weapons-grade baloniumweapons-grade balonium--- tags: - myth_class title: The Myth of America and Its Classical Foundations class aliases: [The Myth of America and Its Classical Foundations class] linter-yaml-title-alias: The Myth of America and Its Classical Foundations class --- --- ### Conclusions about the America Myth 1. People and events shape the national myth, not the other way around. 2. I kept trying to (clumsily) insert the question of Duty into the discussion. National Duty was the defining mythic value of my childhood and my parents’ lives. It was my Father-in-Laws dying regret–shame, really–that he did not serve in uniform during WWII. Despite being a pilot and an ROTC graduate, Boeing prevented his enlistment as "service vital to the war effort" because Dad was an Electrical Engineer designing electrical & hydraulic systems for the B-17 & B-29 in Seattle. 3. The hierarchy of men of that generation was something like: - Uniformed Service? - Which Service? - Combat or non-Combat? - Theater? - Wounded? - Crippled? - Deferred? - the Myth: Uniformed service during WWII was The Only Service worth counting. 4. In many respects, my F-n-Law died, at least a little bit, of shame at not having fulfilled the American Myth of his time. 5. On the topic of **Duty**, it has been playing on my mind because recently on a Reddit forum I was told quite strongly by more than one man of draft age something like: **I don’t owe this country nothing!** They can never draft me. I won’t go. 6. Which feeds into the myth of "thank you for your service." Younger veterans understand the unspoken part of that platitude: Thank you for your Service (my son is going to law school and he’s to precious to risk on a pointless war) Read:  - Fountain, Ben. 2012. _Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk_. Harper Collins. - Powers, Kevin. 2013. _The Yellow Birds : A Novel_. New York: Back Bay Books, Little, Brown And Company. - O’brien, Tim. 2018. The Things They Carried : A Work of Fiction. Vancouver, B.C.: Langara College.>) 7. National Myths allow us to accept, uncritically, the horrors done in our name and wash our hands of them: - **Our Heart is in the Right Place** (despite the horrors of the Indian genocide or the 280,000 civilian Iraqi’s who died because of our total misunderstanding of the situation in Iraq-Iran. I haven’t even bothered to check on Afghanistan yet.) - **It’s a lie, Americans would Never Do That** (Abu Grab, Mi Lai, napalming villages, executing prisoners) - **We Support the Police!** (even though everything a cop does, both for good and ill, he does in our name, by our authority. When Derrick Chevin squeezed the life out of a handcuffed George Floyd, while grinning at the camera and ignoring the warnings of citizens, that was my knee on Floyds neck. And your knee too. More importantly, when we as a public explain away the evil in the police ranks, we demoralize the good cops still on the beat. I spent a decade policing, and I know as well as anyone that every shift needs an animal or two. But somebody’s got to hold the leash, not let the animals run wild through the city.) - **American Exceptionalism** - American Exceptionalism is not a myth, but a binary choice of nations. We either are an exceptional nation, or we are not. If America is Exceptional, then it is apparent and there is no need to discuss it. If we are not Exceptional, saying it over and over again does not make it so. - **We Love Our Troops** - The things we shout the loudest are the least true. Every veteran knows the truth. This nation does anything but love our troops. Instead, we love the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex. Troops are merely window dressing trotted out during hearings, during ads for McDonald-Douglas, Lockheed-Martin, and the various weapon suppliers. - All the while, troops are wasted and families broken by decades of pointless wars, endless back-to-back deployments, substandard barracks and housing, poison drinking water (leguin, 29 palms, and many others) and poor schools for out children. The military divorce rate is substantially higher than in the civilian world. Active duty personnel are in such despair that they commit suicide at the rate of about 25 a month and have for years, decades. Veterans commit suicide at far higher, but officially unquantified rate. 1. The good news is that we are in a period of transition for national myths. The new national myth, recycled from the Melting Pot era, is about to be as more actual fact: - more seats at the table - more inclusive - more open - more realistic about our abilities as a nation. Well enough from me. Happy Birthday (mine is 31st…did you get "combination" Christmas and Birthday gifts/parties, too?) See you next class. I hope it’s better. ### The Course 1. I resented slogging through all of Campbell (again), well before the announcement the vids would do. 2. I really resented not using very much from the Campbell text at all. A wiki synopsis of _The Hero’s Journey_ would have sufficed. 3. I also had done significant reading and thinking about the various mythology tales outlined in the course material, only to have it all ignored in class. that was pretty disappointing. 4. _Run Spot Run on the Prairie_ came late in the assignment. Not sure it added much other than the epiphany: Wilder is a fraud. 5. The indian assignments were okay, but also late to the game. 6. Generally, I thought the course over ambitious, under thought, and poorly scoped. This was 8 sessions of material at least, particularly with this crowd. .jpeg) ## Myths - [[Judgment of Paris]] WWI treaties, Washington farewell address - [[Achilles Heel]] - [[Demeter and Persephone]] - [[Sisyphus]] - [[Orpheus and Eurydice]] - [[Odyssey]] - [[Locke & Antigone]] - [[Little House 5-Book Collection]] - [[Troy]] - [[Mythology]] - [[Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk]] - [[Oath of Tyndareus]] ![[homo deus myth web of stories]] But Freedom is not, as we are told, A Liberty for every Man to do what he lists: (For who could be free, when every other Man’s Humour might domineer over him?) But a Liberty to dispose, and order, as he lists, his Person, Actions25, Possessions, and his whole Property, within the Allowance of those Laws under which he is; and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary Will of another, but freely follow his own. Locke, 2nd ![[@Stuff#^cc6f79]] [[@Stuff#^cc6f79]] ![[Framers ag imagery.png]] ![[Live at the National Constitution Center - Cicero and the Constitution#^378a9d ]] #myth_class --- ## Class Resources ```dataview LIST FROM "" WHERE contains(file.tags, "#myth_class") ```