America’s Story Struggle

 
 
 

What do you notice about our story wall?

For those old enough to realize…

the United States of America is living by, and to, a very tired, age-old story…one way overdue for our reimagining…to either…

  • reclaim the unprecedented opportunity afforded us at our primal inception more than two centuries ago…

  • remain effectively mute, manipulated, and stagnated for another few...or worse…lose our very unique status altogether.

I use remain because you, since your birth no matter your age, along with your ancestors before you, have been captive within the inauthentic American-branded existence all your life.

A very particular existence cultivated by a story that positions you…and all of us…in a phony reality…a reality calculated and fabricated by singlularly-minded exceptionals that now, in the early 21st century, have operated along a continuum: from holding people as slaves to devising our civilization’s total destruction…toward ushering in the transhuman era…

because they’ve nearly-conceived their well-concocted uploading to the digi-sphere until We the People succumb to the planet-bound apocalypse and then they, the exceptionals, re-inhabit with full possession of any valuable remains plus re-engineer everything exactly as they like.

It’s more than intriguing the impact these exploiters have had upon our story…from their bartering of beavers to their programming of cloud-based service networks interfacing with low Earth orbit satellites.

But this is not exclusively about them, nor their tech-singularity plan that will finally initiate the compromise of us all. 

My analysis backs up really far from there to scrutinize the fact that we Americans are 400 years burnished and forged by a dysfunctional and nefarious story, the exceptionals are very much a part of, that was already thousands of years old when we unconsciously assumed it for our own particular new world building needs.

Yes…this is about the imperative of aligning our identity myth with the actual tactics we utilized in our coarse beginnings…but first we must actually bring that myth…that origin story into the light…the real origin story that is…the true one.

Because it’s true what they say:

The Truth Hurts and then it sets You Free.

We must SEE and REALIZE that this TRUE STORY affords us THE BEST OPPORTUNITY for BENEFICIAL TRANSFORMATION…

and then we must engage in a story plot maneuvering…one we could use now more than ever...to grapple with and incorporate this TRUE STORY because it’s the ONLY THING WE CAN DO TO AUTHENTICALLY ENSURE OUR DESTINY IS ONE WORTH LIVING.

  • With this post my goal is to prove to you that the current story we’re telling about ourselves, as Americans, is mindless, incomplete, inaccurate, inadequate, stagnating our progress, robbing us of true joy, and even slowly killing us…just a little more each day.

    And that if we embrace a new story we can, and probably will, be better…much better than we’ve ever been…plus I even share how to tips.

    There is a lot to grapple with here and it is an extremely long post.

    Why? because I challenged myself to create a one-and-done regarding America’sproblems.

    Of course, this can’t be accomplished properly, and in full spectrum detail, short of a book, but it is a start…one I hope you will consider deeply.

But not to get ahead…let’s just LOOK at America’s Story…so far…

America’s Story CHARACTERS

  • Rich Whites > Slave Owners > Billionaires

  • Poor Blacks > Slaves > People of Color

  • Poor Whites > Uneducated > MAGAts

    _______________________________________

  • Everybody Else > Average Citizen > Middle Class

  • Judges > Judiciary > Supreme Court

  • Lawmakers > Legislative > Congress

  • Narcissists > Edgelords or Dope Foils

  • Good Guys > Heroes

Note: the cast order reflects priority…top three load the plot fulcrum most. Zoom in on the continuity of our repertoire below. Observe both left to right across time periods and top to bottom per archetype.

 America’s Story PLOT

And here’s roughly how that Casting has been, still is, playing out…

  • The big frame we must SEE everything through, even us highly evolved 21C tech-savvy modern humans, is that since the dawning of our civilization there’s *only been Kings or Dictators...

    -Point being…Kings-Monarchy/Dictator-Authoritarian are ingrained in our collective psyche and, tactically speaking, much simpler to administrate and easier to enforce.

    -Point being…for way longer than not…THE RICH HAD CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

    *Sadly, this post only addresses Western society, and does not include indigenous ones as we Americans NEVER integrated their stories into ours…one of our biggest mistakes.

  • But then in 1776 the U.S. changed this...

    yes France, too, was also instrumental in cultivating democracy as a new way of governing…distributive rights and wealth…wow.

    -Point being...it's taken for granted now...but only a very short while ago...our New World Democracy was the most radical proposal the world had ever been exposed to, as well as the most challenging to implement and uphold.

    -Point being…democracy is still actually new, fragile, less tested...only 248 years old against 5,000yrs of Monarchies/Dictators.

    -Point being...bravo our founders did something great here but at tremendous cost to innocent others and Project 1619 lays it all out for us to understand.

  • Our Civil War over the issue of Slavery…the bloodiest, most horrific, and extensive loss of life we've ever incurred as Americans was against each other...620,000 dead...over whether we could own each other like we would a tractor or a washing machine.

    -Point being…even after such a noble gesture as did the Founding Fathers make proclaiming all men are created equal no one believed or followed through. Check out Project 1619...the date we first started importing slaves from Africa.

    -Point being…over the long many years before, during, and after this waged war...the U.S. was able to position itself for becoming the world’s #1 Superpower, for generations to come, based upon selling ITS goods and services for healthy profit having paid virtually zero for their production…

    all free for the seller from 1619 to 1863…but we know slavery was still going on for years even after the Emancipation Proclamation. Therefore, the U.S. benefited from paying people nothing, with the exception of minimal food, clothing, shelter, for their outlandishly difficult production work for about 70 percent of the period we’ve been a sovereign nation: 174yrs out of 248yrs.

    We did free slaves in 1865, and even though literally nothing was done to help them elevate their station some climbed high to reset their destiny but most simply couldn’t. And even the ones who managed were slapped back down or severely limited by the Jim Crow era: 1865-1965…yet 100 more years of unwavering discrimination.

    -Point being…THE RICH WHITES BELIEVED THE POOR BLACKS WERE INFERIOR. THEY DID NOT WANT DEMOCRACY. PERIOD.

    THE RICH HAD CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

  • The first symbolic death of the United States' union was the assignation of our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.

