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CHAPTER XIV: EAST OF EDEN
But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”
~ East of Eden, p. 301.
The Expulsion of the Chosen People
But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”
~ East of Eden, p. 301.
The Expulsion of the Chosen People
The American writer John Steinbeck is arguably one of the great American literati not just of the twentieth century, but of the history of the American people. His stories of the American agrarian way, the simple protagonist, family strife, religious hope, and the life of the dust pilgrim, captured the trials and tribulations of the “common American” like no other writer could. His two great novels, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, were the quintessential embodiment of common hopes and woes. Of Mice and Men, an even more tragic tale in fewer than a hundred pages.
From the time of the arrival of the Pilgrims, Puritans, and Cavaliers, America had been considered the New Eden. And since the writings of Thomas Jefferson, especially in his Notes on the State of Virginia, in declaring the farmer, “the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue,”[1] the farming, or laboring, individual and family was always the prized image of American exceptionalism. Unlike the shady businessman, the unvirtuous banker, and the imperial schemer, all derivative of the Hamiltonian dream of American empire, the yeoman was the virtuous man of toil who sought the best for his family and his community. Even more latent leftwing writers like Christopher Lasch, would praise these simple folk as the last refuge of virtue and hard work in an increasingly narcissistic, individualistic, and materialistic culture of betrayal and backstabbing. J. Hecor St. John de Crèvecoeur, that famous French emigre to America, equally captured the farmer spirit in the eighteenth century. Given the continuation of the themes from Crèvecoeur in Steinbeck and Lasch, one can easily trace through American literature the image of the hardworking laborer and how that is the fountain of virtue. It was not the farmer per se, that was virtuous, but it is the toil and labor the farmer embodied and represented that was the cause of showing the praise of virtue upon the farmer.
The pioneers and settlers who trekked west, apart from the gold miners who sought to strike it rich quick, were generally farmers and simple folk. Establishing their townships which I had just covered in the previous chapter which were threatened and beaten down by the railroad companies and industrialization of certain Midwestern cities, it is understandable why these people were upset and agitated with the swift changes occurring all around them. These were people of attachment. Their grandfather made the dangerous journey on horse or wagon and built the farmstead. Their father had worked it and raised the children on it, eventually burying father (grandfather) in the back. Now with the next generation of inheritance, the gentle lands that had been cultivated were under siege by foreign forces, industrializing and mechanistic beetles, and the land that generations of a family had worked and been buried in were being stripped away from them.
A photo of an Oklahoman farming family in a temporary camp as they move westward.
The west, as I also covered in Chapter IV, was always the get-away frontier for many. As the east became crowded, urbanized, and a den of sin, these pioneers fled westward to find their little patch of Eden and work it piously. The western territories provided open opportunity and space in an increasingly contained and cramped east.
***
What was, several generations ago, a story of triumph, pioneer ingenuity, and the real American dream—not upward social mobility, but the ability to provide a sufficient living and lifestyle for oneself and one’s family without constant interference from others, especially the government—was now turned into a tragic story. Having found their garden to till and care far for eternity, many families were cast out and forced to wander like Cain. Struck with the mark of xenophobia, irrationalism, and backwardness, the farmers in the 1880s were literally marked apart from the “New America” that was being forged through fire and steel.
As the Great Plains was falling, and as the southwest was falling too, these farmers packed up and trekked to Central California for a last chance at a new beginning.
It is ironic, then, given California’s current state of existence, that it nevertheless retains the consciousness of being the state of new beginnings and the American Dream. And it is historically understandable why it is. California was the great land of gold and the Pacific dream—the first state where you could “get rich quick” and the state that consummated the dream of American Manifest Destiny. After the Civil War and the industrialization of the American Middle West and the devastation of the farmlands, hundreds of thousands fled to California as the last bastion of the American dream and to “begin anew.” California as the state where dreams were possible and a new beginning afforded was, originally, for the farming and laboring family rather than the startup commercialist.
Uprooted and unmoored, after, in some cases, a century of settlement and rootedness, these people driven from their homes, the places their fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers were buried, the place where their children had succumbed to disease or other forms of death, were—of course—resentful of those whom they considered the pillagers of their land and families. This is why eastern writers and cartoonists lampooned the populism of the West as scornful, resentful, and sectional, and prone to demagoguery by politicians, mostly Democratic in the 1880s-1890s, but occasionally Republican during the same time period, and much more commonly Republican after the 1900s, who decided to capitalize and the politics of frustration. But it is a truth of American government policy and history that the federal government did not care for the concerns of this disposed migrant dirt pilgrims.
