Last Thanksgiving, incumbent Vice President J.D. Vance posted the Norman Rockwell painting Freedom From Want to his social media accounts. In the holiday scene, three generations of a White American family gather at the dining table for a midday feast. Grandpa stands at the head of the table behind an aproned grandma, who holds out a whole roast turkey on a platter for the family’s approbation. Except Vance photoshopped Trump’s face onto grandpa’s shoulders. He had also replaced the turkey with a nearly all-red electoral map of the United States. Vance’s own smiling face replaced Grandma’s.
Freedom From Want was originally commissioned by The Saturday Evening Post and appeared on the cover of its March 6, 1943 edition, illustrating President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address, “The Four Freedoms.” (The other freedoms: freedom of worship, freedom of speech, and freedom from fear.)
Even then, Rockwell’s paintings were emblems of state propaganda. FDR’s military used them to sell the war bonds to fund America’s part in World War II. Now, with Trump and Vance in the role of familial patriarch and matriarch, the meme seems to be selling the notion that America will never go hungry again. Or perhaps it’s a coded message to Republicans: We served up this juicy electoral win on a platter. You’re welcome! Or it might be a winking reference to MAGA’s sentimentalized 1950s Americana, with White men at the head of the table hosting an all-White family for a holiday meal. Is the implication then that non-White Americans have no place at the Trump/Vance table?
