Wholesome American Guts: A Thanksgiving Prayer From Our Past

We began posting this Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs back in 2006. And something weird has happened in the years since. The deadpan list of Bloody American Triumphs sounds less like sarcasm in our Terrible Year of the Lord 2010 and more like an elegy.

The stuff that drove Burroughs nuts -- "thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business, thanks for a nation of finks" -- is still here, of course. It's in the latex-gloved hands of the cretin feeling up grandma in the Southwest line. It's in the police helicopters circling the cities night and day.

But thevictories, vulgar as they were, are all in the rapidly receding past. Even the Indians are getting a last laugh, as they shake down the once-wealthy white American, desperately gambling away his last unemployment check on Thanksgiving Morning, unsure whether to go home and kill himself or stop at the Wal-Mart first to take a few of his brethren and let some nerve-rattled Iraq vet pull up in his deputy sheriff's car and finish off the job.

And on a day when Americans once celebrated the bounty of their land by sharing a rare extravagant feast, the modern inhabitant of this doomed nation will only notice that the overflowing platters of greasy poultry and mushed bread were prepared in the kitchen at home for some reason, rather than picked up at the drive-thru. And then it will be time to drink "suitcases" of Bud Lite (less filling!) and plop down before the widescreen to watch towering slabs of humanity slam into each other and scratch at their anuses through tight polyester leggings.