Sam, I'm so glad your headline caught my eye this morning before I hit Publish on my related article about an early Veterans Day parade and civic rituals. (So you'll see I worked you in.) I suspect that more people will be moved by being *moved* (eg, by shared feelings) than by consensus, a more intellectual approach to community formation. I agree with you that people are looking for new myths, and the fact that we're not even looking for shared ones is a concern.
I really appreciate essays like this one that can cover so much history in a concise yet meaningful way. That's not an easy feat!
You made me think about factions (Fed 10), which may contain the most important idea on which our entire political infrastructure is based, the idea that people were decidedly not angels and that different interests would inevitably clash.
On the face of it that's not an inspiring national myth. But it can endure as long as our institutions continue to contain the worst excesses of that clash. Some might say they've already failed. I would disagree and say that Trump and the 2020 election is within the range of historical precedents testing our institutions.
Thank you David! Really appreciate it. There's a really nice depiction in Thomas Ricks' First Principles of how Madison came up with the underlying idea of Fed 10 - he's sitting around in his father's house in New Jersey, reading through the classical texts that Jefferson ships him from Paris, trying to figure out why ancient democracies were so weak, and he finally does put it together - that factions were destructive in city states but that in a larger republic the factions might even themselves out and some kind of a consensus would take hold. You're right, it sounds pretty cynical and political science-y, but it's interesting to think that that's pretty much what the whole enterprise is based on.
Americans are huggers. Americans like big breakfasts. Americans smile a lot. Everywhere you go in America there are TVs. I just hosted some family from overseas for a week, so we've been talking a lot about "how Americans are." A public toilet that to me was marginal at best to them was astonishingly clean. We have powerful restroom taboos that are hard for outsiders to trust: they want floor to ceiling privacy; we know no one would peek but a small child who would then be scolded furiously. A visit to the Bass Pro Shop was "the most American thing" they'd "ever seen" -- so much flannel, BB guns piled on shelves like board games. We're highly tolerant of driving long distances and shockingly intolerant of sharing tight spaces. We are childishly unironic about our fun: we want to see things blow up and crash and fall down and go fast. We talk about the past like we talk about the bathroom: our speech is full of taboos. What version of "American History" will we use? It depends on a subtle verbal dance that determines the conversational compact. Do we dare disturb another's commonplaces? Probably not: we will nod politely and change the subject. What do we agree on? People are nuts. We don't agree on which people. Don't mention that part. Now let's go watch the pumpkin drop. They filled half the pumpkins with colored flour to make great plumes of red white and blue smoke. Boom, baby.
Nailed it. Common to so many of your astute observations is this idea of comfort, a hallowed term in the good ole US of A. From preferring specific temperatures to a fahrenheit decimal point to "the perfect snack" to ergonomic whatevers, each time I return to the USA (I've lived abroad going on 15 years) I'm increasingly disturbed by just how uncomfortable pursuing comfort as an end in itself really is.
I remember the poet Robert Pinsky saying once, during a reading at Bread Loaf, that American identity is like jazz. We're constantly improvising as we go. That felt right at the time (the early 00s), when I suppose the diversity myth was still alive. But, as you say, that seat-of-the-pants culture isn't reassuring when people lose faith in basic institutions, like public schools. I might need to write about this for next week: one out of every ten students is now homeschooled (and the trend is growing). That's a pretty basic expression of your thesis here.
Most other cultures are rooted in ethnic identities. Is there another immigrant country comparable to the U.S.? Being Czech or Egyptian is a racial and national signifier. And so the myths have been more important than ever in creating shared culture. The problem is that the myths are so transparently false, that they keep getting punctured. And I see no reason to prop up propaganda. I wonder how many immigrants, who earn their citizenship the hard way, feel that they've been baited and switched the more they learn about national history. Because the citizenship curriculum is steeped in myth, yes?
That is a crazy stat about homeschooling! I had no idea. Sounds like a good piece.
Yeah, the nation-state built on immigrants is a very interesting idea. It's not so easy to come up with parallels. Canada and Australia. Some of the South American countries? Argentina and Uruguay? In a sense, Israel and South Africa. (That definitely goes into a lot of the rhetoric surrounding Israel: to anti-Zionists, Israel is a "settler" or "colonial" nation; to Israel's allies, it's just a nation with a relatively large number of recent immigrants.)
