By Carole Raphaelle Davis

Thanksgiving is a big, fat, roasted, dried out, over-stuffed lie, served with a huge side of  creamed and candied delusion.

There was no peace with native Americans, come on, the truth is we stole their land and we murdered them.  Yeah, I’m thankful I don’t live in a tin hut that looks out onto an open sewer like most people in the world do. I’m thankful I’m not hungry and thirsty and that there isn’t a tribe of fanatics waiting to rape me the minute I go out to get fire wood.  That’s how most people live. I live in America, the “land of plenty” and I’m really thankful I don’t have cancer… yet.

It’s early morning on Thanksgiving day and Americans are preparing to get together to pretend that families are the source of all comfort and happiness and to stuff themselves with dead turkeys, the epitome of basse cuisine, the opposite of haute cuisine.  

Every American is an amateur actor today,  willfully playing a bit part in an enormous and simultaneous demonstration of performance art that crosses three time zones. This over-rehearsed play, a wannabe live version of the nostalgic painting  of Thanksgiving dinner by Norman Rockwell is stale. Let’s face it; that painting depicting American abundance, multi-generational family closeness and cheer isn't merely surreal—it’s a lie.

Except for the rich-like-Romneys, there’s no abundance. According to a census bureau report released a week ago, roughly 46.2 million people remained below the poverty line, unchanged from 2010. That figure was the highest in more than half a century. The truth is, there is an abundance of loneliness today with 33 million Americans (28% of all U.S. households) living alone.

Here are some mouth-watering and eye-opening facts from the census bureau:

Food Insecurity and Very Low Food Security

• In 2011, 50.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 33.5 million adults and 16.7 million children.
• In 2011, 14.9 percent of households (17.9 million households) were food insecure.
• In 2011, 5.7 percent of households (6.8 million households) experienced very low food security.
• In 2011, households with children reported food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than those without children, 20.6 percent compared to 12.2percent.
• In 2011, households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (20.6 percent), especially households with children headed by single women (36.8 percent) or single men (24.9 percent), Black non-Hispanic households (25.1 percent) and Hispanic households (26.2 percent).
• In 2011, 8.8 percent of seniors living alone (1 million households) were food insecure.

For us folks in the animal protection movement, there is little to be thankful for. This is a day of mourning for the 45 million turkeys killed for this holiday. This is a day for shame, reflection and sadness for the hundreds of millions of turkeys who live a short life of abuse in America’s factory farms. Right now, millions of animal lovers are frantically trying to convince their loved ones to not contribute to this massive annual animal holocaust. 

All those people who feel good about themselves feeding dead turkeys to homeless people are inadvertantly contributing to animal cruelty. If you have any doubts about the way turkeys are treated before you carve them up, watch this undercover footage taken at a Butterball processing plant. 

Inexplicably, even self-described animal lovers remain apathetic in the face of evidence that turkeys are routinely abused on their way to the plate. What will it take to convince them? I've tried. I've failed. The leading by example way doesn't work. 

For me, if I can somehow convince just one friend to have a cruelty-free day, it will be a good day.  

Yeah, I’m thankful. I’m thankful I’m not a turkey.

Carole Raphaelle Davis is an actress, recording artist and author of "The Diary of Jinky, Dog of a Hollywood Wife." Carole is also the West Coast Director of The Companion Animal Protection Society 

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