The Bulwark: Is the American Myth Unraveling?

Obviously.

The Bulwark:

“Nations have narratives; they need them. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are how we understand and reify our national identity. Over the course of our history, our story has evolved, and our national identity has changed with it. Such evolution was baked in our political DNA even before our Constitution promised a quest for a more perfect Union. But the changing is disruptive; the evolution contested.

Political scientist Samuel Goldman makes the case in After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division that the United States is on its third myth, or national narrative. He says the first was the covenant myth of our founding, a puritanical telling in which a chosen people—essentially Anglo-Protestants—providentially inherited a promised land.

The second was the crucible myth that expanded the American identity by more fully integrating other European immigrants and faith traditions as the nation grew, took new territories, abolished slavery, and waged wars. These struggles forged a new people—as if in a melting pot—but did not fully settle questions of race, gender, and equality.

The third myth—the reigning myth today—is one of creed, a story that feels quite familiar to us in its connecting principles and ideals to the core of the American identity. This narrative says the United States was founded on an idea defined by equality, liberty, and democracy unbounded by race, religion, gender, or nation of origin. In this myth, the antagonist is inequality.

The days of the creed myth, as Goldman describes it, may be numbered. Everywhere around us is evidence that we deeply disagree on the meaning and practice of the basic American principles of equality, liberty, justice, and democracy. …”

How should I put this?

American history can be divided into three ages.

The first age was the Founding until the War Between the States. The second age was Reconstruction until World War II. The third age, which is the one we are currently living through, runs from the Cold War through the present. We often refer to it as the post-World War II era.

I would describe the years between World War I and World War II as the transition period between Victorian America and Modern America. It was a time in which the old “mainstream” was challenged by insurgents and collapsed. The result was a radical cultural shift away from Victorian norms that trickled down from the new rising hegemonic liberal elites in New York. It was disorienting for the generations that lived through it and the culture convulsed and didn’t stabilize until after World War II.

The “creedal myth” that redefined American national identity was largely constructed in this era. The Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal was one of its primary architects in his 1944 book An American Dilemma. There were a lot of interesting things going on in this period which shaped the post-World War II era. Modern liberalism rose in this period. The “mainstream media” was created in this period. The American elite was swept by modernism, cosmopolitanism and antiracism. The old Eastern WASP establishment which had dominated the country since the War Between the States gradually lost power to the Jews. The New Deal coalition began its dominance over American politics. The governing ideologies of the two parties – New Deal liberalism and conservatism – can be traced back to this period.

You could make a persuasive argument that the 1920s and 1930s were like a Third Founding with World War II sealing the deal as its capstone. The American Empire as it exists today and the “liberal world order” that we continue to maintain and expand was established as a result of that conflict. The notion that America is a “Nation of Immigrants” and that something called “racism” is the greatest of all moral failings alongside various other -isms and -phobias can be traced back to this era when Sigmund Freud’s work was having a large cultural impact on the American liberal intelligentsia. Previously, few people would have denied that the United States is a White country, an Anglo-Saxon country and a Protestant country. This was the narrative that was being taught in public schools until the 1930s and 1940s.

Look at it this way: America’s liberal establishment spun this national myth which was based on the pillars of modernism, cosmopolitanism, antiracism and globalism – the fashionable trends of the 1920s and 1930s – and mixed it up with Progressivism and Sigmund Freud’s influence and then over the course of a century proceeded to take this cocktail to ever greater extremes at the expense of social cohesion. This is the indispensable background to understanding how and why we ended up where we are today.

What’s the idea here? The idea is that a strong, centralized activist government is needed to empower experts and bureaucrats to “liberate” the individual from his or her backward cultural traditions so that the past can be erased and the Self can be empowered and cultivated and distinctions whether of race, sex, gender or culture can all be leveled in the name of social equality. Push the envelope hard enough in this direction and the inevitable result is shredding the social fabric and cultural collapse.

So, you can see that this recipe for American national identity contains within itself the seeds of its own demise. It has left us with a world where we can’t even agree on things like what is a woman. We can’t agree now on what a woman is because self-expression has been elevated above reality. Maybe being a woman is a purely subjective experience or a social construct like race. The globalist cause of supporting Ukraine and defending the “liberal world order” from evil doers like Russia is so righteous that we will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” The cause of antiracism is so righteous that we should be toppling statues of the Founding Fathers and brainwashing White kids into hating themselves.

Progressivism is a runaway train. It can only continue to barrel down this one track. Its basic parameters were set in stone by the dead hands of people who lived a century ago. Eventually, it will crash into a wall and that train wreck will be how it ends and we proceed and move forward. The sheer passage of time erodes and ultimately destroys even the most hegemonic ideologies.

