By Bob Boldt

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It is long past due that Columbus Day (the celebration of an opportunist, genocidal sociopath) be abolished. That day should be one of quiet reflection and the celebration of the religions, diverse cultures and wisdom of a people we gleefully and heinously nearly destroyed. I think the changing of the national bird would also be in order.

In comparing the turkey to the eagle, Franklin wrote,

"The Turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original Native of America."

Actually the scavenging bald eagle is a perfect symbol for Imperialism, be it Roman or American. I have always loved the beautifully erotic adornment of the wily, domestic wild turkey. I have often balked at the pejorative use of the word "turkey" to represent bumbling incompetence, as in, "George W. Bush is a real turkey." I guess the reference to "turkey" is more appropriate to the modern genetically bred stupid cousin than to the wild original.  Most of my fellow citizens have never met a live version of either bird.

This year I (proudly) plan on resisting my annual Thanksgiving message concerning the real nature of the wicked, genocidal Plymouth Colony, their decimation of the natives who befriended them in their hour of greatest need and how they violently drove off the nearby, wiser, more prosperous, tolerant, pagan Maypole builders of the peace loving Merrymount community.  I have been told that most of my fellow Americans do not appreciate having their L-tryptophan slumbers disturbed with my preaching that, like Columbus Day, Thanksgiving should be a day of morning.

Puritan Governor, William Bradford described the horrors of the Merrymount revels.

"They...set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together, like so many fairies, or furies rather, and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians."  Gov. William Bradford

It definitely sounds like they were my kind of party animals!

Actually what probably pissed off Bradford and Miles Standish even more than these revels was the fact that the members of the Merrymount community were more effective farmers, savvy fur traders and were generally making a better go of getting on in the New World than the brutish, hidebound, dull monotheists of the Old Colony. Another reason for the success of Merrymount was its acceptance of their indigenous neighbors’ customs, beliefs and lifestyle.  One can only speculate on how American history might have been changed had the intolerant Puritans not forcefully destroyed the Merrymount community. 

Columbus Day, like Thanksgiving, should be a day of sackcloth & ashes, fasting, morning, penance and restitution to the remaining descendants of those few rightful inhabitants who were lucky enough to have escaped our wrath.