    The very person, unique as he was, that led the United States through the American Civil War, defended our nation as a constitutional union, defeated the Confederacy, played a major role in the abolition of slavery, expanded the power of the federal government, and modernized the U.S. economy was slain before his term ended by an enraged John Wilkes Booth because Lincoln supported Black citizenship and voting rights -both of which he rejected.

    -Point being…we have ALWAYS been in a battle where THE RICH, AND OR BIGOTED, HAD CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

  • The U.S. FAILED at democracy…not just because we allowed Slavery but we allowed our Capitalistic Economy to function without guardrails…resulting in the Great Depression. 

    Why? because our unregulated form of winner-takes-all capitalism allowed for such an exaggerated level of inequity and inequality…that our devised economic system could not compensate for the cataclysmic degree of stress all that greed and recklessness wrought.

    -Point being…between the 1776 Declaration signing to the 1929 Crash our country found its way to sh*t…it really wasn’t as rosy as you might think:

    • children were overworked in factories…12hrs/day

    • factory workers had no rights

    • air/water was polluted to unsurvivable levels

    • society was a lot mega-wealthy rich vs destitute poor…the Middle Class was already scant…we had nearly found ourselves back to the conditions for which we first revolted against King George III.

    Why? Remember…Kings and Dictators since 3,000 B.C…

    THE RICH STILL WERE AGAIN GAINING CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

  • Few of us are left that experienced it...and none of us are impacted by…the Great Depression because we’re the beneficiaries of FDR's visionary resets implemented from 1933-45.

    -Point being…after the Depression, FDR redirected us back to Founding Father-esque concepts.

    • social security, medicare-medicaid, and minimum wage did not exist before him!

    • first federal law protecting overworking children, and adults.

    • first laws protecting clean air and water.

    • but, tragically, he got shut down too early because THE RICH started accusing him of SOCIALISM.

    • among other things he was ready to pass a Human Bill of Rights!!! We so needed this...but the Billionaire power grabbers shut that legislation down.

    -Point being…the ONLY TIME THE MIDDLE CLASS REALLY RULED IN THIS COUNTRY WAS FROM ABOUT 1938-1988...50yrs...the other 198 not so much.

    -Point being…we have ALWAYS been in a battle where THE RICH HAD CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

  • A pretty huge 3-part blow to our Nation...at less than, officially, 200 years old...reshaped us within a new age of cynicism regarding authentic civil rights equality.

    • We all watched, in real time, as our youngest-ever and exceptionally-handsome highest office-holder...very openly committed to revolutionary change...was ruthlessly obliterated in great spectacle while his loving wife desperately sought to revive him. A profoundly brutal and uncivilized act we can never unsee or forget. So stealthily coordinated and symbolically designed to send the message to all citizens to: 'don’t change a thing, or else...'

    • America's Idealism died with the assassination of our 35th President, John F. Kennedy, at a psychic level. With Lincoln's assassination too far in the past, it was the first time, again, that living people witnessed 'the lie' between our expressed fairness ideals vs the dark forces intent on making certain they're not achieved.

    • JFK's New Frontier platform prioritized equality/civil rights, increasing education funding, reducing the military industrial complex, raising the minimum wage, increasing social security benefits, enacting pollution controls, and funding space exploration. All the things We the People were so desperate for and needed...but we were denied.

    "The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and opportunities." -JFK speech, June 1963

    That very evening after this speech, segregationist Byron de La Beckwith shot and killed Medgar Evers, the NAACP's Mississippi field secretary. Five months later, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, TX. As comprehensive civil rights legislation had not yet been passed, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Kennedy's successor resumed the battle for equality.

    -Point being...after this societal wide trauma and world stage spectacle we are still told know one knows who killed JFK or why. Now, all the documents that might reveal this information are locked up or have been destroyed, and no one is still alive that was directly involved. That which is responsible is as buried as our outrage/disbelief that it happened. We have never worked through this profound loss and our cracks just keep getting wider.

    -Point being…we have ALWAYS been in a battle where THE RICH, AND OR BIGOTED, HAD CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

  • The Civil Rights Act, a landmark piece of legislation prohibiting discrimination in public places, schools, and federally funded programs intended to challenge all Americans to eliminate injustice, is almost not worth mentioning...

    -Point being…same as the Emancipation Proclamation it really didn’t change things much…People of Color were still deemed inferior….no significant change…until 2007…keep reading…

    -Point being…THE RICH WHITES BELIEVED THE POOR BLACKS WERE INFERIOR. THEY DID NOT WANT DEMOCRACY. PERIOD.

    THE RICH HAD CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

  • If there was any sliver of hope left after the JFK assassination, the powers that be doubled down on to make it extra clear that equality was just something they would not tolerate…just talk but no walk.

    Both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were gunned down within a span of three months in 1968, declarative, ruthless, inhumane murders sponsored by the dark hidden forces committed to inequality and the continuation of getting things for nothing…or not sharing.

    -Point being...it was still the same dark hidden force that brought slaves over in 1619 and later killed Lincoln, that then also killed the Kennedys and MLK...the force interested in more control to either make more money or retain inequality. These DARK FORCE MEN NEVER MOVED ON FROM THE CONFEDERACY. THEY BELIEVED POOR BLACKS WERE INFERIOR. THEY DID NOT WANT EQUALITY OR A DEMOCRACY. PERIOD.

  • We didn't see, in real time, that Reagan started rolling back all that FDR had done to make our lives better since the Great Depression…reversing all the rulings/programs that had made the U.S. stronger because FDR’s societal development guides empowered the Many…the Middle Class…you/me. 

    -Point being…Reagan reinstated the conditions that allowed the Great Depression to happen the first time around...conditions promoting corporate scions to bribe government officials...conditions reversing any headway regarding racial injustice made in the 60s/70s...conditions that allowed business to be reckless regarding worker health-safety and the environment again…conditions that eventually triggered the 2007 Great Recession under his successor, George W. Bush.

