America has always had a contradiction at it’s heart: It purports to represent high minded ideas about freedom, egalitarianism, peace, democracy, secular enlightenment ideals, etc… while simultaneously being none of those things for most of it’s history. A country built on genocide and slavery, a government that excluded nearly everyone from participating in it, extreme inequality, a war every few years, laws based on religious sentiments of the majority, etc…
That the story it tells itself is so at odds with it’s actual identity is a testament to the power of propaganda and self-delusion. I think part of how people try to resolve this contradiction is by refocusing the story to be about steady progress: We may not have always lived up to our ideals, but that was in the past, we learned from them, and got better, as they ignore the problems of today and even actively resist changes that they would applaud if they read it in a history book or saw it in a documentary.
It’s not wholly unique in this kind of narrative self-delusion, but I think America’s relative lack of longer term history and ethnic identity makes the story a more central part of it’s identity. The pledge is one part of this.
It’s not wholly unique in this kind of narrative self-delusion, but I think America’s relative lack of longer term history and ethnic identity makes the story a more central part of it’s identity. The pledge is one part of this.
This is exactly why the Republicans have been fighting so hard to whitewash history in our schools, they want people to continue to be unquestioningly loyal to the government, and believe the propaganda. You would think all the crackers in the South who want the Confederacy to ‘rise again’ would be against it, but it benefits them because it allows them to make slavery seem like it wasn’t so bad actually.
What makes American brainwashing somewhat unique is that it includes the notion of individuality, originality, free speech and personal uniqueness, whilst successfully managing to railroad all of those things within a set of acceptable parameters.
You’re encouraged to speak freely as long as you’re not communist or anti-American, terms which are then defined so broadly as to cover a whole world of reasonable opinions.
America has always had a contradiction at it’s heart: It purports to represent high minded ideas about freedom, egalitarianism, peace, democracy, secular enlightenment ideals, etc… while simultaneously being none of those things for most of it’s history. A country built on genocide and slavery, a government that excluded nearly everyone from participating in it, extreme inequality, a war every few years, laws based on religious sentiments of the majority, etc…
That the story it tells itself is so at odds with it’s actual identity is a testament to the power of propaganda and self-delusion. I think part of how people try to resolve this contradiction is by refocusing the story to be about steady progress: We may not have always lived up to our ideals, but that was in the past, we learned from them, and got better, as they ignore the problems of today and even actively resist changes that they would applaud if they read it in a history book or saw it in a documentary.
It’s not wholly unique in this kind of narrative self-delusion, but I think America’s relative lack of longer term history and ethnic identity makes the story a more central part of it’s identity. The pledge is one part of this.
This is exactly why the Republicans have been fighting so hard to whitewash history in our schools, they want people to continue to be unquestioningly loyal to the government, and believe the propaganda. You would think all the crackers in the South who want the Confederacy to ‘rise again’ would be against it, but it benefits them because it allows them to make slavery seem like it wasn’t so bad actually.
What makes American brainwashing somewhat unique is that it includes the notion of individuality, originality, free speech and personal uniqueness, whilst successfully managing to railroad all of those things within a set of acceptable parameters.
You’re encouraged to speak freely as long as you’re not communist or anti-American, terms which are then defined so broadly as to cover a whole world of reasonable opinions.