On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, the world looked on in horror as they witnessed the president of the United States die from a gunshot wound. Clips of Walter Cronkite breaking the news are branded into the American psyche as its people experienced the pain and shock of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The death of JFK was only one such domino to fall in the chaos of the 60’s.
Five years later, in April of ’68, Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. Just two months after that, the late president’s brother Robert F. Kennedy, also a former US Attorney General, New York Senator, and then-presidential candidate, was murdered. Even RFK’s assassin was assassinated.
The whirlwind of institutional and societal revolution left a wound in the culture that may not be understood by those born in recent decades.
From the Bay of Pigs invasion and Cuban Missile Crisis to the war in Vietnam, it’s no wonder that young Americans felt as though they were standing on quicksand. Teenagers were being sent into jungles across the world to die, while even at home, there was existential anxiety about a Soviet nuclear attack.
Nobody seems to argue that JFK was a great president or even a particularly good one. The few things about him that live on in public memory are his promiscuity, his failed foreign policy, and his famous line from his Inaugural Address: “Ask not what your country can do for you – but what you can do for your country,” which today sounds positively archaic.
Our Political Moment Beyond JFK
Our present time echoes aspects of the revolutionary 1960’s. Rejection of marriage, gender roles, and religion is accelerating, egged on by the mass use of social media.
Increasingly unserious US leadership is lending credibility to the arguments of America’s enemies that a new global hegemony is needed. Instead of a communist USSR, we are faced with a communist China, which is forging partnerships around the globe with those who would do away with the post-World War II liberal order.
In this political moment, America seems to be irrevocably polarized. So – where do we go from here?
To answer that question, we can look to Samoset.
“Welcome, Englishmen!”
In March of 1621, pilgrim settlers had been in Plymouth, Massachusetts, for only a few months, having sailed the Mayflower across the Atlantic to make a new life in a new land.
An account of the day Samoset greeted the English settlers can be found in Mourt’s Relation – a booklet created in 1622 to detail the events of the previous two years.
He saluted us in English, and bade us welcome, for he had learned some broken English among the Englishmen that came to fish at Monchiggon, and knew by name the most of the captains, commanders, and masters that usually come. He was a man free in speech, so far as he could express his mind, and of a seemly carriage.
Samoset remained with the Englishmen and introduced them to Squanto, who understood the English language with greater fluency since he had been previously enslaved in Britain. Both Squanto and Samoset created a friendship, or at the very least a peaceful cooperation with the settlers, and helped sustain their colony.
There was no bloodshed, hatred, or disdain from either party. Samoset reached out diplomatically to these strangers with the hope of creating an alliance, and for mutual benefit.
Giving Thanks
On the first Thanksgiving in 1621, 50 English settlers dined with 90 Wampanoag. This meal was not, on the one hand, a jubilee of friendship and free love between Indians and Englishmen, nor was it a contrived fiction to gloss over colonial atrocities. The reality was likely that it was a formal celebration of a newly forged alliance between these two peoples. And it is good that we praise that.
It is good to follow in the footsteps of the pilgrims and give thanks to God for blessing us with this prosperous, peaceful, and safe country we have today. Our country is not perfect, nor has it ever been. But it’s ours, so we give thanks.
Mourt’s Relation continues with Edward Winslow leaving us an image of the first Thanksgiving, and the incredible humility of the settlers.
Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you, partakers of our plenty.
Even in the revolutionary eras of the past and present, we maintain the traditions that have endured to our present time. Our traditions are what make us Americans, and our traditions are what will keep the American Spirit alive throughout generations hereafter.
Happy Thanksgiving.