    -Point being…Reagan reversed FDR's bottom up economy model to trickle down…sit with that against what the Constitution intends…Reagan exalted the wealthy…one of two big reasons we fled Britain in the first place.

    -Point being…Reagan undid everything FDR did to protect us from a feudal-state, Oligarchy-led takeover of the private business sector...and his operation settings have barely been nudged for 40 years, therefore, we’re now living in the Great Depression 2.0...fueled by a combination of the industrial revolution old guard alongside the internet/Silicon Valley new guard….because we have allowed Billionaires to exist in any age and they are always focused upon the power of money, which never changes.

    THE RICH HAVE CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

  • Enter, now, Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America…the first ever Black American to hold this office.

    After 250 years of slavery, a century of Jim Crow laws, and a legacy of racial terror that included the lynching of thousands of African Americans, America elected a Black president, a day that many thought would never come.

    And amidst all the euphoria, it was tempting to think the era of overt racism as past, that the U.S. had finally overcome its ugly history. But sadly, that was mistaken, as Obama's election reflects the fact that the country has made enormous progress in the area of race relations, likely to propel it to even greater heights, but progress is never a straight line. There is always the danger of a backlash....which indeed came with an unprecedented amount of dark force behind it.

  • Although, in general, everyone enjoys a higher standard of living than pre-1929, we do now live in drastic inequity and inequality resembling the Roaring 20s, courtesy of 40 years of Reaganomics…even though we just elected the first Black president who signaled the Middle Class was actually making headway…and racial division was dissipating…

    but that unprecedented event panicked the Poor Whites and Rich Whites/Billionaires more than ever...resulting in serious backlash...and the over-correction that is Trump/MAGA.

    -Poor Whites
    Successfully reining supreme to Blacks, within their own minds, for all these years, Obama was their lightening rod wake up call.

    Their rage also engulfed the radical right like Thom Robb, an Arkansas Klan leader, describing the 'race war' he sees developing 'between our people, who I SEE as the rightful owners and leaders of this great country vs the Blacks.' In Tennessee, two neo-Nazi skinheads went further, allegedly planning to murder black schoolchildren, behead other African Americans, and assassinate Obama. They were arrested two weeks before the election.

    Point being...these guys NEVER MOVED ON FROM THE CONFEDERACY. THEY BELIEVE BLACKS ARE INFERIOR. THEY DO NOT WANT DEMOCRACY...because their psychological superiority identity over Blacks is literally the ONLY THING OF VALUE THEY POSSESS.

    -Rich Whites Faction 01: Old Guard

    • top Republican Billionaire donors and dark money promoters Leonard Leo/Federalist Society and Koch Bros/Heritage Foundation are nothing but White-Christian Nationalist groups busy buying out our judiciary branch since Reagan opened it up to them to do so in 1982 to…you got it…have MORE CONTROL to make MORE MONEY. These guys NEVER MOVED ON FROM THE CONFEDERACY. THEY BELIEVE POOR WHITES and BLACKS ARE INFERIOR. THEY DO NOT WANT DEMOCRACY. PERIOD.

    -Rich Whites Faction 02: New Guard

    • Silicon Valley Billionaires Peter Thiel/Elon Musk were brought up in apartheid South Africa and they’re greasing Congress as you read this. These guys NEVER MOVED ON FROM APARTHEID. THEY BELIEVE POOR WHITES and BLACKS ARE INFERIOR. THEY DO NOT WANT DEMOCRACY. PERIOD. And there are many other valley dudes who believe same.

    Eventually the three factions above co-opted Trump, the pathetic vaudeville act successfully seducing the Poor Whites, to not only validate/legitimize but shift into hyper-drive his Mission: Manipulation. He's in it just for the money-fame-empire extension and these three factions are giving him plenty of all of those. 

    THE RICH HAVE CONTROL OF TOO MUCH…and we’re kinda ingrained by that.

  • This is a non-sequitur insertion to make the point that enslaved Africans were brought to, what would become the U.S. of America, before the Mayflower.

    Realize that slavery was completely typical and integral to most of the world’s non-indigenous societies and, in fact, the word Slave comes from ‘Slav’ as in the Slavic people originating in Central-Eastern Europe…many of which were coopted as Slaves.

    -Point being…Slaves were typical and integral the American life experience from 1619 to 1863...its first 244 years of existence.

    And just as the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation changed very little, neither did the 1964 Civil Rights Act 101 years later, except for on paper.

    It would take another 43 years to reposition the American psyche regarding African Americans' potential in this country when Barack Obama was elected the first Black U.S. president in 2007.

AMERICA’S CULTURAL IDENTITY MYTH

So now, suspending for the fact that we are in a post truth world…

we SEE our Characters and Plot laid out above as simply who and what has happened thus far…the facts over 248 years.

And, influenced by plenty of invisible culturally derived things, plus a lot of help from the way our history books have been written, we have forged a particular way to think about all this plus craft a nice little tale we love telling about it.

Here’s approximately how American’s identity myth goes…

 

We, Americans, are exceptional humans, chosen by God, to lead the world to better in every way, and we got here by our own superior intelligence, visionary insights, unique talents, fierce determination, and good old-fashioned hard work.

We own the concept of freedom…so don’t tread on us and we won’t tread on you…unless we really need what you got.

 

So, back to the original question:

What do you notice about our story wall?

Well, how about this tweak to the portraiture first…for catalyzing additional insight.

REFLECTING upon our 400 year reoccurring Story Plot plus SEEING ourselves as a consistent continuum of Character Archetypes being perpetually involved in it…we notice at least the following four radical truths.

AMERICA’S RADICAL TRUTHS

The first two constitute the DnA of our collective psyche, which tragically render it unhealthy and imbalanced.

The second two are merely enculturated expressions of that psychic damage…they’re the visible manifestations of our natal dissonance serving to further agitate our, both, individual and cultural-level psychic dysfunction which then exacerbates our community-level polarization.

But these four radical truths need a little more unpacking to move from just REFLECTING-SEEING to INTERNALIZING so…

    • We notice our Rich White Founding Fathers WERE BOTH VERY EXCEPTIONAL AND VERY IMPERFECT.

