"Tis the Season to Examine Myths

This Thanksgiving invoking the Norman Rockwell holiday - a mythological feast about pilgrims and Indians sitting down like buddies giving thanks to a version of the Christian god for a successful harvest – has passed. Add the heart-warming scene of the harmonious American family, every member home for the holiday, sitting down happily together feeling blessed by their Maker for the over-eating opportunity their country has provided.

Whatever its real, less fanciful history, and however dysfunctional family get-togethers really are, this holiday season beginning with the American Thanksgiving is the perfect time to remind us as we count down to a major election in less than a year that nations promote many myths that sustain them.

In the field of religious studies, identifying a myth is not a comment on the historical accuracy of the story in question. History happened back then. But a myth is any story that says something meaningful to someone today.

It can be historically accurate (or not), but its power and meaning is that it informs, directs, justifies, and touches emotions about framing the present. And all countries have myths that teach from childhood what loyal citizens of the nation are supposed to believe about what it means to be American, French, Chinese, Egyptian, or whatever.

Beyond the religious myths of this season are the national myths that sanctify ideals that the powers that be want represented as part of national identity. They’re taught by schools and other institutions so incessantly that they become unquestionably so.

Whether or not George Washington ever really chopped down any cherry tree, we’re to understand that honesty is American, while those who teach it might be as dishonest as it takes for them to maintain privileged societal positions.

The power of these dominant myths can obscure any historical inaccuracy. And if so, they can teach ideas that are good for enforcing the way things are, with the current powers, prejudices, and expectations in place.

They discourage as hopeless the chances of anyone who wants to change the system and its power structure. And doubters and questioners are suspect of something like treason.

LGBTQ people, people of color, and others who’ve missed out on mainstream privileges, know the dominant myths about their communities that support prejudice. They stumble over them regularly -- running into those who’ve accepted myths about them without question and hearing them repeated in the media.

How fitting, then, when celebrating a season tied to Americana, to remember two major national myths that keep people disempowered. Myths that a deep reading of American history -- not the official history of our schools -- proves are historically false. Myths that if exploded would no longer hinder everyday people from believing that they can change things.

Myth 1: The salvation of this country is in electing great leaders who will solve our problems because presidents and other big heroes are responsible for America’s progress.

There are people who continue to expect some outsider from the business world to be some special savior. So they think that just supporting the right person would produce progress.

They didn’t want to believe that he too was already actually a part of an established system. They wanted to believe that he would be different enough in some heroic way to somehow change the old ways that transcend the two entrenched political parties, including the party in which he was skillful enough to climb to the top.

The historical reality is that this is not how populist change has ever taken place in the US no matter how much we think the solution would be the election of even another Lincoln or FDR.

It’s the social movements of the everyday people that moved our leaders. When so moved, leaders then took credit for what was accomplished as a result: “There go the people, let me get out in front of them and look like I’m leading.”

American historian Howard Zinn concludes from his exhaustive study that American mythology downplays, even omits, the importance of everyday people’s social movements and thus --

 “a fundamental principle of democracy is undermined: the principle that it is the citizenry, rather than the government, that is the ultimate source of power and the locomotive that pulls the train of government in the direction of equality and justice.”

Myth 2: The wars we continually enter are forced on us by the needs of the American people but ended because of the heroics of great leaders. Yes, there might have been a few “bad” wars, but they were necessary.

Historically, it’s the exact opposite. Zinn shows that war:

“is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort – by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion – to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war.”

In 1917 the government sent 75,000 lecturers around the country to give 750,000 lectures to persuade the people that it was right to enter World War I. Thousands of people were put on trial and imprisoned to suppress opposition.

FDR, as James Polk before him for the Mexican War, Lyndon Johnson after him for the Vietnam War, and George W. Bush for the Iraq War, had to lie to the American people to convince them to support entrance into World War II.

Historian Thomas Bailey, portrays this in what he thinks is a positive light:

“Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly deceived the American people during the period before Pearl Harbor… like a physician who must tell the patient lies for the patient’s own good... because the masses are notoriously shortsighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats.”

Wars begin for business reasons and end when the people have had enough. Everyday people and their movements force an end when they rise up, realize their power, and demand change.

The fact that these two basic national myths (there are others) are untrue is a reminder that, yes, we’re not stuck with the present. We can make change.

It’s not hopeless if we choose to act in hope. We don't have to even wait for the right leader, Democrat or Republican, to do the right thing.

Zinn: “no pitifully small picket line, no poorly attended meeting, no tossing out of an idea to an audience or even to an individual should be scorned as insignificant.”

Before the election season is in full swing, the holidays are a good time to prepare for it by rereading the history beneath our national myths. How about, Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present?