Thread by @BillWeirCNN

If you run out of political arguments with Uncle Rush, here's some fun Thanksgiving history to argue over pie:

Pilgrims and Puritans were as different as Sunni and Shia. While Pilgrims were radical separatists, Puritans were upset with the Church of England but loyal to England.

But by modern definitions, both groups were socialists. They got off the boat, divvied up the land equally, passed the hat to build schools and meeting houses and saw government as an extension of God's will to create a "shining city on a hill."

As brilliantly explained in "American Nations" by @WoodardColin their attitude is why much of New England remains liberal blue, while the lowland Scotch/Irish clans who settled in W. PA had nothing but disdain for centralized government. Their attitude was "you do you."

@WoodardColin Historians argue over whether the 90 Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving were invited or crashed the party after hearing gunshots.
But that star of that movie is unquestionably Tisquantum, better known as Squanto.
What a life this guy had...

By the time he met the Pilgrims, he had been taken to England by John Smith, came back to MA only to be captured by one of Smith's men and sold into slavery in Spain. He either escaped or was released by Catholic friars, moved to London for a bit and then came home to find...

...that his entire Pawtuxet tribe had been wiped out by smallpox carried by English livestock. Since he was fluent in English, he told rival tribes that white men kept the disease in special boxes and if they didn't treat him well, he'd tell them to unleash the pain.

Squanto was a player.

He fell in with the Wampanoag who were friendly with the Pilgrims and joined the Mayflower colony as a guide and interpreter. He helped demystify this strange migrant caravan, helped find a missing boy and taught them how to grow corn and squash and fish for eels.

By the time of the first Thanksgiving, half of the Mayflower passengers had dropped dead in the harsh New World but they had finally learned to fend for themselves enough to celebrate a bounty crop. But relations with natives were still fearful and fragile.

(plane is about to land...thread to be continued)

So... a few years after that first Thanksgiving, Puritan colonists found one of their own dead in his boat and immediately suspected the Pequot tribe on the Mystic River. They surrounded the village and laid waste to everyone inside.

The Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote of the party that followed the slaughter of hundreds of men, women and children and signed into law that “This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots.”

So while we all love the idea of Pilgrims and Indians coming together in a moment of cultural kumbaya, like the rest of American history it is a lot more complicated.
Our audacious nation is built on fear and loathing and sublime moments of empathy and understanding....

And unless we understand where we came from, we can never form "a more perfect union."

Let's raise a glass to the Squantos and the Pilgrims that gave him the benefit of the doubt.