      -aspiring, erudite, visionary men that ALSO assumed most people were not intelligent enough to be involved in government and believed People of Color could be owned as Slaves…even though THEY SAID the opposite.

      Do as we Say, Not as we Do.

      -like your boss refusing your business trip airfare expense reimbursement but they get reimbursed for theirs. So you’re like…ok…well, that’s pretty fishy now isn’t it?

      -not only did Thomas Jefferson have six children with his favorite lady Slave, Sally Hemings, and owned 400 Slaves overall whose labor kept his 5,000 acre enterprise running over the course of his life, he also developed a secret master plan to fully end slavery YET REMOVE ALL Black people from his resident state of Virginia. Super fishy.

      -this arrogance and inauthenticity still haunts our attempt at unity too much. Because it’s never been properly addressed, ever. This double-dealing swings the door wide for more of the same corrupt behavior of which too many Americans, including most women, are notably victim to, as well. Not to mention, if something is obviously suspect…has stuffing/suppressing it ever worked best for anybody? or does saying it out loud to at least one other person work better? Take a guess who’s more likely to suppress uncomfortable feelings/emotions, refusing to discuss them with others…hint: it’s not women.

    • We notice America’s story characters are ONLY WHITE MEN…deciding our plot, theme, raison d’être, how we achieve all things…everything.

      -this is a fact…along with another fact which is that women see/think/feel/do differently from men.

      -influential British psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald Winnicott’s theories identify that the staggering disparity in political leadership of men vs women is rooted in their profound psychological developmental differences. Yet, also staggeringly, no one gives the appropriate level of consideration to this phenomenon because we Americans don’t even realize how male-gaze-saturate we are.

      Fish don’t know they’re in water.

      The absence of female decision-makers for over 400 years has had epic impact on America’s past and present, and will continue to upon its future…and even more than that…it is our perpetual unconscious male-bias regarding everything we do…which perpetuates our view of everything through male perspectival lens…whether debacle or opportunity the lack of recognition around this masculine worldview bias-monopoly has had profound consequence upon every year of our existence…to the point that, now, we’re nothing but a boiling-over toxic testosterone slurry pot poised, Jim Jones style, to self-annihilate.

      Given all these horrible, spoiled men rising to our top governmental and economic strata we no longer even need foreign enemies, as we’re overly inundated by the Toxic-White Male that lurks within.

    • We notice that although the cast members keep changing, not much else does. Our story is remarkably CYCLICAL…it holds as a REPEATING CYCLE OF DRASTICALLY ALTERNATING OUTCOMES.

      -we never all win…we have to take turns winning…aka, polarization. So sometimes we get clean water and sometimes we get more Gulfstream G450’s. OK…better than a monarchy where you concede to brown baths all the time, but come on. Always one step forward and two-to-three back seems far from real progress given our *VUCA and *TESCREAL world conditions in the 21st century.

      -could it have anything to do with our TJ hero-worship-complex?

      Part of us resonates exclusively with his ruthless-controling-hoodwinking-villain side, while the rest of us assume his erudite-altruistic-visionary-hero side. As a population, with each of us adopting just one of these dueling contradictory personas, it sure has left us at odds with each other.

      What if our true origin story included Goethe’s:

      ‘Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them and the man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.’

      …well that could afford us something big

      …but, instead, our real legacy remains:

      ‘A silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

      -so, the story we continue identifying with remains fishy…antithetical…stagnant…inadequate…brittle...vulnerable.

    • We notice our heroes keep changing, but they always seem to represent two conflicting VALUE POOLS…the EXCEPTIONAL INDIVIDUAL versus the EVERYMAN.

      -their repeating presence in our narrative landscape sure seems to underscore our natal psychosis bugaboo.

      -it’s like the early 21st Century in this country still feels way too much like 1776 in this regard...which is to say there’s hardly been any real alchemy…just one group buying more air time than the other to shout louder. THERE ARE STILL VERY DISTINCT GROUPS TETHERED TO POLARIZED WORLDVIEWS SEEDED BY OPPOSITE VALUE SETS, TELLING WILDLY DIFFERENT STORIES ABOUT AMERICA. And it doesn’t have to be like that.

America’s Story Thesis

So now SEEING how America’s Reoccurring Story Characters-Heroes continue to enact our Cyclical Dueling-Values Plot…because they’re stuck in manifesting the radical truth aspects of our 400 year old collective psyche…we can now identify America’s Story Thesis.

Not the grand projected thesis we’re taught in American History…eloquently put forth in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution…but the REAL THESIS we detect from what we’re ACTUALLY SEEING HERE AND EXPERIENCE IN OUR DAILY LIVES.

 

Refresher definition…
THESIS STATEMENT: the central idea, governing thought, or seed of a story focused to reflect a claim or answer a prompt.

So here goes…

The United States struggles to cohere, always has, due to the authoritative inauthenticity upon which it was founded:

  • the ‘Do as we Say, Not as we Do’ subterfuge of its Founding Fathers.

Therefore, America is unfolding as per the lack of integrity in which it was first conceived…never unified, even from the very beginning at a conceptual level…its’ cracks ever worsening over time…which will only continue to widen as long as the truth of our real origin story remains unrecognized, unwritten, and unclaimed by ALL its citizens.

 

Long forged within the mold of our founder’s own discontinuity, American Society is, and has always been, more like a stagnated purgatory, than an aspiring, enlightened, multi-cultural civilization.

And now in the age of AI, drastic wealth inequity, and growing distrust of our government, the stakes couldn’t be higher regarding how our schizophrenic condition makes us more and more vulnerable to undesirable and irreversible outcomes.

    • With our characters, plot, collective psyche, and thesis now IN THE LIGHT…how about a snippet of dialogue…as if a screenplay were developed based upon all this reality and radical truths we now SEE?

      Abuser to Victim:
      “You’ll just have to get over it…just how things go. Everything’s ok now so no need digging all that back up. It’s over.”