Right the myth about being on equal footing shows the persuasive ability of the bigger the lie, the certainty it will be taken up. My depression era grandparents faced young death many times from t.b. and rentiers on the plains. Now that we tacitly accept maybe, that 90 percent of wealthy north am'cans were traumatized into areas of silence about what seem to me middle of the pyramid of needs issues like affordable housing, we might drop the Silent generation thing. It is true enough though that we can attend city council meetings on the other hand. It wld take scheduling with your work, it seems both loomingly large and potentially an underused commonspace. Mr. Dolezal, your attn is in the right dramatic space. Niccola Banta talks about the Saved in the Nick of time story being sadly near the center of our images of success. If that was the rule, moments of stolen happiness would utterly change us. They are beautiful, structured stories, ommitting the more often changes we find in ourselves after the pain disappears, you notice sincerely without much chagrin, the pain left, or you threw away another subset of magic words, for example.
The jazz life you refer to still *feels* like it exists in New Orleans, but I have trouble finding it anywhere else, and now Po Boys are $20 at the most basic sandwich joints, so farewell, improvisation in C-minor. You make an important point re: national identities being wrapped up in ethnic identities. To add to your point about the USA's immigrant population, the country was built upon on a slave labor system + the systematic marginalization and eradication of the natives (last I checked, there are no "native reservations" in any other major nation). This has become a hollow talking point for the left, primarily because the American left doesn't actually care about helping marginalized communities, only about maintaining a puritanical sense of self-righteousness. And to that point, maybe we've all been kidding ourselves all along. Maybe puritanism remains at the core of what, if anything, it still means to be "American." Words like conviction, and faith, and community, and progress still ring true for many Americans. But it's only ever, really, about ideology.
Haha. I can't remember who said this thing about the entire culture always being encompassed in the founding moment. Yeah, maybe it is all Puritans (and lapsed Puritans).
Solid observations Sam. I agree that it’s a moving target, which is always hard to hit. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Dee! Really appreciate it.
Sam, I'm so glad your headline caught my eye this morning before I hit Publish on my related article about an early Veterans Day parade and civic rituals. (So you'll see I worked you in.) I suspect that more people will be moved by being *moved* (eg, by shared feelings) than by consensus, a more intellectual approach to community formation. I agree with you that people are looking for new myths, and the fact that we're not even looking for shared ones is a concern.
Thank you Tara! That's really a very nice post. Nice to find your work!
Sam,
I really appreciate essays like this one that can cover so much history in a concise yet meaningful way. That's not an easy feat!
You made me think about factions (Fed 10), which may contain the most important idea on which our entire political infrastructure is based, the idea that people were decidedly not angels and that different interests would inevitably clash.
On the face of it that's not an inspiring national myth. But it can endure as long as our institutions continue to contain the worst excesses of that clash. Some might say they've already failed. I would disagree and say that Trump and the 2020 election is within the range of historical precedents testing our institutions.
Thank you David! Really appreciate it. There's a really nice depiction in Thomas Ricks' First Principles of how Madison came up with the underlying idea of Fed 10 - he's sitting around in his father's house in New Jersey, reading through the classical texts that Jefferson ships him from Paris, trying to figure out why ancient democracies were so weak, and he finally does put it together - that factions were destructive in city states but that in a larger republic the factions might even themselves out and some kind of a consensus would take hold. You're right, it sounds pretty cynical and political science-y, but it's interesting to think that that's pretty much what the whole enterprise is based on.
Americans are huggers. Americans like big breakfasts. Americans smile a lot. Everywhere you go in America there are TVs. I just hosted some family from overseas for a week, so we've been talking a lot about "how Americans are." A public toilet that to me was marginal at best to them was astonishingly clean. We have powerful restroom taboos that are hard for outsiders to trust: they want floor to ceiling privacy; we know no one would peek but a small child who would then be scolded furiously. A visit to the Bass Pro Shop was "the most American thing" they'd "ever seen" -- so much flannel, BB guns piled on shelves like board games. We're highly tolerant of driving long distances and shockingly intolerant of sharing tight spaces. We are childishly unironic about our fun: we want to see things blow up and crash and fall down and go fast. We talk about the past like we talk about the bathroom: our speech is full of taboos. What version of "American History" will we use? It depends on a subtle verbal dance that determines the conversational compact. Do we dare disturb another's commonplaces? Probably not: we will nod politely and change the subject. What do we agree on? People are nuts. We don't agree on which people. Don't mention that part. Now let's go watch the pumpkin drop. They filled half the pumpkins with colored flour to make great plumes of red white and blue smoke. Boom, baby.
