A problem of a homogenized society is the inability to remember. The cauldron of American patriotic identity demands forgetfulness. We are not our past, but some nationalistic stew that demands we lie about history.
The genocide of the First Americans is relatively undocumented. The slavery of the African American is glossed. These twin catastrophes are subsumed in the idea of Manifest Destiny- it was all God’s plan.
Christopher Columbus discovered America, land of the free and home of the brave. Any other narrative is un-American. Such is the tremendous need to repress and prevaricate about the facts.
If the problem of Europe was class and monarchy, the problem of America is the strenuous need to bury the history of rape and pillage that was required to create an “egalitarian” society- one in which only genteel male whites could draft and sign the Declaration of Independence.
The myth of America is a classic example of how desperately important it is for nationalism to lie, and lie again, to fabricate a narrative that sells.
America has always excelled at marketing. America is a con. This is the enduring legacy of a patriotism based on amnesia.
America is all about democracy and free markets, right? This is what we relentlessly preach to ourselves and the world. This is a hundred times more false a narrative than the lie of communism, which is transparent. The idea of democratic capitalism is an opiate that demands an ever increasing fix until corporatism becomes the new tyrannical King clawing on our backs.
And thus came King Baby Trump, the inglorious fulfillment of corporatism as our new sovereign. And The People cry and cry, but the stinking turd of royal greed has assumed the throne- and we can’t account for how it happened.
