"Historians whose specialty is the early 20th Century probably could never have dreamt that a TV and radio personality could convince so many ordinary Americans that laws that ensure the safety of meat and drugs, minimum wages, expanding voting rights, etc. undermined their 'freedom.'"
Beck is the champion of American Myth, the kind of history that ends up in grade school books (and history books published for Texas), the Washington and the cherry tree stuff. Today Sunday Morning had a story about the U.S. being the only industrialized country in the world without guaranteed vacation time for workers. We aren't the best of anything any more, are we? So there's considerable desire to hallucinate that we're still the way we were when we, in fact, were the best at several things. History as distorted nostalgia.
Beck is the champion of American Myth, the kind of history that ends up in grade school books (and history books published for Texas), the Washington and the cherry tree stuff. Today Sunday Morning had a story about the U.S. being the only industrialized country in the world without guaranteed vacation time for workers. We aren't the best of anything any more, are we? So there's considerable desire to hallucinate that we're still the way we were when we, in fact, were the best at several things. History as distorted nostalgia.
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