The populist doctrine was not anti-government. Originally, the populist doctrine was about using the power of the federal government to benefit the toiling working-class union members and farmers who were the backbone of the populist movement. The cause of the populists would be familiar to us today. Populist newspapers and politicians excoriated the corruption and conspiracy of big business leaders in New York and Boston to hold captive the government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” for their own ends. Populist dogma held that there was a corrupt alliance of money, business, and the status-quo politicians who got rich from advancing the economic interests of the moneyed classes along the coast at the expense of poor working families west of the Atlantic.
A photo of Sequoia National Forest. The untouched and pristine wilderness of the far-west is what led to the belief that America was the New Eden. Generally growing to over 200 feet high and with some specimens living over 2,000 years, the sequoia tree is a state treasure to California and national treasure to the United States.
Having arrived at the Pacific there was no more room for these people to roam. No more room for these families to escape to. Finding the peace and solitude promised in the west was rapidly disappearing. If westward expansion was really a form of westward flight as I explored earlier, then the completion of westward expansion was the end of westward flight and it shouldn’t be surprising that the lands west of the Appalachian, even going to the Pacific Coast, were populist strongholds. While states like California suddenly transformed in the mid-twentieth century, the fact remains that the west was not the optimistic frontier as such, but the optimistic land in the sense of new beginning through flight and resentment of forces back east.
In this sense John Steinbeck captured the plight of the farmer and farming family, that chosen people of God if he ever had a chosen people, perfectly and unlike any other writer in American history. Steinbeck’s portrayal of the human condition and the strife of the farmer was a realistic one unlike Jefferson’s idealization. His portrayal of the virtuous hardworking father, who resented the gifts of the sons who swindled other hardworking men out of their money, the highest reflection of the “virtue” that Jefferson romanticized and Lasch spoke of in the 1980s and 1990s. Family breakdown in the midst of struggle and hardship was also something Steinbeck was able to portray in all of its tragedy. It is equally unsurprising that Steinbeck incorporates the plight of the farmer after the Civil War and into the twentieth century, those tumultuous 60-80 years that shaped much of American culture and consciousness in “Flyover Country.”
The story of the American farmer is one of acceptance, glorification, expulsion, rejection, and resentment—in that order too. At once the farmer was the accepted norm. At the birth of the country the farmer was glorified, his actions and embodied ethos deified as the best of what American democracy entailed. Then the farmer was expelled from his home, cast out in favor of mechanical monsters that would connect the lands of the United States. Expelled from their garden they were soon rejected wherever they went, then resented by those who had expelled them. The actions and embodied ethos of the farmer now the worst that American democracy entailed.
[1] Notes on the State of Virginia, p. 290.
SUGGESTED READING
J. Hecor St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer
David Danbom, Born in the Country: A History of Rural America
Guy Emerson, The New Frontier, a Study of the American Liberal Spirit, Its Frontier Origin, and Its Application to Modern Problems
John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden
Laura Wilder, Little House of the Prairie
J. Hecor St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer
David Danbom, Born in the Country: A History of Rural America
Guy Emerson, The New Frontier, a Study of the American Liberal Spirit, Its Frontier Origin, and Its Application to Modern Problems
John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden
Laura Wilder, Little House of the Prairie
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I love East of Eden. And not only for the fact that it actually mentions my hometown at one point, but for all the reasons you highlight here. Those tensions still exists, writ both large and small, and Central California maintains an identity opposed to the other parts of California because of those tensions.
I must confess I loathed Of Mice and Men, but then that might be in part the consequence of having it thrust down my throat for GCSE.
If the West is America's Eden, then -- extending the metaphor -- the closure of the frontier must be the moment where the angel took up the flaming sword to bar the way.
East of Eden may be my favorite novel by an American. Though I'm still prejudiced to prefer English writers over Americans. But Steinbeck is a national treasure. What is your home town's name if I may ask? We may have traversed this road before and I have forgotten, but I know you've referenced your Californian home several times. Is it somewhere in Salinas Valley?
