An essay by Kenneth W. Beek
Four hundred years ago, the first Thanksgiving feast celebrated survival — thanks largely to the kindness of the Wampanoag, who taught the colonists how to feed themselves. Within a generation, those natives’ descendants began to be hunted, displaced and starved by descendants of the people they’d first welcomed and taught to farm their new land. The empire, even in its infancy, was already learning to bite the hand that fed.
Some habits die hard, especially classism, incumbent seating on the Hill, and the perennial self-preservation of Congress.
Forty‐five years ago we experienced the first official government shutdown. Congress wanted to pass an authorization bill limiting the Federal Trade Commission’s power, partly in response to criticism from business interests. The FTC was funded by its own separate appropriations line, so the funding lapse affected it uniquely.
In April of 1980, Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued a legal opinion interpreting the Antideficiency Act more strictly. He argued that during a lapse in appropriations, agencies must cease operations. It was a strategic maneuver worthy of a grandmaster — or a grifter.
Historically, even when Congress failed to pass appropriations on time, many agencies continued operating, assuming Congress did not intend for their work to entirely cease. Under Civiletti’s new interpretation, funding gaps could produce actual, enforced shutdowns of government agencies, rather than just disruptions or reduced activity. The idea was that continuing operations during a lapse would create legal obligations — paying salaries, for instance — without legal authority, which the Act aimed to prohibit.
This year’s shutdown, the 11th in U.S. history, now has Congress — that same body of well-fed incumbents — preparing to thank America by cutting food assistance just in time for the holiday season.
One wonders if any of them remember who brought the corn to the table in the first place.
This Thanksgiving, America will once again bow its head in gratitude for a bounty it never earned. The grocery aisles overflow, the football commentators praise “teamwork” between beer brands, and politicians deliver televised blessings between donor calls.
But as turkey bastes and the nation congratulates itself on its greatness, millions of its citizens are wondering how to stretch a can of creamed corn into a meal — assuming they still qualify for SNAP, assuming SNAP still exists.
It’s a familiar irony. The nation that calls itself the land of opportunity has a habit of treating hunger as a personal failure and generosity as a seasonal decoration. The same government that spends trillions to “defend freedom” abroad routinely forgets to defend the freedom to eat at home. If that isn’t arrested development, I don’t know what to call it.
Four centuries after that first feast, the children of rebellion are still screaming “freedom” with their mouths full. Their grandchildren now wear red hats instead of powdered wigs, and mock their elders, who once again shout “No More Kings!” The irony, of course, is that they’ve crowned one anyway — Donald J. Scrooge, a man who weighs his blessings in gold bullion and keeps his ghosts in blockchain links.
These are the heirs of arrested development: citizens who never grew beyond the tantrum stage, who learned to confuse liberty with luxury, and who worship the “self-made” myth while standing on stolen ground. They wave flags made in China and sneer at the concept of “union,” disgracing the very revolutionaries they claim to revere.
It’s not a budget issue — it’s a belief issue.
Last Thanksgiving, I walked two miles in the cold wind and rain to the Spurwink Living Room, the only place in Portland serving a hot meal indoors. There was no table to sit around. We ate on sofas with our plates on our laps like the TV-dinner generations at the close of the last century. But it was a “home-cooked” meal provided for the homeless and the indigent — and I was grateful for it.
So this Thanksgiving, as the faithful carve their turkeys and the cynics carve each other into ribbons online, please, remember: arrested development isn’t merely a diagnosis — it’s a dynasty. The same hands that once fed the nation are still displaced, the same hunger still dismissed, and the same feast still served to the few.
Kenneth W. Beek is the author of the memoir Transience, available in the Bonus! content section at bollardhead.substack.com.
