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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Myth America summary
Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer
Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies about Our Past
19 mins
Table of Contents
Myth America
Summary of 7 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 7
The story of America is intertwined with myths and alternate narratives.
Which stories truly tell the American story?
Every nation has a narrative, a bold and stirring tale of creation and recreation. The American story is a special one because of the nation’s influence around the world and its role as standard-bearer of democracy.
But as a growingly fractured country with a narrative that has increasingly become hijacked by the political right, it’s become harder to separate fact from fiction. There are more ways to communicate than ever, but in this new reality, it seems anyone can claim to be an expert – just look at the nonhistorians raging about “revisionist history” that highlights the undeniable facts of slavery and subsequent systemic racism.
Consider the arrival of the Europeans. Their whole journey is underpinned by legends of destiny, mirroring stories from the Bible of special people who are owed a land by sacred decree. This drove not only their arrival but relentless expansion. All collateral damage in this march to create America was excused by the notion of “American exceptionalism.” Newt Gingrich made this a weapon for the right during his 1994 election stump speeches and crystallized for many the idea of America as an ideal, a notion that is echoed in its spirit by Trump’s “Make America Great” slogans.
These origin stories leave out one convenient fact though: you can’t discover a continent that was already occupied and had been for millennia by its own people. But you can try and deny it, as Rick Santorum did during a 2021 speech for the Young America’s Foundation when he said the Europeans found in America a “blank state” with “nothing here.” This myth of the vanishing Indian has been perpetuated and echoed in tropes throughout the past three centuries, lending support to the idea that the time had come for native civilization to make way for a superior European one. Such claims were backed by pseudoscientists like Josiah Nott, an Alabama physician who stated that the Native Americans were a separate race incapable of change and destined to eventually die out.
These creation myths work to set the stage for false alternative narratives that can be easily used as a tool to discriminate and suppress others – especially when it benefits those spreading them.
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What is Myth America about?
Myth America (2022) is a collection of essays that examine and dismantle some of the most pervasive myths about America: how it was founded, who’s allowed to be here, and how we define a ‘real’ American or American family.
Who should read Myth America?
- History buffs
- Students of American politics
- Activists and social justice warriors
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