—their indoctrinated children might start to question other structures, the ones that upheld hate, greed, and gluttony. And so, dissenters were framed as the problem, their objections an inconvenience, so that the obvious harms could be set aside in favor of comfort.
Technology note:
I continue to test the use of AI within my writing and artistic practice. I wrote this one a few times, my anger and spite louder than the creative writing exercise I wanted to share. Eventually, I asked chatGPT 4o to help me edit the alien review of our history to create a more objective text. I edited this slightly and then I used chatGPT to create a summary and reading estimate, and recommend some content warnings for this blog, and Grammarly to assist me in spelling and grammar.