A vignette on the feed: an elderly couple introduced to Star Wars in the 80s—recognizing it as allegory for French resistance.
Never cared for Star Wars. Before today, would just say it's too high fantasy.
Now realizing how said genre accommodates Usian WWII nostalgia—palpable as background of an 80s childhood—a far far away epic battle of good vs. evil, dehistoricized to a futuristic long long ago.
Detached from the U.S. cultural exports that made Nazi ideology thinkable in the first place.
Days after coming to above realization vis-à-vis Star Wars as ahistoricized Usian WWII nostalgia—divorced by way of high fantasy from any culpability for the cultural exports that made the Nazis and their Stormtroopers possible…
Roommate greets me today with a fundraising letter—laden with words like "valiant" and "epic"—for the National WWII Museum, wherein folk are asked to generously join the "Honor Roll" .
An accompanying brochure includes quotes from media figures, incl. Steven Spielberg.
To be clear, we need museums. We need history.
But somehow me thinks the "whole story of [all Americans'] epic struggle" (the word "whole" and "all" being italicized for emphasis in form asking for tick-box donations of up to $10K) this museum aims to tell won't dwell overly much on Jim Crow or Indian Law or the Progressive Eugenics movement and the "moron scare".
Italicized "all" here is nod to representation. Representation that glorifies the "lasting benefits" of the "American experience".
When you look around and see fascism at every turn, and Usians doing nothing about it, this is part of why.
Yes, same disassociative apathy happened in Weimar Germany. For Usians, there's another factor.
We were raised on sanitized fairy tales where the only bad things that happen are epic struggles where good defeats evil, after which happily ever after.
We're waiting for the epic struggle. So we can be the good guys defeating the bad guys. The bad guys ain't yet epic enough for our tastes.
Also (writing this on my phone so can’t see all thread context, sorry) liberals have been taught that the final clash is a vote so they all think of the vote as the end. “Enjoy the camps” means they don’t imagine resistance after a vote where Trump wins.
Liberals certainly have a very abstracted sense of what resistance/opposition is and how it shifts as a function of contextual factors: