Sometimes, my cynicism about our national holidays even starts to get to me. But not today. So here I am, bright and early, to crap on Thanksgiving. For most people, Thanksgiving is a feel-good holiday about gratitude for God’s plenty and the wonders of mutual understanding in a multicultural context. For me, it’s about theft, lies, self-delusion, and worst of all, football. So here are some downer, myth-busting pieces on Thanksgiving.

Mutual understanding in a multicultural context? Start with David Silverman’s “The Vicious Reality Behind Thanksgiving.” You’ll be cured of that one.

It gets worse. Turns out some ways of crapping on Thanksgiving don’t even do it the right way. There’s an old tale, popularized by Tom Bethell, that Plymouth Plantation was a case of communism gone wrong, a fact which he took to vindicate private property–a “noble triumph.” Kevin Carson begs to differ. So does Roderick Long, who’s quoted in Carson’s piece. By the way, don’t confuse that Kevin Carson with this one.

Incidentally, Reason Papers featured a debate on this same topic a few years ago between David Schmidtz and PoT’s own Gordon Barnes. Barnes’s Discussion Note appeared in issue 34:2 (October 2012), followed by an exchange between the two of them in the next issue, 35:1 (July 2013). Here’s Schmidtz. Here’s Barnes again. Goes well with cranberry sauce.

Then there’s football, and its $20 million crusade to subsidize the oppression of indigenous peoples.

And so we come full circle.

Yeah, and if, after all this, you’re going to eat a big, murdered bird tonight for dinner? At least have the decency to put your phone away. How would you like it if someone threw you in an oven, ate you, and posted your carcasse on social media?

*I originally called this post “Happy Thankstealing,” but after watching Donald Trump attack liberals for wanting to change the name of the day, I decided to come up with a better option that has more of a chance of sticking.

I also want to change the national anthem, by the way.