The Birth of a New American Mythology

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Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2021

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 15 We are witnessing the birth of a new national mythology in America, and it is not good news. Imperfect as it was, the old one was better, warts and all, and it needs to be fought for. This new mythology turns the story of America on its head, positioning it not as having been born in the pursuit of freedom and liberty in 1776 but in slavery and evil in 1619. It has mainstreamed itself since the 1960s but especially over the last five years as it used Trump's presidency as a foil to legitimize its pseudo-real description of America for millions, and now it has gained the beginnings of cultural hegemony (which it is already abusing). This magic narrative has been and remains the key to their power. This new mythology is using its own narrative about Trump's presidency and, especially, the events that took place at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as a pivotal moment in its story arc, where it finally gained the upper hand on more than 400 years of evil and could usher in a new world order based on equity, guaranteed by the "perfected" state apparatus and its corporate partners (especially in tech). The thing is, while the real American story genuinely is the story of freedom, this new alternative, of "liberation," is based not in truth but in alchemy, and like all such regimes, it will therefore end in catastrophe. Lead, as it sees our history, cannot be changed into gold, as it views our future through its manic utopian lenses, and drinking potions of cinnabar will not make people live forever but will slowly poison them into madness. Join James Lindsay as he tries to make sense of the events we have been watching unfold over the last few days and years, relying in an unexpected way, if you'll believe it, on the postmodern philosophers who in some ways saw this danger first. Support New Discourses: paypal.me/newdiscourses patreon.com/newdiscourses subscribestar.com/newdiscourses youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg/join Website: newdiscourses.com Follow: facebook.com/newdiscourses twitter.com/NewDiscourses instagram.com/newdiscourses pinterest.com/newdiscourses/ linkedin.com/company/newdiscourses minds.com/newdiscourses reddit.com/r/NewDiscourses Podcast: @newdiscourses podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-…es/id1499880546 play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#…nzwvdjjpd6gg3cmuy open.spotify.com/show/0HfzDaXI5L4LnJQStFWgZp stitcher.com/podcast/new-discourses © 2021 New Discourses. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Hello everyone it's James Lindsey you're listening to the new discourse's podcast welcome
0:27.1	to the beginning of the end of the world so
0:31.8	last year in March I wrote an essay a new discourse.
0:37.0	This is actually one of the earlier essays I wrote where I had visited the National
0:41.5	Archive and I had visited the National Archive and I had seen the way that they have things
0:45.6	organized and I was struck with this idea that there were two American
0:48.9	stories and I think this essay basically dives into the idea of the two American stories and that we have to be able
0:56.8	to tell the true American story, which in some sense you could say it starts with the colonies but in some sense really
1:04.8	starts with the opening section, opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence from
1:10.8	July of 1776. And that sort of of that led to eventually the abolition of slavery, eventually the Civil Rights Acts, and the end of segregation
1:29.0	and the end of
1:35.0	racism. I don't think that you can drive racism all the way out of people
1:41.0	in their hearts, but functionally speaking it really, really has been reduced or had been reduced.
1:49.3	I think it's on an upswing for a reason, and I was comparing in the essay against the critical
1:54.8	race theory narrative about America which posits instead that America was created in as a slaveocracy in 1619 and that slavery and
2:09.7	its maintenance were there was the main reason for the the revolutionary war in the 1770s.
2:18.8	And this presents two very different visions.
2:21.4	The critical race theory story of America is one of racism
2:25.0	and then more racism and in fact the the story in critical race theory
2:29.6	begins from the first assumption that it has which is that racism is the ordinary state of affairs in society, not an aberration from them.
2:37.5	And then the second assumption of critical race theory is that it's called interest convergence. It's that white people specifically only
2:48.8	help minority races but especially black people when it's in their own self-interest to do so and therefore racism doesn't actually go away
	...

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