Unlearning the Myth of American Innocence by Suzy Hansen.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/08/unlearning-the-myth-of-american-innocenceguillaumeb
(42,641 posts)but we also knew the reality of how the US behaves in its relationships with other countries. Even neighbors. US history is more mythstory than history.
Girard442
(6,083 posts)It took me a long time to realize that the raucous tumult of New York was infinitely freer than the genteel civility in the state of Missouri where I grew up. A multitude of sins seethed below that thin skin of civility.
Solly Mack
(90,779 posts)The thing is, not all Americans have to unlearn the myth.
You grow up aware of the lie of "with freedom and justice for all" and you grow up knowing America likes to lie about what it is and isn't as a nation.
I'll say - likes to pretend about what it is and isn't - if it makes people feel better, but the end result is the same for those of us who grew up knowing that there wasn't freedom for all and justice could be bought, and not just with money - the color of your skin could buy it too.
That your gender changed how you were seen and treated.
That your sexuality changed it as well.
When you know from an early age that the America you see and experience isn't the America others see and experience, you feel like an outsider - and not just because you're treated that way either. It can play with your head and you wonder what's wrong with you. It's hard to trust a system that allows for so much harm.
My favorite parts.
Wow, a friend once replied. How strange. That is a very quiet kind of fascism, isnt it?
It was a quiet kind of fascism that would mean I would always see Turkey as beneath the country I came from, and also that would mean I believed my uniquely benevolent country to have uniquely benevolent intentions towards the peoples of the world.
I truly hope more people read this article.