While I disliked OMAM when I was younger (around your age if you read it for GCSE) it grew on me as I got older and gained a greater appreciation of literature. While I do not think it is of the same caliber of The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden, those three works serve as a troika of Steinbeck's writings on the pilgrim farming. I understand, now, the allegory contained in the story. Perhaps you should give it a re-read, or just go for Steinbeck's greater novels!
A vengeful angel, not a chubby baby-like cherub!
Genesis might be among my favorites work of literature of all time as we're discussing literature. Also the most profound and deep of the books of Moses too. And far superior to anything those utilitarian philosophers of modernity ever produced concerning the human condition.
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CHAPTER XIV EAST OF EDEN
The Revolt of the Dispossessed: The Agrarian Revolts of 1879
The continued plight of America’s farming class reached a boiling point two years after the Great Railroad Strikes of 1877. The Great Farming Strikes of 1879, or the Agrarian Revolts, pending the historiography, was the culmination of the agrarian revolt as it related to physical violence and use of agitated force to exert public outrage over economic and cultural developments.[1] The revolts broke the back of a president—William Wheeler, who had succeeded the war-hero Ulysses Grant in 1877—and prompted the nomination of the “only man who could save the republic after the trial of that terrible war”, William T. Sherman. Sherman’s reluctance was reflective of his a-political ambitions, but his acceptance was out of dedication to his country. The famous one-term president who declined to run for reelection, come 1884, remarked he had saved the country twice, and had no interest doing it again.The Revolt of the Dispossessed: The Agrarian Revolts of 1879
As the industrialization of the United States went into full swing, and the monopolized control over the economy grew on behalf of the big railroad companies, and then to big steel companies which fueled the construction of railroads, the farmers were the ones hardest hit. Hitherto described, the monopolization of the economy by the railroads broke the back of the farmers so much that bled dry, forced to seek refuge westward, and expelled from their towns and homes, the most agitated and militant of farmers took to the railroads and roads to disrupt commerce and industrial expansion. Like the Great Railroad Strikes of 1877, the Farming Strikes of 1879 were an occasion of a real Marxist revolution: the workers who controlled the means of productivity and life in general—the farmers who fueled the cities with their grain and plowed the prairies that sustained the growing American economy and urban way of life—literally did seize the means of production and attempt to leverage with the powers that be their bargaining chip: food.
The farming strikes begin.
The early strikes were successful for the farmers. Overwhelming the railroad outposts and seizing the small rural towns and their roads and other transportation systems, the farmers effectively brought to a halt the construction of new railroads and the movement of trains and other vehicles of commerce and industry wherever they stood. New England businessman George Bissell, one of the captains of the nascent oil industry who depended on railroads to transport crude oil to his refineries, opined that if the farmers stood in the way of progress then the farmers would have to suffer the new force of steel bayonets: the train that refused to stop. Likewise, Collis Huntington, a westcoast railroad baron, concurred. The farmers would have to be pushed out of the way if they could not be reasoned out of the way.
Initially, the many captains of industry employed private armies of their own to drive out the farmers. The bloody conflicts between farmers and private agents of the industrialists descended into anarchy and war. The farmers rallied to their cause with a vengeance and increased militancy. Men played drums and wove the American Flag as if reenacting the American Revolution—which many saw themselves preserving in this struggle. Unwilling to listen to attempted negotiations by nervous industrialists who feared the worse, the farmers began destroying railroads and pillaging railroad cars wherever they were stopped. Pennsylvania, in particular, was one of the hardest hit states in the Great Railroad Strikes of 1877 and again in the Farming Riots of 1879.
With the farmers engaged in property damage, the governors of many states had to call up the state militias to put down the rioters. But in some places the rioters, armed with their weapons and torches, kept the state militias at bay. President Wheeler was forced to declare a state of emergency and rallied the federal forces to put down the farming strikers. The bloodshed between Americans, especially federal soldiers shooting their fellow citizens, was not an uncommon sight or occurrence—but it was particularly tragic given the Great Railroad Strikes in 1877 that ended in a similar circumstance and now the Farming Riots of 1879.
Depictions of the Farming Strikes of 1879.
The songs of jubilation and exhilaration moved from:
It has caus'd a great sensation,
Throughout this mighty nation;
There has been a deal of trouble,
We've never heard the like.
