Title: The End of the Myth
Rating: 2 Stars
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize this year, this book tries to establish a through line from America’s past to its present that explains how we got to where we are now.
I believe that Grandin’s main thesis is that our country has a long overdue social reckoning with itself. To a great extent we’ve not had to do this because we’ve always had room to expand. This is in contrast to most other countries. Most of them have well described and fairly fixed borders. Therefore, when social issues arise, these countries must address them.
Especially in the early days of US history, our borders were barely even defined. Even before the Louisiana Purchase, there was great wilderness waiting to be populated.
Of course, that’s not really a true statement. In fact they were populated, but by non Europeans. Even before the revolution, King George III issued a decree preventing the colonists from invading the Native American lands. It was, depending upon your point of view, either unenforceable or not enforced. After the revolution, the newly formed national government also tried to stem the tide of settlers, to no avail.
Once the Louisiana Purchase was concluded, it seemed that a nearly infinite amount of land was now available for Americans to settle. Once again, this was at the expanse of the Native Americans. Presidents from Andrew Jackson on no longer even gave a pretense of dealing with the Native Americans with fairness.
When the purchase was completed, Thomas Jefferson thought that there would be enough land for at least a hundred generations. He dramatically underestimated American appetite for land.
The next big land grab was the Mexican-American War, which the American government instigated by having its army knowingly occupy Mexican territory. When the Mexican army responded to the invasion, the American government immediately made a hue and cry and war fever swept the nation. Beating up on a much weaker government got the American government what it wanted, which was another huge chunk of land.
All of this available land served as a safety valve. When social pressures seemed to be building, the government could make land available. Large numbers of people would then leave to settle on the new land with the promise of individual freedom from state interference, thus relieving the pressure.
Having all of this land ultimately caused other issues. Whether or not these soon to be states were to be free or slave became a critical issue. Despite various attempts at compromises, the fear that one or the other side would gain dominance in the country ultimately became a main trigger of The Civil War.
In the decades after The Civil War, the US had accomplished its manifest destiny of crossing the continent. There was no new land to take. The frontier was fixed. There was the additional problem of integrating the Southern rebels back into the country again.
A neat solution to this problem was the Spanish-American War. By encouraging the active participation of Southern soldiers, they were once again considered full Americans. By defeating the Spanish, the US was able to increase its territory once again, this time by taking over far away territories. Filipino rebels that helped the US defeat Spain had no interest in switching from one colonial master to another. This led to the Philippine-American War. This tied the US Northern and Southern soldiers even tighter together now that they were unified in battling soldiers of a different color.
The New Deal and World War II fueled a US economic expansion. This was a frontier beyond land borders. By using its economic might, the US was able to dramatically grow into a financial powerhouse. This economic growth served as another safety valve to tamp down social issues.
Continuing with this theme, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) greatly expanded US economic frontiers.
The US has now reached the point where there appear to be no new frontiers left for it to discover. There appear to be no new safety valves to relieve pressure on issues like racism or classism. US policies have left broken countries in Central America. Desperate for a better life, millions of people from this area are now heading North.
Instead of looking outward for new frontiers, the US now seems only interested in protecting its existing frontiers. Hence the call to build a wall.
At some point, the US will have to understand that it needs to face up to its internal social issues. The rugged individualistic “Go West, young man” can no longer be our myth. We need to start working together in, if not a more socialist manner, at least like a social democracy.
That, at least as I understood it, is the thesis of the work. I didn’t actually see the entire through line that he was trying to achieve. It seemed as if the work was in two parts. The first part was standard manifest destiny. The second part seemed to be more of a screed against the dying of the liberal movement in the ashes of The Vietnam War and the rise of modern conservatism and all of the issues that it brings.
Both parts were well written and informative. I just didn’t get the connective tissue between the two, so for me, the argument broke down.
dorkenstein 