Beautiful list Amy! Nicely done!
Nailed it. Common to so many of your astute observations is this idea of comfort, a hallowed term in the good ole US of A. From preferring specific temperatures to a fahrenheit decimal point to "the perfect snack" to ergonomic whatevers, each time I return to the USA (I've lived abroad going on 15 years) I'm increasingly disturbed by just how uncomfortable pursuing comfort as an end in itself really is.
Well worth watching this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
My mother rates it her favorite SNL sketch of all time!
I remember the poet Robert Pinsky saying once, during a reading at Bread Loaf, that American identity is like jazz. We're constantly improvising as we go. That felt right at the time (the early 00s), when I suppose the diversity myth was still alive. But, as you say, that seat-of-the-pants culture isn't reassuring when people lose faith in basic institutions, like public schools. I might need to write about this for next week: one out of every ten students is now homeschooled (and the trend is growing). That's a pretty basic expression of your thesis here.
Most other cultures are rooted in ethnic identities. Is there another immigrant country comparable to the U.S.? Being Czech or Egyptian is a racial and national signifier. And so the myths have been more important than ever in creating shared culture. The problem is that the myths are so transparently false, that they keep getting punctured. And I see no reason to prop up propaganda. I wonder how many immigrants, who earn their citizenship the hard way, feel that they've been baited and switched the more they learn about national history. Because the citizenship curriculum is steeped in myth, yes?
Curious to hear what others have to say.
That is a crazy stat about homeschooling! I had no idea. Sounds like a good piece.
Yeah, the nation-state built on immigrants is a very interesting idea. It's not so easy to come up with parallels. Canada and Australia. Some of the South American countries? Argentina and Uruguay? In a sense, Israel and South Africa. (That definitely goes into a lot of the rhetoric surrounding Israel: to anti-Zionists, Israel is a "settler" or "colonial" nation; to Israel's allies, it's just a nation with a relatively large number of recent immigrants.)
That's a lovely quote by Pinsky!
Right the myth about being on equal footing shows the persuasive ability of the bigger the lie, the certainty it will be taken up. My depression era grandparents faced young death many times from t.b. and rentiers on the plains. Now that we tacitly accept maybe, that 90 percent of wealthy north am'cans were traumatized into areas of silence about what seem to me middle of the pyramid of needs issues like affordable housing, we might drop the Silent generation thing. It is true enough though that we can attend city council meetings on the other hand. It wld take scheduling with your work, it seems both loomingly large and potentially an underused commonspace. Mr. Dolezal, your attn is in the right dramatic space. Niccola Banta talks about the Saved in the Nick of time story being sadly near the center of our images of success. If that was the rule, moments of stolen happiness would utterly change us. They are beautiful, structured stories, ommitting the more often changes we find in ourselves after the pain disappears, you notice sincerely without much chagrin, the pain left, or you threw away another subset of magic words, for example.
Interesting stuff Nathan! Another interesting-sounding writer (Niccola Banta) I've never heard of!
The jazz life you refer to still *feels* like it exists in New Orleans, but I have trouble finding it anywhere else, and now Po Boys are $20 at the most basic sandwich joints, so farewell, improvisation in C-minor. You make an important point re: national identities being wrapped up in ethnic identities. To add to your point about the USA's immigrant population, the country was built upon on a slave labor system + the systematic marginalization and eradication of the natives (last I checked, there are no "native reservations" in any other major nation). This has become a hollow talking point for the left, primarily because the American left doesn't actually care about helping marginalized communities, only about maintaining a puritanical sense of self-righteousness. And to that point, maybe we've all been kidding ourselves all along. Maybe puritanism remains at the core of what, if anything, it still means to be "American." Words like conviction, and faith, and community, and progress still ring true for many Americans. But it's only ever, really, about ideology.
Haha. I can't remember who said this thing about the entire culture always being encompassed in the founding moment. Yeah, maybe it is all Puritans (and lapsed Puritans).