With famine floods and earthquakes,
Fires, wars and drouths
And later worse than all the rest,
The railway strike.
(CHORUS)
Then come to the front,
Brother friend and neighbor,
In Union there is strength,
Join the Knights of Labor.
T'was the news thro' all the nation,
Gould agreed to arbitration,
Then we thought good times were coming,
As daylight after night.
Long, long will all remember,
The year of [seventy-nine],
When the country seems turned upside down,
About the railway strike.
(CHORUS)
'Tis a world of tribulation,
Full of sorrow and vexation,
Things go smoothly for awhile,
Then again go far from right,
But an end is now approaching,
To all our hopes and fears,
When the world will know if good or bad,
Attend the railway strike.
(CHORUS)
Throughout this mighty nation;
There has been a deal of trouble,
We've never heard the like.
With famine floods and earthquakes,
Fires, wars and drouths
And later worse than all the rest,
The railway strike.
(CHORUS)
Then come to the front,
Brother friend and neighbor,
In Union there is strength,
Join the Knights of Labor.
T'was the news thro' all the nation,
Gould agreed to arbitration,
Then we thought good times were coming,
As daylight after night.
Long, long will all remember,
The year of [seventy-nine],
When the country seems turned upside down,
About the railway strike.
(CHORUS)
'Tis a world of tribulation,
Full of sorrow and vexation,
Things go smoothly for awhile,
Then again go far from right,
But an end is now approaching,
To all our hopes and fears,
When the world will know if good or bad,
Attend the railway strike.
(CHORUS)
To:
Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll sing another song
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along
Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
Yes and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said and 'twas a handsome boast
Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the Host
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain
While we were marching through Georgia.*
Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along
Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found
How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
Yes and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears,
When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years;
Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers,
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
"Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!"
So the saucy rebels said and 'twas a handsome boast
Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the Host
While we were marching through Georgia.
(Chorus)
So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main;
Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain
While we were marching through Georgia.*
Although the election of Sherman as President brought an end to the Farming strikes, the Long Depression, and the anti-farmer bias, the crushing of the Farming Strikes of 1879 and the bloodshed that ensued was but another wound to the long history of grievances against the “chosen people.” But as Sherman walked out to give his inaugural to the shouts, “God bless the name of Sherman the name the country reveres!” the whimpering and healing wounds of the farmers were still floating in the wind.
[1] The Agrarian Revolts of 1879 are ahistorical from OTL, they are a reflection of in-game events tied to historicity.
*William Sherman, historically, disliked “Marching Through Georgia.”
I'm from Paso Robles, just south of the Salinas Valley, but still on the Salinas River. It's mentioned in East of Eden as the destination of a road. Monterey through Santa Barbara counties consider themselves a unique California region, so I'm not afraid to claim kinship there!
A vengeful angel, not a chubby baby-like cherub!
Cherubim are decidedly not cute baby-like creatures, and I'll happily cite scripture on that point. Or L'Engle for a change in pace.
Though can you imagine how different some of that art would have been with multi-faced, multi-winged, decidedly weird creatures in it?
Go oppressed farmers! Rise up and…oh.
Well, I'm just glad that did not disappoint at all, although I doubt that you might have heard of my rabble-rousing earlier, let just say, for the record, that I am happy that General-President Sherman's election has been delved into.
I like turning the in game revolts into strikes. Might use that idea myself later.
I figured it had to be around the Salinas Valley but wasn't sure as to where. Now I know!
Perhaps I could have phrased the cherub joke better, but would point out that the emoji should have indicated a joke. I was lampooning the fact that most cherubs are depicted like little babies with wings -- much like the header image for my Europa AAR. I'm well aware of the actual history and depiction of the cherubs going back to Near Eastern mythology, not to mention the Hebraic tradition. It wouldn't be all that intimidating to see a little baby with a harp guarding the gate to Eden now would it?
I had alluded to a Sherman presidency earlier. Though, we're not really covering the presidents at all in this AAR as it is not my focus to do a great man history. Nor do I subscribe to such historiography personally. The only president who will get significant time in this AAR is William Jennings Bryan, who has already been referenced and promised multiple times.
