People really fall for the “America used to be great” propaganda, huh?
Did no one learn anything in middle school history? We definitely covered ✨the 1900s✨, which featured multiple world wide depressions/ressessions that the US was not exempt from, two world wars where millions of people died, the great dust bowl and famine, and plenty of corruption. Most of which happened just before or during our grandparents lives. It’s not like we’re talking about the colonial era of this continent or something.
At least part of my education starting at the turn off the century, we were taught these things happened but that once they were over it was a solved problem, never to happen again.
For me there was a narrative that post 1950 the US was the pinnacle of humanity, the best place on earth. Cold war, Vietnam, Korea, all things on the other side of the world from our walled garden. Civil rights was just a few people in the south having disagreements and 9/11 was either swept under the rug or passed off as some dumb dirty Arab who was irrationally angry and lashed out.
It took me moving to the big bad city for college, where I was supposed to be shot every 5 minutes and robbed of everything including the clothes on my back, to have that world view crack enough to begin questioning what I was told. When I did, I was instantly ostracized from my rural upper midwest hometown and became barely tolerated by my family.
The blinders are very real and it’s too easy to ignore uncomfortable truths
Become? Always has been.
People really fall for the “America used to be great” propaganda, huh?
Did no one learn anything in middle school history? We definitely covered ✨the 1900s✨, which featured multiple world wide depressions/ressessions that the US was not exempt from, two world wars where millions of people died, the great dust bowl and famine, and plenty of corruption. Most of which happened just before or during our grandparents lives. It’s not like we’re talking about the colonial era of this continent or something.
At least part of my education starting at the turn off the century, we were taught these things happened but that once they were over it was a solved problem, never to happen again.
For me there was a narrative that post 1950 the US was the pinnacle of humanity, the best place on earth. Cold war, Vietnam, Korea, all things on the other side of the world from our walled garden. Civil rights was just a few people in the south having disagreements and 9/11 was either swept under the rug or passed off as some dumb dirty Arab who was irrationally angry and lashed out.
It took me moving to the big bad city for college, where I was supposed to be shot every 5 minutes and robbed of everything including the clothes on my back, to have that world view crack enough to begin questioning what I was told. When I did, I was instantly ostracized from my rural upper midwest hometown and became barely tolerated by my family.
The blinders are very real and it’s too easy to ignore uncomfortable truths