      Victim [response expected by Abuser]:
      “Sure, I understand. Will do. Let’s just forget about it and move on.”

      Remember your boss gets reimbursed but you don’t.

AMERICA’S CULTURAL IDENTITY MYTH: PERCEIVED

Informed by all the dysfunction showcased above…especially how our unhealthy, imbalanced collective psyche colors our sense of self and our place in the world…American’s identity myth goes something like…

 

We, Americans, are exceptional humans, chosen by God, to lead the world to better in every way, and we got here by our own superior intelligence, visionary insights, unique talents, fierce determination, and good old-fashioned hard work.

We own the concept of freedom…so don’t tread on us and we won’t tread on you…unless we really need what you got.

 

That so many of us in this country think like this doesn’t make it true.

THE TRUTH HURTS AND THEN IT SETS YOU FREE

One of…if not THE primary reason for our dysfunction is not admitting to the fact that:

We exploited and killed a great number of people in our coming of age as a nation, and on top of our ruthless, unprecedented scale of abuse we’ve, repeatedly, omitted this fact in our historical storytelling…oral and written.

We treat slavery like a footnote and as African American History, not American History.

Why? Because the radical truth about American History is absolutely horrific, and what our ancestors did implicates us all by association. So, we not only do not want to talk about it…we don’t want to hear, see, grapple…we want to leave it in the dark. So, as a subject, we treat it matter of factly…fait accompli…rendered without detail…and devoid of any acknowledgement of wrong doing or contrition.

SLAVERY…AS A TOPIC INTEGRAL TO OUR NATION’S HISTORY…IS BURIED…WITHOUT A HEADSTONE…like the dead nameless Slaves still laying in our fields.

If you kill someone, and no one finds out, and you continue to live with this secret for your entire life long…what’s likely to happen?

Well, that has piled onto our flawed fathers-no mothers collective psyche…the lingering, rotting guilt…we’ve been pushing way down for centuries has poisoned the very flesh we grow out of and made us sick…which today looks like our apathy for the greater good coupled with our cynicism that that will ever actually manifest.

And we’ve done this to ourselves.

Rather than work hard, as hard as we claim we worked to BUILD this country, we’ve worked just as hard to IGNORE…NOT SEE our whole history…our real truth…OUR ACTUAL TRUE ORIGIN STORY. Because we are all victim to one of two scenarios:

  • We the People that discount/deny/lie about what happened

versus

  • We the People that acknowledge…but don’t know what to do about it.

So, for way too long we just keep hoping that whatever’s wrong here will just eventually go away.

It hasn’t. It won’t.

If you get all the credit for something you actually didn’t do completely by yourself, and you are rewarded again and again for it…how does that make you feel? 

We are literally living out our Founding Fathers insincerities as a collective body of people which has deeply compromised us all…yet we’re not even aware of it because we still have not yet even really SEEN IT.

So here it is.

THE VERY THING THAT HAS MADE US GREAT ALSO MAKES US VILE.

Throughout the 17th Century, we Americans/European settlers turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than Indigenous populations and indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans/Whites.

Existing estimates establish the Slave trader transports at nearly 12.5 million, with approximately 10.7 million actually disembarking alive. Meaning 2 million of them died on the way here. All while this heinous act of forced migration also deprived the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women.

This such that, over the course of the 17th and 18th Centuries, enslaved Africans could toil 12 to 14 hour days in our tobacco, rice, and indigo plantation fields, along the southern Atlantic coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and Virginia south to Georgia. Such that we could sell/export the goods they cultivated at extremely minimal production costs.

AMERICA’S REAL CULTURAL IDENTITY MYTH: FOR REAL

By including the above unsavory, inhumane, truly essential part of our story suggests our real cultural identity myth should read something like this:

 

By exploiting the forced, unpaid labor of millions of Africans, taken against their will from their homelands of: Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Angola, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon, over the period of 1619 to 1863, we Americans accelerated our global status to become the world’s number one superpower.

Now we control the world, because we cheated and abused millions of people for over hundreds of years, but we don’t focus much on that part…just the part that makes us exceptional.

 

SPOTLIGHT ON: THE RUB

Our true story includes that which we prefer not to even consider…much less include…which is exactly what The 1619 Project has laid out in scrupulous detail so well…that every aspect of our country’s formation has been touched by slavery.

  • The 1619 Project aims to reframe American history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

"The amount of violence directed at African Americans in the U.S. cannot be overstated. Ripped away from our ancestor's homeland, against our will, and by virtue of our bondage in America…we became the most American of all.

The relentless buying-selling-insuring and financing of our bodies would help make Wall Street and New York City the financial capital of the world.

But it would be inaccurate to reduce our contribution to the vast material wealth created by our forced labor.

Black Americans rights struggles have laid the foundation for every other rights struggle."

-Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of Project 1619

SO WHAT HAVE BEEN THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR CULTURAL IDENTITY MYTH [STORY] STRUGGLE?

Answering this requires a War and Peace length novel.

For now, let’s just look at only one consequence.

  • the annihilation of our Everyman Leaders

    Those most-focused on doing something about our torrid dissonance, disconnection, dysfunction…that actually wanted to unequivocally change the course of our history, by changing how we think about things, influencing how we treat each other, and reshaping what we value.

    Each of these leaders…are analogous to a stone thrown into our shared pond…with the potential of their evolutionary ripples alchemically reordering our context from within…from the center out…uniformly encompassing all variable shorelines in its wake.

    During incredibly volatile past periods…those who dared in America…were snuffed out abruptly…mid-stream…to the point we don’t see them much anymore. Which is exactly what the Exceptional Individual Assassins and their backers intended.

  • The magnitude of loss is astounding when you carefully consider it might have been…

    John F. Kennedy instead of Richard M. Nixon…

    Robert F. Kennedy instead of Ronald Reagan…

    Martin Luther King instead of Billy Graham….

    I SAVED IMAGES TO ILLUSTRATE THESE DICHOTOMIES ABOVE!!!

    actively shaping our perspectives, expectations, aspirations…collective psyche.

