It's Day 325 of the Year 2018 CE
So, November 21, 2018 - for my reference if nothing else.

OK, I profoundly dislike tomorrows holiday and the myth it is based on. Briefly, innumerable "days of thanksgiving" were declared in the early days of this country, by mayors, governor, priests, village elders and the like. They were too often for truly horrible reasons like the fact that the populace of Indian village up the river had all died of some plague, and now they could take their land, crops and possession without having to fight and kill them, or that their midnight sneak attack on such a village was a resounding success, the Indians were slaughtered and the survivors decamped leaving them free to take and use the land. Luckily, today has its own significant event, so I can deal with it instead.

According to the wiki, on 11/21/1620, the Plymouth Colony settlers signed the Mayflower Compact. Today's word of the day is Colonist There were no Plymouth Colony "settlers", they were Colonists. I mean, really, it was a colony. Who lives in a colony? Colonists, that's who. This is a very important distinction. Colonists is an innocent looking word that means "imperialist assholes set on thieving and arrogating to themselves control and power over the land, resources and, if present, people(s) of some foreign land." This place, once sufficiently stolen and controlled and pried loose from its remote owners was designed and written into law as an oligarchy that was in part a plutocracy, but without the leveling influence that plutocracy grants new money procured by the lower classes.

Once we remember that the original "settlers" and "Pilgrims" and all that were colonists, things are suddenly perceptually different. The key is to use the word in order that we always remember the reality, colonists, colonizers, residents of colonies. There those with royal charters, and slaves and everybody in between. Slaves, of course, like the criminals and debtors exiled here for life, weren't truly colonists, because they weren't here voluntarily. That's ok, they also aren't part of the mythical history of the creation and foundation of this country. So, among these colonists were The Founding Fathers

Note the lack of Founding Mothers. It's not like there were no mothers who came here and no women who came here and subsequently became mothers. Their absence is because they weren't allowed to have much of anything to do with the founding of the place. The colonies were highly patriarchal, and in many enclaves, theocratic as well. It has been said that the founders of the country were wealthy white male slave owners who didn't want to pay taxes. This might be over broad, but probably hits close to home. It appears that only 41 of 57 signers of the constitution owned slaves, for example. As to those who actually drafted it, quien sabe? I'll wager that a larger percentage than that owned land. (The states set the voting requirements and generally that meant land owning and/or tax paying white males, less than 10% of the population. Those were also pretty much the class of folks from whom the framers and signers of the Constitution were drawn, the "founding fathers".) Also, most didn't oppose all taxation, they simply wanted to control who was taxed on what and to what extent as well as how those tax revenues were spent. "No taxation without representation" wasn't pure rhetoric.

This was not an egalitarian society and the colonists were not egalitarians. Ignoring the treatment of the Indians, slaves and indentured servants serfs, it took until 1790 for all states to get rid of a religious test for voting, and it took until 1856 for all states to get rid of property ownership as a pre-condition for white males to vote. Even then, the structure of the Senate and the Electoral college, and to a lesser degree, the courts, were designed to prevent the hoi polloi from obtaining any meaningful measure of control over their destiny or that of the country as a whole. And, of course, we're still just talking about white male hoi polloi, black, Indian and female hoi polloi still had no say in the matter. Control of the country's government by a select handful of people can be oligarchy, theocracy, plutocracy or a combination of the above, but it is not democracy or anything remotely resembling democracy. So, I'd re-identify the Founding fathers as land owning elitist white male oligarchs who mostly owned slaves and wanted to control not only taxation, but everything else.

The main keys to understand US history are 2 words, which must be repeated and practiced until they become as automatic as "founding Fathers", "settlers" and "Pilgrims" used to be - Colonists and oligarchs

Have a great day.

(Image: Image from page 859 of "Programme" (1881) )

OK, it's an open thread, so go for it ...

EDIT: fix 3 typos