I’m currently reading Myth America, a collection of essays edited by Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer. I am informed by the cover image on my e-reader that it is or was a New York Times bestseller, a fact of which I was unaware, in part because we can no longer get home delivery of the Times here in the wilds of Eastern Connecticut. I ran across the book by chance and decided to get it, as both my wife and I follow Kruse, she on Twitter and I on Mastodon, and we usually agree with what he has to say.
As the name implies, the book seeks to deflate a number of myths about this country, primarily by eschewing the both siderism so prevalent in our media today, except for the right wing media, of course, which exempts itself from what it demands of others. The book has a clear leftward slant, but that’s because facts have a liberal bias.
Needless to say, if one is relatively well informed, a reader is likely to already know that the myths in question are just that. It is, for example, self evident to almost anyone that the right wing trope that not only should the “Free Market” be left to develop on its own without governmental interference, but that doing so will solve all our problems, is an absurd notion. One need only imagine what the state of our rivers would be today had the government not stepped in to stop the free enterprisers from dumping anything they like into them. Why, the Cuyahoga River, in the immortal words of Randy Newman, would still “burn on”. The list could go on into infinity.
Still, it’s good to have the rebuttals to these myths presented in well documented form. Some of the essays delve into matters that are not so familiar, and are well worth knowing about, such as that by Kathleen Belew that documents the history and tactics of the right wing militia movement in this country. While I’ve been aware of these groups, I was unaware of the manner in which they organize and the extent to which what appear to be “lone wolf” actions are often actions taken consistent with goals spread through the network the militias use to coordinate their actions while making it quite hard to legally prove that coordination.
The book is well worth a read.
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