Right now, we’re going through another one of those turbulent periods of decay and renewal like the 1760s and 1770s, 1840s and 1850s or the 1920s and 1930s. We have always gone through these cycles. Radicals always suddenly break through in the end. The old culture convulses, combusts, dies and is repudiated. Seen from defenders of the ossifying old order, these people are dangerous extremists. Seen from the perspective of the challengers, they are toppling an exhausted and decadent regime, sowing and fertilizing the seeds of a new culture that is a response to the problems of their own times. The ideals of the post-World War II era have grown so toxic that they are generating this response.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

22 Comments

  1. “expanded the American identity by more fully integrating other European immigrants and faith traditions”

    Intermarrying with Jews as in Germany and England, which is how we got into this mess

  2. During previous convulsions demography was not an issue. Now it is. Once racial hegemony is lost, everything is. Until civil war can force sides physically apart, and new hegemonies form on, now reduced, lands. And if that sounds bad, the alternative is worse.

    • Exactly. This is not just another “turbulent period of decay”, it’s the extermination of the population that went through those periods. Not change but elimination, what existed before ceasing to exist.

  3. All right and correct Brad, i also think that the situation of today is even worst than 70’s/80’s and 90’s…… at that time there were also a bad situation, globalism was already everywhere but politically correct wasn’t present or probably it was present but less madness than now.

  4. So many people want to go back to the 1950’s. Not me. I’ve read the cultural marxist drivel written by left-wing psueds during the 1930’s through the 1960’s. It’s shocking to hear people talking like modern day libtards from so long ago but it really happened. These people sounded so smart at the time & so many people were captivated by them (or intimidated by them). I’m glad I live in a time where these progressive sentiments are increasingly met with derision & laughter. I think people are lot more based these days & I’m thankful to be at the end of liberalism rather than at the beginning.

  5. That’s a good analysis about the three ages, Brad, It fits. As for the rest I believe you are on to something.

    To add on to it one of the things that came out of the WBTS a number of families who got rich off of US govt. contracts. The Mellons are a prime example. Old man Mellon told his son “no, you won’t go into the Union Army as a captain.” He has bigger things for his son. Samuel Clemons mock this new class of plutocrats in the book “The Gilded Age”. When the massive Jewish immigration occurred between 1894 to 1924 if was love at first sight when these Jews saw the New Class and got in the bed with them. They joined forces to screw everyone else. The WASPs didn’t notice that they were being gradually being pushed out of the bed by these Jews who understood networking while they didn’t.

  6. Dementia Joe, really his handlers and owners, look like they are going to get a crisis over Taiwan because of that wrinkled: hmmm, what’s the word I’m reaching for; it rhymes with runt, stunt, begins with a ‘C’, Nancy Pelosi, is planning to go to Taiwan, infuriating the government in Peking. She is being egged on by MAGA idiot Pompeo and many others, Republicans and Democrats alike as well as the warmongers like Fox News and CNN. The wrinkled bitch may back out else there is likely to be a serious but for now, avoidable military crisis over Taiwan.

    At the same time the geniuses in Washington are openly talking about sending “advisers” to Ukraine and perhaps, U.S. fighter planes. They have had plenty of time to train Ukrainian pilots since last March. Reading between the lines, Ukraine is losing badly. The U.S. Government doesn’t want to admit defeat of an ally and is willing to risk a big war directly with Russia to try to retrieve the situation.

    Two big military crises at the same time when the military is missing recruiting goals by tens of thousands of recruits. The military is also a rainbow coalition of woke, fags, trannies, third world types and demoralized Whites. This is not a recipe for success.

    These people are not just wrecking the country, they are virtually guaranteeing an unprecedented national disaster. In times of crisis the U.S. Government’s woke ideology will go out the window and the U.S. Government will demand Whites serve its evil agenda in the military and elsewhere. The ruling class knows the wogs they profess to love so much are nothing but trouble, only Whites can keep the lights on and supplies moving.

    This will be a Darwinian IQ test for Whites. When the U.S. Government institutes conscription and claims that “everyone” is equally subject to its conscription will Whites fall for the big lie again? The proper thing to do for Whites is give them the finger and not comply, don’t fall for the GloboHomo Pedo Shopping Mall Empire’s lying propaganda. I’m not optimistic though, many Whites still believe in the Government that hates them and wants them dead, six feet under.

  7. Golly gee what happened in the transition period between WW1 and WW2 that changed politics in America? I cant quite put my finger on it. Oh wait, women got the vote. Do you think that changed things just a little bit?

    • It is overrated.

      Did you know that the reason that women got the vote is because women used to be associated with causes like Prohibition? Women used to be associated with moral purity in the Victorian era. It sounds laughable to our ears, but back then most people believed women were more moral than men and that giving them the right to vote would elevate the culture.

      The enormous gender gap in our politics today has more to do with women going to college and the mass media and birth control and feminism and a bunch of more recent developments. These trends were already nascent though in the 1920s

      • Yeah, Prohibition was a type of “moral crusade” – something that any sane person could see would never work. It was Anti-German and Anti-Catholic as much as anything else. Just because drunkenness is really an evil doesn’t make their influence less pernicious. “Feminism its Fallacies and Follies” is a good book to show that feminism is the same as it has always been. And it’s defenders still make a pose of not being perturbed by it as if it’s “no big deal.” Idiots.