    We would be living in a hugely different kind of zeitgeist had the three who died, at the dawning of their careers, more permanently imprinted our society instead of the three who did. Big time. Period.

    More specifics on the ASSASSINATION of our AUTHENTIC HEALING, PROGRESS, and HOPE as HUGE CONSEQUENCES below:

    • Imagine for a moment if he had served a full two terms, 8 years, earnestly shepherding us through the worst of the war, aftermath, divide.

      No doubt devoting his focus upon reconstruction, economic integration, African American voting rights…imagine black voters actually impacting the make-up of our electorate as far back as the 1860s? would countless lynchings have occurred? would the Jim Crow days have been as ingrained/long lasting? would Emmett Till have died naturally? would Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and thousands of other Black American’s still be alive…maybe quite a few more that would have reshaped our history for the better? would the most bigoted White Americans then…still be as extreme in their hatred as they are now? or would a full 2-term Lincoln have drastically helped mitigate the racist undercurrent from the 1870s to the 2020s somehow?

    • If Lincoln didn’t get equality done, John F. would have. And he did, sort of, by way of the ultimate sacrifice.

      It’s generally accepted that The Civil Rights Acts of 1964/68, that outlawed discrimination based on race, regarding public accommodations, voting rights, and housing, was actually passed as a gesture of honor and deference to his life.

      If allowed to live, Kennedy would have kept the All White industrial military complex in check, and would not have escalated the Vietnam War, while his social security and minimum wage raises would have empowered the Middle Class significantly more…plus his enactment of pollution regulations would have included limited emissions well before 1970.

      But NONE of this happened so the war mongers and billionaires proliferated greatly…58,220 young Americans died, for no reason, and a 75% increase in military spending from 1964-1975, set a new precedent to be upheld, or surpassed each year after.

      And, from a psychic perspective, imagine if we had witnessed the unfolding of his entire life. What level of idealism vs cynicism would we now possess if JFK had lived as long a distinguished, contributive, meaningful life as Jimmy Carter? Or at least until the age of 80 or so?

    • We don’t know what it would have been like if Robert Kennedy had been elected president but probably more old school left with strong labor unions, less social and economic inequality, and less political polarization. Better in a lot of ways.

      Just imagine if he were still alive, either way. What’s fundamental is that truly evil, above the law, conspiracy forces were allowed to shape our so called democracy in the 1960s and we just let it happen like we’re letting Trump, Musk, and Thiel do what they want with it/us now. As Bobby Kennedy wanted approximately what his brother wanted…might we be a bit different, more tolerant, more unified now?

    • King's survival would have assured a more unified and sustained effort for civil rights and social justice in the United States that would have resulted tangible policies and intangible collective psyche positive outcomes.

      -just by keeping that end of our society activated and in the news cycle more.

      -he was a threat to many politicians because he asked questions that they didn't want heard, because they didn’t want to answer which was good for us all.

      -the most important thing, if he wasn't murdered, would have been his ability to build a cohesive funded organization to make change against those most exploitative which we haven’t had since the 1970s and it shows…not only with regard to the decisions our institutions have made for us, with only the wealthy whispering in their ears for these past 50 years, but also regarding us, as a society.

      As a result, we are far more fixated on the rich, and being richer, than we were on the idealism of 1960s…and we now need some of that back.

      -yes, the Black Panthers and other militant movements would have persisted as well.

      -but he was also just beginning to lead a broader, more cohesive coalition that included poverty/economic justice issues and social welfare programs for the poor. Poor people that ascend to durable wage earning status add to the economy/GDP. THIS is now the focus in 21st century…60 years later.

      -he would have had influence on governmental policy such as comprehensive voting rights protections and anti-discrimination laws in housing and employment.

      -he probably would have affected the political landscape, resulting in more progressive candidates and policies emerging in the Democratic Party to influence national elections. MLK would have been a nice rallying cry during the times after Nixon took over.

      -there would be stronger emphasis on his teachings and philosophies in education and public policy, shaping future generations’ understanding of civil rights, even emanating outward globally to strengthen international solidarity movements, influencing anti-colonial struggles, and global human rights advocacy.

      -point being, imagine King’s presence throughout the 80s that would counter Reagan’s roll back of civil rights and the Middle Class…as opposed to Jesse Jackson…who try as he might, never mustered the same presence.

The point being…if these Everyman Leaders had all lived…we would be a much more advanced society in the realm of offering equality and equity to all…our so called raison detre...from the beginning. The tyranny-toxic patriarchy that we are all witnessing now would just be written into scary, sci-fi movies.

Each of these leaders had big initiatives that would have truly served us, made us better, more innovative, more resilient, commensurate with our 1776 freedom positioning, not just economically but psychically...collectively. Because they were all pushing to translate our story across divides…alchemically re-ordering us…more so than just forcing us to sit next to each other in the theatre for two hours tops. …because they countered the Exceptional Individual Leader.

There would not be the huge accumulation of wealth in the hands of so few now, such a robust 1% vs 99% divide, and hollowed out middle class, as they were all FDR’s successors in this way…preserving equality and equity through the way our systems are devised to empower the many. So, no exorbitant higher education and medical costs, no stagnated minimum wage rate or distrust of unions, much less of the military and prison industrial complex, and maybe even a Black President by 1989? Just imagining these aspects, alone, we would be hugely different country by now, including that we would have retained much more of idealism, instead of receding into such subliminal depths of cynicism.

And for certain we wouldn’t have just conceded the voting rights act, campaign contribution limits/Citizens United, and women’s reproductive rights, at the turn of the 21st century, because we the people would be the strong majority steering things in our best interest.

But, instead of achieving these enormous systemic and psychic-positive gains…each of these transistors were extinguished, time and again, for their attempt to make good on TJ’s everyman persona attempt...by those who chose to adopt his exceptional individual one.

The consequences of not having a fundamentally Shared Cultural Identity Myth…Shared True Origin Story…for both White and Black Americans is for all of us, to date, INCALCULABLE.

LOOK/SEE above how much we’ve LOST…in the last 159 years.

