Myths of the modern age

One of the questions, one of many, facing us, is what is
America today? Who are we and what is our ''story?"

Much of what defines a people, a state, a culture, a society,
a civilization is the stories that those entities tell about
themselves…The Ancient Roman had their stories of
the Roman removed the yoke of Kings, and the martial
virtues of Rome…From the very beginning of the establishment
of the Roman state, Rome had to fight for its very survival…
and the myths of Rome back this up…

one of the very first acts of the Roman state is the murder of Remus…
violence is present from the very start of the Roman state… and
one of the key myths of Rome was the Rape of the Sabine women…
another act of violence… that the myths of Rome were violent
in nature, tells us something about Rome itself…
for in myths, we can get a sense of what a society/state feels
about itself…

and so, we return to America… what of the myths of America?
what do they say about America and how we think about ourselves…
There are two primary myths of America… One is the Horatio
Alger type, of the poor lad who by hard work, becomes wealthy…
The second myth is the exceptionalism of America… that by
some virtue, America is special in the eyes of god…
and part of this specialness is in another myth, the ‘‘city on the hill’’
myth… That America is a shining ‘‘city on the hill’’ being a beacon
of light and hope for the rest of the world…and being special, means
one never has to say, sorry… and for what crimes has America ever
apologized for? The genocide of the American Indian?
The overthrow of the Shah of Iran? The dropping of the
Atomic Bomb? The Vietnam war? The phony made up war
of Bush/Cheney on Iraq and Afghanistan? Abu Gharib?
The forcible separation of children from their parents as part
of the IQ45 war on immigration?

and his defense, as the defense of many of these actions will be,
I kept America safe… as if keeping America safe justifies
a vast number of evils… the myth that the strong person/country
never apologizes for their actions/crimes…

the myth that by apologizing, we make ourselves weaker,
is just that, a myth… if we cannot apologize for something,
we cannot learn from that experience…

and if there is something about America and Americans that
we can learn, it is this, America/Americans don’t seem
to learn from their mistakes…We make the same mistakes,
over and over again… and why? Because we think ourselves
as special… As the ''city on the hill"… but we are no longer that ‘‘city
on the hill’’… We lost that specific title with the War on Vietnam
and Watergate, and the disastrous presidency of Raygun,
and the election of Bush Jr. and of course, IQ45…

and what are we today? That is the entire question of this thread…
What are we today? Look at our myths today… of gangs taking
over some apartment buildings or of immigrants eating dogs and cats…
Is that how far we have fallen? From being a shining light in the world,
to Haitians eating dogs and cats?

It is an advertising motto that sex sells, but a close second
is fear sells… and that is what the right wing has to offer us,
fear… that IQ45 keep trying to sell an America that is in total
free fall due to liberal/WOKE ideas…

but the fact is that America became the ‘‘city on the hill’’ due
to liberal ideas… that the idea of democracy itself, is
a liberal idea… the idea that everyone getting to vote, is
a liberal idea… that every child should be publicly educated,
is a liberal idea… that workers should have a number of
workplace protections… that is a liberal idea… that workers
should only work 5 days a week with vacations is a liberal idea…
In fact, every single idea that made America a ‘‘shining city on
the hill’’ is a liberal idea… name me a conservative idea
that help make America a ''shining city on the hill"

and that brings us back to the myths of America today…
that we are a ‘‘Christian’’ nation, that we are exceptional,
that we are favored by god… I reject each and every single one
of these myths…

I play sports as a kid… in high school, I would have been
identified as a ‘‘jock’’ and I would have self-identified as a ‘‘jock’’,
an athlete… and the one thing you learn in sports, is that
even if you win a championship, that is no guarantee of
success next year… every single day, you have to go out
and prove that you are champion material…
and what did IQ45 do in his 4 years to prove that he/America
was championship material? nothing… Championships are
won by outworking and outplaying the competition…

America is resting on its laurels of the past and that isn’t
going to get a win in today’s modern world… you want
to defeat China? then you have to outwork and outplay them…
and we are not doing that today… and we don’t even have
any myths going right now that support that idea that we must
outwork a country to win the battle…

What have you done today, to make yourself better than you
were yesterday? and that in a nutshell is what makes
a champion? every single day working hard to improve oneself…
and where are the myths that support that position?

