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That's fair, I'm just struggling to define what the prior American mythos actually was, and I think Jesus factors in there somewhere, in name. As a Catholic my

by mbg721 6y ago

That's fair, I'm just struggling to define what the prior American mythos actually was, and I think Jesus factors in there somewhere, in name. As a Catholic myself, I know well that actual religious belief isn't the main driver. Maybe I'm wrong and there never was an American mythos, but there's a palpable sense of change that isn't just outright racism.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> That’s fair, I’m just struggling to define what the prior American mythos actually was The problem I think is that you are starting from the assumption that America had a uniting mythos that only recently fell apart, rather than America having had deep, vicious internal divides throughout its entire history that were sometimes temporary subordinated to even stronger shared opposition to external forces.
- mbg721 6y ago
  It wasn't always this vicious, or this pervasive in its viciousness, in my lifetime.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    >> The problem I think is that you are starting from the assumption that America had a uniting mythos that only recently fell apart, rather than America having had deep, vicious internal divides throughout its entire history that were sometimes temporary subordinated to even stronger shared opposition to external forces. > It wasn't always this vicious, or this pervasive in its viciousness, in my lifetime. In our & our parents lifetimes, we had the "even stronger shared opposition to external forces" of Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union to keep these divisions in check. America's divides have been terribly vicious in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War), and some of the current things that divide us even have their roots in that era.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > we had the "even stronger shared opposition to external forces" of Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union to keep these divisions in check. And even then, the Civil Rights and Anti-War and other internal conflicts of the 1950s-1970s weren't insignificant.

by mbg721 6y ago

dragonwriter 6y ago

> That’s fair, I’m just struggling to define what the prior American mythos actually was The problem I think is that you are starting from the assumption that America had a uniting mythos that only recently fell apart, rather than America having had deep, vicious internal divides throughout its entire history that were sometimes temporary subordinated to even stronger shared opposition to external forces.

mbg721 6y ago
It wasn't always this vicious, or this pervasive in its viciousness, in my lifetime.
- ardy42 6y ago
  >> The problem I think is that you are starting from the assumption that America had a uniting mythos that only recently fell apart, rather than America having had deep, vicious internal divides throughout its entire history that were sometimes temporary subordinated to even stronger shared opposition to external forces. > It wasn't always this vicious, or this pervasive in its viciousness, in my lifetime. In our & our parents lifetimes, we had the "even stronger shared opposition to external forces" of Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union to keep these divisions in check. America's divides have been terribly vicious in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War), and some of the current things that divide us even have their roots in that era.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > we had the "even stronger shared opposition to external forces" of Cold War opposition to the Soviet Union to keep these divisions in check. And even then, the Civil Rights and Anti-War and other internal conflicts of the 1950s-1970s weren't insignificant.