And without a Truly Shared Story we’re in for so much more Tragedy and Loss ahead.

WHAT CONSEQUENCES ARE STILL LOOMING GIVEN OUR CULTURAL IDENTITY MYTH STRUGGLE?

America’s cultural identity crisis will continue to promote a range of consequences for us as individuals, communities, and, of course, as an overall nation, similar to the ones we’ve already been experiencing for so long now.

Without an agreed upon origin story revision, none of our bad will be ameliorated anymore than it ever has…from the moment whomever of our ancestors attacked that first village in Western-Central Africa.

You’ll recognize many undesirable circumstances below:

    • Isolation: a bunch of individuals running around saying they’re exceptional doesn’t merit a coherent thought, much less a vibrant, stable society. And that their rantings and bullying tends to sideline us everymen even more than we already are, they promote our withdrawal.

    • Identity Confusion: this disconnect between our persona archetypes leads us to be confused, uncertain, overwhelmed.

    • Low Self-Esteem/Anxiety: which then diminishes our agency, self-worth, especially if we feel disconnected from our cultural roots with our fellow citizens and, of course, the stress of navigating conflicting cultural expectations leads to even more mental health issues.

    • Fragmentation/Polarization: we’ll continue to be mired in family or community conflicts based upon the fact we hold different beliefs or values regarding cultural identity….could it eventually lead to real violence…civil war? Probably.

    • Cultural Disconnection: that we can’t agree upon what brings us strength vs weakness, we disengage from cultural practices, traditions, or communities, leading to a loss of cultural bonding.

    • Increased Prejudice: a cultural identity crisis exacerbates feelings of otherness, leading to increased discrimination or prejudice from others.

    • Employment Challenges: issues related to identity can affect what kind of opportunities we’re presented, as well as how many, and job performance.

    • Network Limitations: disconnection from cultural networks can limit access to resources, support systems, and economic opportunities.

    • Economic System Drag: a cultural identity crisis significantly impacts individual’s mental health, relationships, and community dynamics to the point they must seek support, whether through counseling, community engagement, or cultural education, to navigate these challenges effectively. In some ways that has some positive benefit, but imagine if almost no one needed this kind of therapy due to cultural identity schizophrenia in the first place.

And realize it’s this collection of consequences that has led us to be a sitting duck for the likes of: Putin, Orban, Jong-Un, MBS, etc. Civil War is ever present whether psychically-invisibly or behaviorally-visibly.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS STRUGGLE NOW?

As mentioned in the beginning, this is about the imperative of aligning our identity myth with the actual tactics we adopted in our coarse beginnings…but first we must actually bring that myth…our origin story into the light which my above begins to and The 1619 Project does.

We can now do these three things instead of continuing onward within our deep grooves of ignorance, reactive triggers, cancelation, or debilitating polarization.

  • READY OURSELVES FOR THE EXCUSES

    Assuming you’ve taken this post to heart and done some research, you and I are both faced with the excuses others will claim about the matter.

    Here’s three typical ones to get familiar with and, hopefully, you can stitch bits together as needed:

    • I had nothing to with all that…even if my ancestors owned Slaves…I still don't have to apologize.

    • Why do some people demand that Whites feel guilty because of what some did in the past? Should Germanic people today feel guilty for the Holocaust?

    • White Guilt is very counter-productive.

    • You don’t punish the children for the sins of the father.
      ___________________

    OK…and here’s some things to consider:

    • Slavery fueled the country’s economy, its GDP for hundreds of years, to such heights even early on in our formation it challenged that of many other nations, while also suppressing wealth building for the enslaved…America is the number one superpower of the world today for this very reason. In 1860, the value placed on cotton produced by enslaved Blacks was $250 million/$4.85 trillion today, and the value assigned to the physical bodies of enslaved Black Americans to be used as free labor and production was over $3 billion/$58 trillion today…more money than was invested in factories and railroads combined.

    • The U.S. government repeatedly denied the inherent promise of: ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ penned in the Declaration of Independence to Black Americans. Central to the American Dream lies an assumption that we’ve all had an equal opportunity to generate these things, but that was not true, and this lie leaves many Americans still suffering today.

      After Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, President Andrew Johnson returned land back to former slave owners and provided no means for Blacks to support themselves. Most had limited work options so returned as sharecroppers to till the same land for the very slave owners to whom they were once enslaved, as it was their only choice.

      In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt implemented a series of policies as part of his New Deal legislation to counter the Great Depression’s impact, estimated to cost roughly $50 billion then, but all the programs fell short in redressing American’s racial wrongs. 

      Example: though white and Black Americans fought in WWII, Black veterans could not redeem their post-war G.I. Bill benefits like their white peers. Mandated federally, but implemented locally, the presence of racial housing covenants and redlining among local municipalities prohibited Blacks from utilizing federal benefits. White soldiers were afforded the opportunity to build wealth by sending themselves and their children to college and by obtaining housing and small business grants.

    So many other policies and practices contributed to racial wealth gap but the point is, today, the average white family has roughly 10 times the amount of wealth as the average Black family. White college graduates have over seven times more wealth than Black college graduates. And this disparity will remain forever if nothing is done.

    The United States has yet to compensate descendants of enslaved Black Americans for their labor. Nor has the federal government atoned for slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and anti-Black practices like redlining, and other discriminatory public policies in criminal justice or educational opportunities to build wealth, like those afforded to their white peers.

  • I feel empathy and discomfort about all that, but what can I do?
    ______________


    OK…here’s some things to consider:

  • I just don’t think about it…doesn’t really matter now.

    I genuinely don't give a shit.
    _______________


    OK…I would say these are the people who there is no hope for in terms of changing their mind about anything including that America can win bigger and better with a different, whole truth story.

    But it does not hurt to try using some of evidence mentioned in the previous two excuse examples.

