by Russell Banks
If ever there was a timely book to read this is it for it is the Story of America and we came to where we are today. The first half of the book argues that the mythology portrayed by American movies does us a disservice for the fantasy these movies project do not match reality. Our nation was founded for materialistic gain based on the backs of “Others” to produce the American Dream. Others are anyone not Christain and white for there were three distinct groups who populated America. Thus West Africans who arrived here in droves as slaved having never been referred to as immigrants. were originally black slaves rather than black immigrants and yet immigrants they were. So starting with the march across the contintent where we eliminated the American Indian was the beginning of our feeling that we were following a Manifest Destiny which led to Nationalism which led to the invastion of Iraq and on and on.
I have a feeling that many people will take offence at what he says for we do not cope well when people disagree with our general ideas of what makes an American.
For information on Russell Banks and a listing of his books and other writings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Banks
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Personally I am going to have to diagree with his book. I dont have an issue with people pointing out the problems of America, as long as they bring up a reasonablly good way to fix the issue. This book does not. Banks repeatedly points out numerous flaws, and then just skips ahead on to whatever else he was thinking of at the time. I also disagree with his views about the country. I do not believe we still have a major conflicting issue with race. We only have a huge issue with race when people try to seperate themselves from the national identity (that horrible creature according to Banks as nationalism) as seperate identities-african american, spanish american, european american, japanese american, arabic-americans-damn it we are all americans. We wouldnt have near as many issues if we didnt try to snuggle up to all these different groups and just treat everyone the same.
The blunt attacks in this book are ridiculous. And I'm talking about how he directly criticizes the administration for inspiring fear into americans right after 9/11. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the terrorists, crashing planes into our buildings and killing thousands at the same time, did that. He acts as though bush inspired fear into us to make us go to war. And then he talks as to how horrible nationalism is, as it rips apart our identity and unites it as one "tribal" identity that is dangerous to humanity. Your damn right its dangerous. To those that choose to mess with our nation. Banks writes as though, if he were in power, that he would have just sat on his lazy ass after we were attacked, because it would be attacking as though we were conquerors by invading other nations that were harboring terrorists.
So you'd think that the answer that would satisfy him would be to pull back, and isolate ourselves. Nope, he rants on that too. I dont think any answer would satisfy this man, other then to sit in a field running with rabbits and wildlife while smoking a blunt with the major leaders of the world and suggest that we all just become peace loving hippies and hug one another.
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