A propositional nation continuously replenished by immigrants seeking economic improvement lives in a perpetual present. Even a patriotic new arrival cannot be expected to get emotional over the memory Valley Forge. Eventually, even FDR, JFK, and MLK will be similarly forgotten.
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Replying to @martyrmade
So what is the national myth of the USA? According to David Hackett Fisher in Albion’s Seed there are actually four main cultures and hence narratives to the USA. Resolving these into a cohesive national story has eleuded us this far
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Replying to @flyineric
I think we were in the process of forging a legit postwar mainstream, and working on resolving the historical injustice committed against African Americans until, in '65, we began importing more than the population of France from the 3rd World into the US and scrambled it all up.
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Replying to @martyrmade @flyineric
Thing is that eventually the race-based immigration quotas would have been seen as immoral-do you think moving to a colorblind merit-based immigration system similar to Canada or Australia would have been better for the U.S. than the one we adopted?
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And speaking of African-Americans, I don't get why nobody thought (or thinks today) that taking on the task of assimilating and integrating millions of immigrants at the same time that we needed to integrate the black population was a bad idea.
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It's an historical tragedy. Their unique and valid historical claims got mixed up with grievances from descendants of Cortes who recently arrived to go to Harvard.
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