A Bird's-Eye-View of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is about not going to work, hanging out, day drinking, cooking, and watching the holiday-appropriate Cowboys vs. Redskins game – a pairing that recalls the ongoing genocide of American Indians undertaken by white settlers. Thanksgiving commemorates a meal whereat European colonialists broke bread with Native Americans. This diplomatic stunt jibes nicely with the age-old U.S. tradition of brokering peace within a context of injustice. Try finding an Indian to break bread with this year.Thanksgiving is now synonymous with its superficial affectations such as cornucopias, pumpkins, and the fanned plumage of a turkey’s tail feathers. Most people won’t think of a single Plymouth Pilgrim unless one floats down the Macy’s Day Parade route.But people often celebrate traditions without knowing the history or meaning, like in Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, where townsfolk gather for an annual event at which one person is chosen by lottery to be stoned to death by fellow villagers to ensure a bountiful harvest. Problem is, most people partake in the sacrificial murder despite their ignorance of the event’s history and purpose. “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual… they still remembered to use the stones.” The meaning has vanished and all that remains is ceremonial violence that generates a sense of collective identity. “We have done it for so long, it must do some good”, the villagers say.Speaking of arbitrary selection in a public ceremony of forgotten origin, every Thanksgiving the President pardons a turkey, which is enough to make you think the turkey was involved in something crooked. After the ceremonial pardoning of the turkey, the President unceremoniously eats an unpardoned turkey.Most Americans will likewise gorge on gobbling birds. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans will eat the corpses of 45 million turkeys for Thanksgiving. This massacre isn’t an isolated incident, but part of industrial civilization’s continual holocaust of birds.About one year ago, CBS News ran a piece showcasing how wind turbines kill bald eagles. The message was clear: green energy kills America. However, the piece failed to mention that only five bald eagles have been killed by wind turbines. It also failed to mention that scores of bald eagles die each year from lead poisoning after feasting on the carcasses of bullet-filled deer. Furthermore, fossil fuel energy kills far more birds than green energy. The BP oil spill alone killed 6,147 birds, and the Exxon Valdez spill killed over 200,000 birds.Television, radio and cell phone towers kill nearly seven million birds per year. But of course, Americans need cellular towers so they can cause approximately 1.3 million cell phone-related car crashes per year, which is piddly compared to the 70 million birds killed by cars each year.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) estimates that about 174 million birds die by flying into high-tension wires every year. Ornithologists with the American Bird Conservancy estimate that between 300 million and 1 billion birds die from colliding with plate glass windows annually.Then there’s the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus that spread as a result of large-scale, unsanitary, inhumane factory farming – a mechanized process which supplies Americans with the 23 million chickens they eat daily. Not only does factory farming spawn lethal microbes, but according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, factory farming is a bigger cause of global warming than the entire transportation industry combined.50 years ago Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring proved that DDT killed countless birds, thereby silencing their springtime songs. Instead of learning a lesson, today the USDA and USFWS estimate that pesticides kill about 67 million birds each year.The largest killer of birds is habitat destruction. Half of the world’s original forests are gone, and half of the world’s rainforests have been destroyed in the past 20 years. This massive deforestation drove passenger pigeons into extinction, and is currently leaving many other birds perched on the Red List.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that in the last 50 years nearly half of Antarctica’s penguin population has disappeared due to climate change. NASA scientists were shocked to discover that arctic ice is melting faster than their worst-case-scenario predicted. Scientists now believe that polar seas could be ice-free in 20 years.The National Audubon Society found that bird populations are shifting northward, migrating sooner, and laying eggs earlier due to global warming. These patterns should trouble people since one-third of all human food comes from plants that birds help pollinate. Birds also control the population of rodents and insects which would otherwise ravage crops.None of these statistics will bother Joe Sixpack as he goes to swallow a Butterball this Thanksgiving. After eating 45 million turkeys the U.S. population will succumb to the overdose of tryptophan and drift into a long deep sleep, and then awaken at 5am the following day to lay siege upon retail stores for their ‘early bird specials’ and literally kill each other for toys, thus partaking in the ritual sacrifice known as Black Friday, when townsfolk gather for an annual event at which one person is chosen by lottery to be crushed to death by fellow villagers to ensure bountiful bargains.Future generations will mock this culture for stuffing bread crumbs up a turkey’s funny end and then eating the turkey. A celebration of gratitude for a plentiful harvest has warped into the industrialized slaughter of 45 million birds. But the industrial system has always massacred birds. The machine devours nature, and we strive to make it more efficient, thereby fouling our nest beyond repair.Sadly, it’s difficult to fret about the mass-murder of birds when the world is afflicted with many heavy albatrosses, such as hypermasculine patriarchy, hypermasculine white hegemony, hypermasculine homophobia, hypermasculine nationalism, and hypermasculine anthropocentrism – all of which should be erased right now. But birds are the bellwether species for letting us know when our goose is cooked, and all signs indicate that the chickens are coming home to roost.When the canary in the coal mine finally dies we won’t have time to escape the pit because, as Hegel said, “The owl of Minerva only spreads its wings when the shades of night are gathering.”But happy Thanksgiving...