The weird thing is, the promise of America at least in modern times always included hatred and mistrust of the American system.
Donald Duck was the mascot of WW2 for all these basically-kids who were going off the fight it because he was a huge suspicious pain in the ass. It wasn’t Mickey. People couldn’t identify with him.
Rambo, “Born in the USA,” Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut. Woodward and Bernstein. Hippies and Neal Cassady. Everyone who’s a big icon of American culture thinks the American system is a bunch of dangerous shit.
I think the underlying promise is alive and well. The BLM protests were worldwide. The Trump protests haven’t really got going yet on the pillar-shaking scale that they need to, but they’re developing international echoes. Universities outside the country want to hire all these fired scientists.
Tim Snyder said that when he was in Kyiv, he was talking with someone and the first thing she did was touch his arm and tell him she was so sorry about the United States.
The reason the US matters at all, is more than just a big random place with a lot of racism and income inequality, is because it captured a little flicker of lightning, and the whole system of governance had that light within it. Somewhat. The lightning is the important piece. It can go somewhere else, and the vessel can fall away. The vessel is not the important piece.
Yeah.
The weird thing is, the promise of America at least in modern times always included hatred and mistrust of the American system.
Donald Duck was the mascot of WW2 for all these basically-kids who were going off the fight it because he was a huge suspicious pain in the ass. It wasn’t Mickey. People couldn’t identify with him.
Rambo, “Born in the USA,” Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut. Woodward and Bernstein. Hippies and Neal Cassady. Everyone who’s a big icon of American culture thinks the American system is a bunch of dangerous shit.
I think the underlying promise is alive and well. The BLM protests were worldwide. The Trump protests haven’t really got going yet on the pillar-shaking scale that they need to, but they’re developing international echoes. Universities outside the country want to hire all these fired scientists.
Tim Snyder said that when he was in Kyiv, he was talking with someone and the first thing she did was touch his arm and tell him she was so sorry about the United States.
The reason the US matters at all, is more than just a big random place with a lot of racism and income inequality, is because it captured a little flicker of lightning, and the whole system of governance had that light within it. Somewhat. The lightning is the important piece. It can go somewhere else, and the vessel can fall away. The vessel is not the important piece.