That was my thought as the game unfolded. Timeline fit so I'll just be weaving the in-game revolts with historical occurrences to make a plausible story as to why I had a bunch of revolts in the late 1870s. And again in the late 1880s leading up to the infamous "Cross of Gold" speech!
I thought that was what you were going for and was trying (not well enough) to reinforce the joke. It's also a bit of a pet peeve, probably why the joke failed.
On a different note, do you have thoughts on the idea that The Wizard of Oz is an allegory for the populists? I read it so long before I learned the history that I could never figure it that made sense or no, and it always seemed a bit of a stretch.
On a different note, do you have thoughts on the idea that The Wizard of Oz is an allegory for the populists? I read it so long before I learned the history that I could never figure it that made sense or no, and it always seemed a bit of a stretch.
You are referencing, directly or indirectly, Prof. Henry Littlefield's famous article. The assertion of allegory is plausible only if you accept Littlefield at face value and discount Baum's statements concerning his work. Dorothoy's shoes in the novel are silver. The doubt-filled scarecrow, as Littlefield asserts, is the self-doubting farming (scarecrow, get it?), and the tin-man the mechanistic laborer turned into a machine-like cog for the capitalist economy. The cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryan. So at face value it seems convincing, but Baum was not a populist and never said his work had such allegorical intention. That's good enough for me as someone who actually believes in authorial intention. Where authors indicate satire and allegory and that it was intentional is where I deal with literature. I'm ultimately unconvinced but Littlefield's article is worth a read as a great example of literary-historical criticism, something that I myself engage in professionally.
If I were ever out your way we could have an outing at the bar and discuss the depth of the Hebrew Bible, literature, and classics more generally.
...That's a lot of rebels. Forty-two thousand in Philadelphia alone! One is almost reminded of a simmering pot that, having been left unattended, has finally boiled and bubbled over, spitting scalding hot water into the face of anyone who dares to try to take it off the stove.
One is almost reminded of a simmering pot that, having been left unattended, has finally boiled and bubbled over, spitting scalding hot water into the face of anyone who dares to try to take it off the stove.
Even though I think authorial intent has its limits... yeah, I'm inclined to agree with Baum on this one.You are referencing, directly or indirectly, Prof. Henry Littlefield's famous article. The assertion of allegory is plausible only if you accept Littlefield at face value and discount Baum's statements concerning his work. Dorothoy's shoes in the novel are silver. The doubt-filled scarecrow, as Littlefield asserts, is the self-doubting farming (scarecrow, get it?), and the tin-man the mechanistic laborer turned into a machine-like cog for the capitalist economy. The cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryan. So at face value it seems convincing, but Baum was not a populist and never said his work had such allegorical intention. That's good enough for me as someone who actually believes in authorial intention. Where authors indicate satire and allegory and that it was intentional is where I deal with literature. I'm ultimately unconvinced but Littlefield's article is worth a read as a great example of literary-historical criticism, something that I myself engage in professionally.
If I were ever out your way we could have an outing at the bar and discuss the depth of the Hebrew Bible, literature, and classics more generally.
To be honest, I'm intrigued on how a Sherman Presidency would affect American culture. Especially in the realm of theater and literature, since those who once supported abolition and civil rights (whether accurately or not) will be invigorated by a President who was best known for wiping Slave Power off the face of the earth. For the average reformer/radical, there are strong similarities between the antebellum plantation master and the Gilded Age industrialist.
At the very least, I could imagine a world where whatever Sherman wrote about his Holy War might become required reading for high school English classes.
...That's a lot of rebels. Forty-two thousand in Philadelphia alone!
Farmer... er, Rebel scum!
You're absolutely right that Sherman, having a successful albeit one term presidency, will become a sort of new icon alongside Washington and Lincoln in this timeline. His Memoirs will certainly become standard reading in English and history classes in America, and will have many counties named after him - especially in the northern states. He will, of course, still be scorned in the south until Civil War memory fades and roadmarks of "Sherman's March" dot the landscape instead of statues.