      • yes I did notice that the first thing that women voted for was alcohol prohibition. How did that turn out? It’s been down hill ever since.

  8. People are not going to unite based on skin color, and if you think any different you are a moron.

  9. “…The notion that America is a “Nation of Immigrants” …”

    I read a book about the making of the Statue of Liberty. The French people in mostly small donations paid for the statue. The American people in mostly small donations paid for the base, which cost were comparable to the statue. The reason they were told it was built was that as long as it stood America would be a light for freedom. The Jews bribed someone and put a plaque on it that said the real reason it was erected was so we could pile the wretched and refuse in the country. A real story.

    • The Statue of Liberty wasn’t originally associated with immigration. Jews began pushing that narrative decades later and put that Emma Lazarus plaque on it. It didn’t catch on until that pamphlet JFK wrote for the ADL was published

  10. It’s important to separate the American myth from the American reality.
    The myth is America is a democratic republic.
    The reality is America’s elite circumvent both the general will, and the constitution whenever it suits them.

    The myth is America’s elite are anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobic.
    The reality is if anything they prefer nonwhites, women and queers because they’re easier to control, the latter don’t have kids (they want to reduce world population and how much plebs/proles can consume) and they can blame all our socioeconomic ills on straight white men, it’s deflection.
    And they like cheap labor, hence mass (illegal) immigration, offshoring and outsourcing.

    Myth: The American right is capitalist and the American left is social democrat.
    Reality: Both parties are banksters and corporatists first and foremost.
    Myth: America is a nation state.
    Reality: It’s a globalist tool, one that’s perhaps outlived its usefulness.
    Myth: The American military is spreading liberal democracy around the globe.
    Reality: It’s plundering the globe and spreading American style serfdom.

    The bottom line is by and large America’s elite no longer believe in the American myth, if they ever did, they believe in their wealth and power.
    As our standard of living lowers and the list of rights and freedoms shrinks year by year, increasingly the people don’t believe in it either.
    There’s still some who’re asleep, who believe the American myth is its reality.
    Then there’s conservative liberals and libertarians, social liberals and populists who’re aware things are messed up but still believe some flavor of real true liberalism and/or populism can be restored.
    And then there’s guys who reject both the American reality and the myth, and they believe in all sorts of things, or nothing.

    I think the elite are sick of pretending to be liberals.
    Guys like Klaus Schwab are writing a new myth, based much less on capitalism and the American dream and much more on things like antiracism, globalism, climate change, involuntary medication, mass surveillance and virtual reality, where the vast majority of people will own nothing and be happy, while the elite live in opulence.

    • “What’s the idea here? The idea is that a strong, centralized activist government is needed to empower experts and bureaucrats to “liberate” the individual from his or her backward cultural traditions so that the past can be erased and the Self can be empowered and cultivated and distinctions whether of race, sex, gender or culture can all be leveled in the name of social equality.”

      Communism has now entered the chat.

  11. Devin Stack called “The Believer” one of the most jewish movies of all-time, and he might be correct, but this exchange is spot on in regard to the JQ.

  12. I would much rather live in smaller racially homogeneous nation than a heterogenous empire with visions of Godhood and global government! Our Founding Fathers understood that nations are not ends in themselves but are a means to and end namely the preservation and protection of a people.

  13. I am all for alcohol being banned.It is evil and destructive for our race.Prohibition was a Jew con because it didn’t outlaw possession of alcohol.It was probably put in place to enrich and benefit the Jews in many ways unknown.Most of the South was made up of dry counties before Prohibition.Southern Whites knew the evils of alcohol.How can any White man with even a modicum of sense advocate for such poison being legal.Jesus never drank as so many buffoons say so as to justify their own vile habit.I listened to a great young preacher on the radio in South Carolina several weekends back and he delivered a detailed and impassioned rebuke of alcohol,backed by the Bible.He also stated that Christ our Lord never drank alcohol.But I guarantee some who are so in love with their poison drink will still claim it is so even though they know very little of the Bible.I will say good article Hunter but Ann Coulter did a good article on the fact the women voters have voted for the worst choice about every time when allowed.She had some nice graphs to back it up.I agree with those writing before that we are not in some phase but in a fight for our very survival as a race.Christ is King.Long live the glorious White race(created in the Lord’s precious image).May God bless all who come here in good faith.

  14. The “American myth” was the Yankee dream, conflated with America, about power, and not shared by Dixie and the West. Contrast New England towns, with their “commons,” and the plantations, farms measured in sections, not acres, and cattle ranches in Dixie and in the West. They were never really the same country as us. Never will be.

    Manifest destiny was never really about the North, anyway. They opposed the Mexican/American War, and Western expansion.

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