Heading out to the "frontier" to get away from other folks and find happiness has now transitioned to putting up walls to keep away from those folks we could just leave behind before, with the promise that the pot of gold was waiting for us when got there. The author has a point to make about the United States, its very lengthy infatuation with the "frontier" and how the lack and/or significant changes in what the frontier is, at any given time in history, has led the country to, well, walls.
Despite a bit too much academia wording in the early going, for me, it read much more like a long - okay, extra long - magazine article in something like The Atlantic or The New Yorker. Yes, this book was written by a history professor, but it does not read like a typical history book, and certainly not like a school textbook. The border wall may or may not be built, but it will survive as a rallying point, an allegorical tombstone marking the end of American exceptionalism. It is this new reality, Grandin says, that explains the rise of reactionary populism and racist nationalism, the extreme anger and polarization that catapulted Trump to the presidency. And now, the combined catastrophe of the 2008 financial meltdown and our unwinnable wars in the Middle East have slammed this gate shut, bringing political passions that had long been directed elsewhere back home. But this deflection meant that the country’s problems, from racism to inequality, were never confronted directly. For centuries, he shows, America’s constant expansion – fighting wars and opening markets – served as a “gate of escape,” helping to deflect domestic political and economic conflicts outward. history – from the American Revolution to the War of 1898, the New Deal to the election of 2016.
In The End of the Myth, acclaimed historian Greg Grandin explores the meaning of the frontier throughout the full sweep of U.S. Today, though, America hasa new symbol: the border wall.
Symbolizing a future of endless promise, it was the foundation of the United States’ belief in itself as an exceptional nation – democratic, individualistic, forward-looking. A new and eye-opening interpretation of the meaning of the frontier, from early westward expansion to Trump’s border wall.Įver since this nation’s inception, the idea of an open and ever-expanding frontier has been central to American identity.
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