Being a native of Ohio myself, and Sherman being from the Buckeye state, and being fascinated by deep Calvinism - and Sherman was a pretty devout Calvinist despite marrying into a Catholic family - are all reasons for me to like him (not withstanding other members of his family). I figured this was the only fitting way to get the man into the White House: The reluctant president, only as to preserve the republic he already fought to keep together years earlier. Had Sherman been nominated by the Republicans in 1884 historically, he would have more than likely had won, given that Blaine lost NY by 1000 votes, CT only by under 2000 votes and NJ and Indiana by like 4000ish votes. Had Blaine preserved the northern-Union CW voting pattern he would have won by a large EV margin even if a minimal popular vote threshold or even losing the popular vote. Alas, Sherman is only president from 1881-1885 in this AAR.
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If I were ever out your way we could have an outing at the bar and discuss the depth of the Hebrew Bible, literature, and classics more generally.
That would be delightful. I'm in Orange County now, but let me know if you ever trek out this way.
American populism, class resentment, regional discontent, and anti-corporatism, just about as American as Apple Pie and Baseball for those with a real knowledge of American history! Past parallels with today are nothing new at all -- perhaps the authAAR of this AAR is pushing that esoterically throughout the work!
*raises hand*
I am certainly getting a better understanding of today's political climate reading your updates than I ever get from the media outlets you have been bashing (and rightfully so). I see the parallels between then and now, and understanding what gave rise to William Jennings Bryan is giving me a better understanding of what gave rise to Donald Trump. Both men didn't just drop out of the sky and become President.
Is the media the "enemy of the people"? Yes. Most of America's established media network was funded and started by Alexander Hamilton and the Federalist Party to support his program and vision for the country and assailed Jefferson as a blood thirsty revolutionary Jacobin and belittled the "common man." Jefferson then began to support the counter media to Hamilton, and thus we have the media dialectic we see today at the very origin of America's independence. But why bother with facts of history if you take your marching orders from Vox, the NYT, or, alternatively, Fox News. But of course, in our age of cheap consumerism, no one wants to take the time to read hundreds of history books (often with competing historiographical claims) and articles, listen to hundreds of hours of lectures from professional academics, when you can just watch a shoddy 6 or 7 minute propaganda video on YT put out by Vox or a 1000 word op-ed from some dunce who knows next to nothing about American culture and history written at a fifth-grade English level (most national newspapers write at that level of English) and take that as gospel.
Of course, the media is what perpetrates the wild myths of American consciousness and self-understanding. How many people ever learn that the "Know Nothing" Party in the north enacted significant anti-slavery measures when they were briefly in power as I made mention in this AAR? How many people ever learn of the long history of American labor movements and labor agitation, along with the forced and "legal" oppression and suppression of labor movements? How many learn that the Republican Party, going back to its foundation, had strong nativistic, isolationist, Protestant moralist, and protectionist sentiments? (It's as if just because the Republicans abolished slavery that made them some "moderate" or "progressive" party.) Amnesia, amnesia, amnesia. Hmm. I hear about how Trump has destroyed the "Party of Lincoln," yet I, and many other academics (and people with PhDs and tenure unlike myself) have written and exposed the opposite: Trump's policies fit right into the old heart of the "Party of Lincoln."
When Americans say they distrust the media and institutions of higher education - and I say this as someone who has a M.A. from Yale and has published a great number of essays in media venues, not just academic - they are right. Anyone who thinks they receive an "unbiased" education and that the news should be, or used to be, neutral, let alone "objective," needs a reality check and should a real history book instead of whatever they learned in high school.
There's a reason I loathe cable news and most rag newspapers and magazines. While I have certainly been published by some publications of lesser quality (like Salon), the majority of my writings go to publications of the "higher journalism" which tend to have something uniform across them regardless of political, cultural, or religious orientation: a lot of academics write for them. But then again, these publications don't hide "what side" they're on or what perspective they write from. But you can learn a lot from them -- which is why I'm subscribed and read a multitude of such publications: Ranging from genuine socialist and communist publications (unlike Ocasio-Cortez or Sanders who are nothing more than extensive welfare liberals) to mainstream liberal publications and traditionalist venues. The only "objective" position that can be reached is when you read a lot and make your own conclusions.
This is why I've offered an extensive suggested reading list in many updates. These are the works I've read, but few others do. They offer an alternative to the usual tropes. And it just wouldn't be a volksmarschall AAR if I didn't tie historicity to the wacky game events!
I hope that through this AAR people will gain a greater understanding and appreciation for American history, and also to see why the recent political dynamics aren't really new at all.
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