I can’t find any either… most of our myths of working hard
come into play with the accumulation of wealth,
not in the improvement of the body/soul…
in working hard to become a champion… not just making
money…

with that in mind, how does giving massive tax cuts to already wealthy
people, help America become stronger/better? it doesn’t…
the evidence is quite clear, that every single major federal
tax cut has within a few years, has created a recession/depression…
every single one of them… But Kropotkin, what about the
Kennedy/Johnson tax cut? we were actually coming into a recession
by 1966/67, but remember that the war in Vietnam was going into
high gear… and the Keysean’s economics of war, kept America out
of a recession… which finally hit around 1970 or so…

we can use ideas like this to work out what policies we should have…
that trickle-down economics don’t work, that nothing good can come
out of our ever-increasing income inequality…
that policies that favor the few, the rich are the path to failure…

but do our myths of today, do they even suggest this? No,
and that is partly the failure of the myths of today… that they
have failed to guide us… and the evidence increasingly
suggests that our myths no longer help or aid us as they once
did… they no longer suggest to us a path into the future…
that we cannot depend on myths to give us some answers into
what worked in the past and thus might work in the future…

is our age, the end of the age of myths? Perhaps…

Kropotkin

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One of the aspects of MAGA/conservative thought is the
rejection of one’s own eyes… we saw the January 6th,
attempt at overthrowing the government and the MAGA
crowd attempts to rewrite history and deny what our eyes saw…

and they deny much and admit much… they deny reason
and rationality… they reject much of the government business…
they want an end to the FBI and the IRS and the entire federal
education department… but we must ask, to what end do these
actions take? its like they can’t even see cause and effect here…
remove the FBI and crime will soar in America… local PD don’t
have the resources to combat crime the way the FBI does…

and removing the IRS will, in a very short time, turn America
into a third world country…civilization is paid for by our taxes…
our roads, and schools and hospitals and all the other infrastructure
that we depend on, will disappear if we end the IRS…
or said another way, the Hobbes State of nature, will become
a reality in a world without the FBI or the IRS…without those
institutions and the others the MAGA crowd is trying to end,
where are the checks on people come from? the Checks and balance
that keeps the government working also plays a role in the actions
and behavior of the people…
our actions are held in check by the FBI and the IRS…
remove those checks, and what is to keep people from
criminal activity? the FBI holds people accountable and
the IRS pays for the FBI… remove one and destroy the
other…

it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how
we need to have government to hold people accountable
for their actions… remove the government and how do
we hold people accountable for their actions?

but the MAGA world reject this clear vision of accountability…
rejects what our eyes tell us… don’t trust the media says
MAGA, but then where do we get our information?
Reject the government, and then how can we remain safe
and secure in our lives?

Ignore what you see and believe what I tell you… that is
the MAGA way of thinking about things… reject your
reason, reject what you see, only believe in our collective
beliefs of MAGA… or in other words, have faith in our words,
not in other words… faith… is what the MAGA world believes in…
that we are the one and true faith… all others values/beliefs
are false beliefs and false values…

this is the path of accepting superstitions and of holding to
ignorance… it is no wonder that the MAGA crowd call
themselves Christian…the MAGA crowd is often called
a cult… but in reality, it is a religion… the best way to think
of this is the saying:

There is no deity worthy of worship, except the one true god… (allah)…

''there is no deity worthy of worship, except the one true god, '(trump)…

One of the questions of Kant, is ''what am I to believe in?"
and how do we work out what to believe in? I hold to
the evidence, what our eyes sees, to what we can reason out…
not on faith, not on what I am told, but what I can reason out…
and this is the question of the Enlightenment…
how do we become less prejudice, less superstitious, less
ignorant? by having faith? or by engaging in what we can
see and experience and reason out?

the answer for me is easy… so, what do you have faith in?
What beliefs are your beliefs? and have you engaged in what
Nietzsche called, a reexamination of values?

have you examined your values to see if they are worthy
of belief, or are they simply there as a question of faith?

Kropotkin

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I started reading this article about USA with interest and enquiry as I am not an American but nevertheless has visited quite a few times during this decade .
Found that the story doesn’t relate only to US but true for all the so called progressive societies . America , right from its birth is a progressive society though the pains , trials and tribulations of such evolution are inherited psychologically by most of the population.
Myths are generated in the “ darker shadow areas “ of mind as a result of experiences out of fantasy thinking, extremely agonizing and painful circumstances and highly unfulfilled desires, wishes, aspirations , revenge plans , do good plans and many other para-psychological circumstances.
In any given times including the times we are living in these myths unfold to give strange and stranger results .