Thread by @GoyaGokou

In essence Country today descend from the learning of the past. For the US 1776 is year 0. It was this America seeped in British political/philosophical/legal/Cultural/Economic thinking and ways. French influences outside Montesquieu and French literature was minor.

This America was insular in a way not so unlike Japan, it took bits and pieces from Europe afterwards (The Revolutionary War and War of 1812 closed the UK off in a deep sense, while the French Revolution, Napoleon, Monarchy again held little sway in the US.

This America was insular in a way not so unlike Japan, it took bits and pieces from Europe afterwards (The Revolutionary War and War of 1812 closed the UK off in a deep sense, while the French Revolution, Napoleon, Monarchy again held little sway in the US.

The US mirror largely ignored the rest of Europe save for the UK and aspects of France. The French Revolution, Kant, Hegel , Marx are alien to Americans save for a tiny elite because the country has never deserted it's foundational texts 1776 & 1789 conceptually.

The US mirror largely ignored the rest of Europe save for the UK and aspects of France. The French Revolution, Kant, Hegel , Marx are alien to Americans save for a tiny elite because the country has never deserted it's foundational texts 1776 & 1789 conceptually.

The Material and religious instead of conflicting with one another as it largely would in Europe came to mutually reinforce one another "City On A Hill", "Manifest Destiny", "American Dream" married material progress to the sacred space of a metamorphosing ideal.

This "yes and" rather then "either or" pluralism allowed for a never ending space of being and to be. Individual consciousness rather then politics or economics would determine the American Creed. Thus this Belief in the American project has always contained a strong current..

Of faith in at least some type of higher power since it would be impossible to maintain in a strictly secular materialist worldview, hence why even in today's America 90% of the US population still believes in some type of higher power in contrast to Europe despite US wealth...

and education being generally higher then Europe's. Whistle's Puritan mother- Grant Woods plain-isms have produced this imagery of pie-piety America that even most Americans still buy ironic or not.

America: The Impossible Country.

@threadreaderapp unroll