  • START TELLING OUR WHOLE TRUTH STORY

    Tell it in a way that is AUTHENTIC, so that it contains both Black Americans and White Americans, so that it includes both the good and the bad, so that we might learn, repair, and truly triumph above a story that holds us within a stagnant purgatory of competing personas…because we’ve expanded and embraced the Story in its Entirety…a sophisticated narrative that’s reflective of the extreme-complexities and therefore affords

    We’re not children, we’re not still in the 1700s, we get to own up, get over, and enjoy better. Invite others to tell it too.

  • start Telling a True Shared Origin Story that Mends and Empowers Us…

  • PROPOSED CHARACTERS
     

  • PROPOSED PLOT






  • PROPOSED THESIS

     

  • PROPOSED SCRIPT

    Abuser to Victim:
    “I earnestly want to manifest my better self…with regard to what I did to you…for both of our sakes.

    I am sincerely sorry that I took advantage of you to better myself at your expense.

    Will you consider forgiving me in order to diffuse the bad feelings/mistrust between us so our lives might lifted out of this quagmire of bottom dwelling and cynicism?”

    Victim:
    ”Wow…this is so long in coming and after such prolific destruction of trust and profound loss of life from your side.

    I cannot ever forgive you, but I will work with you to create better…

    but only if you accept we are equal partners in the quest…as it is probably the only positive way forward.

    Make your choice.”



  • PROPOSED IDENTITY MYTH

to point out systems that favor white people over everyone else is not “white shaming” it’s just calling out unfair situations. There is nothing wrong with that.

in order to But we continue to claim the severely edited, single-sided story because OUR TRUE STORY has never been properly socialized or enculturated into our everyday conception/perspective…so we are each left with one of these: 

how to, or adopting the inclusive-generative-perspectival-lens different from the…exceptional-indidvidual-male-biased perspectival lens…required to then take the third step, after this one.

  What if we’re said we’re better because of what Africans showed us?






CONCLUSION

At this point you can appreciate how comprehensive this post is…let’s finish with WHAT WE CANNOT DO.

We cannot cherry pick our nation’s history

even though we do our own…which we shouldnt.

In our personal lives as well within our countrys/cultures we so much more to gain by admitying our fsilures than we do by hiding…lying about them.

Hardships that dont kill us make us stronger…but we are not benefitting bc we’ve never admitted it…owned it.



CONCLUSION
[image of slave hands in shackles]
This is THE  METAPHOR  for the CURRENT STORY we  are telling about our Nation.

We desparately need a story that mitigates the assassination of the Everyman leader.

By owning our past bad makes it a lot more likely that us being bad gets called out the next time.

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger
Positive Outcomes

While there are many potential negative consequences, some individuals may also experience positive outcomes, such as:
1. Personal Growth: Navigating a cultural identity crisis can lead to deeper self-understanding and personal development.
2. Cultural Hybridity: Some may find a unique blend of cultures that enriches their identity and fosters creativity.
3. Advocacy and Awareness: Individuals may become more engaged in cultural or social justice issues, advocating for diversity and inclusion.

Potent Tincture
Miasma

BIRTH OF A NATION CROSSED WITH BLACK PANTHER IS THE SOLUTION.
-the arts, sports, political representation, mindset,

we can’t agree upon what brings us strength vs weakness,

So it sits -not like regenerative otentoal- but like an untreated cancer festering spreading annhilating.

It’s a problem that we 21st century Americans still think about our history…our nation’s story…OUR CULTURAL identity myth…in the same way 17th century Americans did.

AND WE WILL ONLY EVER BE AS GOOD AS OUR SHARED STORY...EVER.

And not only do we now have a world of perspective on it, 400 years later, but we can and should be better than that.

 We cannot cherry pick the past but we can edit our story to gain MAXIMUM BENEFIT. WE MUST

17C Americans…we can’t possibly do everything we need to do to make this wild frontier livable without a lot of outside help…and here’s these people whose existing lives don’t amount to much that we can exploit to get whatever we want and then we’ll just cast them aside, so…no need to think about that because it really doesn’t matter.

 

21C Americans…we can’t possibly address our horrible slavery legacy because it’s way too huge, horrible, in the past, and wasn’t even us doing that to those people, so…no need to think about that because it really doesn’t matter.

 

Have you ever suffered something pretty awful by someone who was not held accountable? Or maybe you’ve actually been the awful unaccountable one? We all know how it makes everyone involved feel…it makes them feel like shit.

 

Everything about our country has evolved, grown, and changed around a stuck, stagnant, heavy baggage story…we must REALIZE THIS UNTRUE STORY IS THE ONLY THING HOLDING US DOWN OW.

 

 

By US looking the OTHER WAY regarding what our Founding Fathers devised…we look the OTHER WAY regarding OURSELVES as well. And it’s this ACT OF AVERSION where everything falls apart because if YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING…otherwise someone gets hurt including our truly exceptional and imperfect NATION.

 

Project 1619 is so very, very painful to absorb but until we do WE ARE BUSY DYING NOT LIVING. WE REMAIN IN PURGATORY INSTEAD OF LIVING UP TO THE STATUE OF LIBERTY CREED.

 

By not doing the chemotherapy, horrible as it is, we do not survive the cancer.

No pain no gain…it’s just that age-old simple.

 

I bet you plenty of Mayflower Pilgrims and later born colonists would have as big of an objection to Critical Race Theory or Project 1619 as the MAGAts do now. They should not be considered any different.

 

What they did was as wrong then as it is now…SO NOW WHAT?

 

 All those people spreading the bullshit about Crit Race theory are NOT the strapping Americans who forged this country…they are PUSSIES because they’re just afraid of the TRUTH.

 Having lived in NYC for the past 34 years, within the last 15 to 20, I do not see any whites holding minimum wage positions…none whatsoever. Ad I do notice an increase in white homeless on the streets.


IMAGE > Lynching White Pricks / Jesse Helms / Strom Thurmond / Trump

IMAGES > wealthy blacks from 1890s to1940s…Duke Ellington, Tulsa, etc.

IMAGES > all the black people we’re so grateful to have: Maya Angelou

America’s Story > TAKE ANN UFLINCHING LOOK AT OURSELVES
The response to Black success is punishment.


 
 
Ann O