It’s a sacrament of the empire. https://twitter.com/fieldroamer/status/1253718349697044480

I had a professor in college who said in passing that modern America is founded on the twin myths of immigration and WW2.

At the time I guess saw this as a progressive dismissal of neoconservatism, which is probably how it was intended...

...But since then I’ve come to think that this characterization is not just valid, but also a damningly succinct expression of how thoroughly the American hegemonic ascendancy of the 20th century killed off the old republic, and of how audacious the great retcon has been...

Like, by referring to these twin pillars as “myths,” he was suggesting that America was less welcoming to immigrants than we’d like to think, & that our role in WW2 was less decisive than we’d like to think. (Certainly the vast majority of the fighting in Europe was in the east).

But what’s most interesting to me now is not the truth or falsehood of these “myths,” but rather the fact that neither of them predates the mid 20th century. Ellis Island schmaltz wasn’t normative before then, & obviously WW2 wasn’t a thing until it actually happened.

But obviously America was a going concern before the middle of the 20th century.

So it’s like a whole people and their history became surplus to the requirements of a state and an ideology that had outgrown them.

That’s why “American greatness” has long seemed like a red herring to me. If anything, we have too much greatness.

I want America—or some portion of it, anyway—to be /home/ again.