The End of the Myth, Greg Grandin

The End Of The Myth: From the frontier to the border wall in the mind of America by Greg Grandin is a book about the USA from a Yale Historian.  Yeah, so, gotta read that one...

Started: 6/1/2020

Completed: 6/5/2020

Recommendation: Recommended

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

This is an interesting look at how the concept of a "frontier" has strongly affected the way America grows and views itself.  One thing that is very well done is the effort to show how a border has morphed from a concept of an area of defense against attack, to a concept of an area where America is simply undermined by adding people to the country.  In the past, expanding into the frontier resolved problems because it was possible to just go somewhere else which was virgin territory.  Now, the frontier represents the last barrier against others infringing on the increasingly reduced availability of virgin territory.

It is worth noting that while individuals experience the border as a limit, changes to agreements (like NAFTA) allow for corporate growth without really looking at borders while, somehow, also providing within the structure of the agreement concepts that give the corporation supra-governmental control.  Built into these agreements are legal defenses that allow corporations to sue governments for profits that have not been realized due to legislation detrimental to the corporation (like clean water restrictions).  It is simply staggering.

As part of the post-Vietnam restoration, Reagan, the GOP, and the Tea Party have worked to destroy the social support structures that country.  More than half the population of the United States is living in poverty.  The country has turned over to a government that protects corporations at the cost of real people.  This is done through the concept of the frontier and protecting the border.  The wall is a "kind of geo-political realism" that argues that growth is a zero sum game (if I grow, you must recede).  The New Deal argued that "social citizenship" was important because growth was no longer the simple outlet to allow people to move to new areas.  Instead, we face corporations and governments that "exploit slave and cheap labor."  The very people who were once exploited for gain, become reminders that they can no longer be exploited in the same way.  Somehow, the conservatives (via Trumpism) have resulted in outrageous consumerism (like pulling out of the Paris agreement, which represented a restriction).  "Cruelty itself becomes a brazen show of American freedom."  How ghastly.  Once more, we see that cruelty is the point.