American hedonism closes its eyes to death, and has been
incapable of exorcising the destructive power of the moment
with a wisdom like that of the Epicureans of antiquity.

- Octavio Paz
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

- Arnold Toynbee
"As long as such self-serving hypocrisy
motivates America's response, Ukraine will
only sink further into needless bloodshed,
and that blood will be on America's head."
applies only upwards, not downwards.

― Bertrand Russell
Global Coke
Global Coke
"What those 'racists' are reflexively and rightly reacting
to is the soulless chill as the fire goes out beneath the
melting pot. Those who think America can thrive as a

Global Coke
in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe
have grown to appalling dimensions.

― Frantz Fanon
What the United States does best is understand itself.
What it does worst is understand others.

- Carlos Fuentes
Poor Mexico, so far from God
and so close to the United States.

- Porfirio Diaz
"Indeed, everything about the American southland was magical
and exotic to the young Canadian musicians, from the sights
central role that music played in people’s everyday lives."

America is a mistake, a giant mistake.
- Sigmund Freud
America is an adorable woman chewing tobacco.
- Auguste Bartholdi
"This is the tone of the China Century, a subtle
mix of Nazi/Soviet bravado and 'oriental'
cunning -- easily misunderstood, and

Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
"And for the others who argued for English-only
patriotism, I note that there are more than
57 million Americans (about 20% of the nation)
whose first-language is not English...."

Coke and 'America the Beautiful'
"This is the behavior, and the fate, of paranoid

America is the only nation in history which
miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to
degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

- Georges Clemenceau
- Charles–Maurice Talleyrand
and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

- Edmund Burke
America is the only country ever founded on the printed word.
- Marshall McLuhan
-- why, exactly, has this civil rights cause
taken so long to gain momentum?"

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the
United States reactionaries use to scare people.
It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

- Mao Tse-tung

- Red Cloud
In America sex is an obsession,
in other parts of the world it is a fact.

- Marlene Dietrich
I would rather have a nod from an American,
than a snuff-box from an emperor.

- Lord Byron
One day the United States discovered it was an empire.
But it didn’t know what an empire was.

- Roberto Calasso
Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather
be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

- Alexis de Tocqueville
If you are prepared to accept the consequences of your dreams
then you must still regard America today with the same naive
enthusiasm as the generations that discovered the New World.

- Jean Baudrillard
I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
- Samuel Johnson
America, thou half brother of the world;
With something good and bad of every land.

- Philip Bailey
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
- Sir Walter Besant
Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by
posterity because he was the last to discover America.

- James Joyce
Now, from America, empty indifferent things
are pouring across, sham things, dummy life.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
If the United States is to recover fortitude and lucidity,
it must recover itself, and to recover itself it must
- Octavio Paz
The youth of America is their oldest tradition.
It has been going on now for three hundred years.

- Oscar Wilde
When good Americans die they go to Paris;
when bad Americans die they go to America.

- Oscar Wilde
jobs drug dealer
jobs drug dealer
jobs drug dealer

- Georg Friedrich Hegel

- Arnold Toynbee
- Winston Churchill
The thing that impresses me most about Americans
is the way parents obey their children.

- Edward, Duke of Windsor
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering
what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

- John Maynard Keynes
Europe was created by history.
America was created by philosophy.

- Margaret Thatcher

- Israel Zangwill
American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those
who have seen America only in their dreams.

- Pico Iyer
America: It's like Britain, only with buttons.
- Ringo Starr
It has never yet melted.

― D.H. Lawrence
I have two conflicting visions of America.

― Bono
The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror
of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis,
the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.

― Roberto Bolaño

July 18, 2019


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Pages: 1
Author Topic: The Reformed "American Identity"

New Member
Posts: 4
The Reformed "American Identity"
on: April 3, 2018, 23:08

I watched a video recently in which the speakers discuss how Native American imagery is widely depicted in mainstream American culture subconsciously, specifically in common merchandise (for ex. logos on clothing, food items, motorcycles and even sports teams). Jeffrey Brown, a speaker on the video draws an inference that even after the dark history involving wars, mass-killings and appropriation of the Natives' lands, mainstream America has embraced the Natives to be a part of the "American identity", specifically as symbol for being "authentically American".
This is an interesting idea because throughout American history of colonization, the "American identity" has been non-existent - there has always been the "white identity" in contrast with the "Native identity". The Whites enforced themselves upon the Natives to make them adopt to the British culture and identity, while the Natives resisted and fought back to maintain their Native identity and culture. In her paper "Why I am a Pagan". Native American writer Zitkala-Sa praises the culture and beliefs of her ancestors as opposed to the white Christian culture she was forced to adhere to. It is interesting to note that there is no mention of either detaching from or accepting anything America. Although this paper is from the 19th century established America, Zitkala-Sa does not express any opinion on it -- only recalls stories from the dark colonial times, and explains her ancestors' beliefs, ideologies, and culture which she wants to hold on to (putting down the whites' culture specifically from the colonial times).
I guess it is a progressive sign that the new generation mainstream Americans are perceiving the Native American culture as being ingrained in the overall unifying American culture. I think this is their attempt to form an American identity where the Natives represent its authenticity and historical backbone.

Link of Video:

New Member
Posts: 4
Mike McMichael Jr
Re: The Reformed "American Identity"
on: April 4, 2018, 22:28

I agree with the general sentiment of what you put forth here, although I think stating that "throughout American history of colonization, the 'American Identity' has been non-existent" is a bit of a fallacious statement. I think a better way of phrasing it would have been that what was conceived, cultivated and transmitted as an "American identity" was actually just a guise for whiteness and white privilege/supremacy. American identity was definitely an absolutely integral component of their enterprise of the highest order, best evidenced through the fact that American colonists literally detached themselves from the crown on their own will to forge an identity for themselves apart from it. You're mentioning of it being interesting that there is "no mention of either detaching from or accepting anything America(n)" in Zitkala-Sa's "Why I Am a Pagan" touches on the crucial tenet that dominant histories have the potential to completely supplant and subordinate what are considered less important histories to the point that they are rendered non existent. Perhaps this was Zitkala-Sa's goal in a sort of roundabout way; to treat American history and major narratives the same way in which they had treated those of her people?
I like to believe indigenous dispossession and assimilation narratives are being brought into mainstream discourse in the right manner as well- even though a lot of the time they are still presented as a means for dominant social groups (i.e. white people) to showcase their seemingly newfound ability for empathy and reconciliation, ultimately using the surfacing of these mitigated narratives to support their own agendas of moral aptitude and decency. Through a certain perspective things may indeed be looking up in these regards, but there is undoubtedly still a ways to go.

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