"Fun Was Actually Becoming Quite Subversive" (Molly Hite)

[Monte Davis]

> Reagan the myth continues to have resonance, for example--nothing on the
left comes close. why is that?

Some parts of some answers, at least, are offered in later books. Like any
big nation, we cultivate multiple, nested narratives that reinforce and
justify each other. And that goes for our outsiders and counterculturati,
too.

Vineland: Hey, you rebels who were going to bring down Nixon, COINTELPRO,
all those informants and provocateurs... how ya doin' out there in the
woods as it all comes round again? Not that it ever really stopped, mind
you! Is that just because Brock Vond is such a mighty badass? Or ya think
maybe that dope haze, and those Tube reruns, and that Me Decade you took
off for yoga and self-actualization, might have something to do with it?

M&D... Reagan loved him some of that John Winthrop's shining "city upon a
hill," because hey, we Americans made a fresh start in an empty wilderness,
free and equal, leaving behind the aristocracies and intrigues of bad old
Europe. Nemmind them Native Americans, African slaves, and Anglo-French
shenanigans beyond the frontier. The Godly grid of latitude, longitude and
LeSparkian armaments prosperity will settle as a blessing on us all.

AtD... And now look! It *did* all work out splendidly: everybody come to
the celebration in Chicago! 400 years since Columbus, and an American
Century coming up; it's almost like a boys' storybook of marvels! We have
burgeoning cities, endless wheat fields, rich mines, even airships, with
railroads and now electric power lines from Jamestown and Plymouth Rock out
to that frontier that Prof. Turner just closed. We may not be up to speed
on the latest European science and math, but we can send our best and
brightest to study up on that. And if those Old World types are foolish
enough to start another of their wars, we'll play bashful and reticent
before we set them straight -- twice, if need be!

[GR, da capo]

Rich, old friend: how can you expect carping leftists (or some highbrow
pomo novelist) to come up with national myths more delicious and nutritious
than *that*?



On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 1:46 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 1:27 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> > an undermining of our inherited ways of looking at WW2 and thus of
>> many other issues
>>
>> Very much so, in my case. My WWII Marine parents were too temperamentally
>> skeptical and contrarian to be "gung ho" about either WWII or the Cold War,
>> but I still grew up more or less within the mainstream, triumphal
>> consensus: "Our Great Democracy saved the world in the Good War." The
>> civil-rights movement, Dr. Strangelove, Viet Nam, Nixon -- and yeah,
>> sex&drugs&rock&roll -- took off the shine and opened some cracks, as did
>> steady reading of modern history. But GR came in like a barrage from a
>> dozen unexpected angles, screaming, unstoppable, hilarious, and opened the
>> cracks into chasms that no amount of "It's morning in America!" <tm Ronald
>> Reagan and Hal Riney> would ever close. .
>> _____________
>>
> true for many of us here, but not for the country as a whole, or its
> culture. Reagan the myth continues to have resonance, for example--nothing
> on the left comes close. why is that?
>
>
>
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