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Inventing a Nation Using Imported Illusions [1]
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Date: 2025-06-02
“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.” Joseph Campbell
Donald Trump’s aspirational slogan, Make America Great Again, is a modern expression of what religious historian Mircea Eliade called the Myth of Eternal Return—the belief that myth and ritual can restore a sacred, idealized past. For Trump, this “sacred time” is the 1950s, the zenith of the so-called American Century. In that postwar decade, U.S. industrial might towered over a devastated Europe and Japan. The Marshall Plan enriched American industries, reinforcing the country’s role as a global superpower. Trump’s longing for the 1950s is not merely nostalgic—it is a regressive vision grounded in racial hierarchy and patriarchal order.
Beneath the nostalgic veneer of “greatness” lies a radical, reactionary agenda: reimposing patriarchy, restricting women’s autonomy, ending immigration, reversing the demographic shift toward a more diverse America, privileging Christian cultural dominance, and dismantling decades of civil rights progress. LGBTQIA+ people are to be erased from public life. Climate science is rejected. Manufacturing, which has long been outsourced, is promised a resurrection through nationalism and tariffs. “America First” morphs into “America Alone.” To many conservatives, the 1950s represent a golden age. MAGA promises a return. But its real result would be a systematic rollback of seventy years of hard-won social, cultural, and political gains.
Trump’s agenda is not theoretical—it is underway. With each Executive Order, policy announcement, and cultural cue, the fantasy is made material. It began with his successful campaign appeal to bro culture and his relentless attack on the trans community. He pledged to “protect” women—whether they wanted it or not—erasing autonomy in favor of patriarchal authority. His assault on immigration has gone beyond violent offenders; all refugee programs were shuttered except for those favoring white South Africans. Temporary Protected Status was revoked for hundreds of thousands of individuals, forcing many to return to dangerous conditions. Federal DEI programs were eliminated, and that purge has spread to corporations. “Merit” is redefined in ways that once again privilege white men regardless of qualifications. An unqualified white appointee with little experience replaced a qualified Black Secretary of Defense. Voter suppression has been codified under the guise of stopping “illegal voting,” propping up Trump’s Big Lie. Climate change mitigation was discarded in favor of “drill, baby, drill.” His tariffs, far from revitalizing manufacturing, sparked chaos. His rejection of allies and global cooperation has left the U.S. more isolated than ever.
MAGA is merely the latest iteration of America’s long tradition of illusion-branding. From its founding, the United States has relied on myths like “all men are created equal,” “manifest destiny,” and “the land of the free”—hypernormalized ideals that projected virtue while concealing systemic inequality. Rather than inventing a new mythology, the Founders rebranded British illusions for American use. The new republic was to be made “great”—for the first time.
Britain’s core political illusion was the divine right of kings, a belief that monarchs ruled by God’s will and were beyond reproach: this sanctioned authoritarianism and crushed dissent. In America, divine authority was transferred from monarch to nation. The U.S. became the “city on a hill,” ordained by God to spread liberty and enlightenment. No longer a sovereign’s divine right, it became a national destiny—“manifest destiny.” Both justified conquest by claiming moral superiority, but now the nation itself was sacred.
Similarly, Britain’s aristocratic hierarchy, rooted in birthright, was replaced by the American myth of the self-made man—a meritocracy in theory but not in practice. Privilege was still passed down generationally, by class in Britain and by wealth in the U.S. Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches tales, starting with “Ragged Dick” in 1867, perpetuated this illusion. These were moral parables, not blueprints for success. Yet they shaped national imagination, justifying inequality by suggesting achievement was purely a matter of effort.
The Glorious Revolution in England of 1688 offered another mythic template. In Britain, it was remembered as a peaceful transition that secured constitutional liberty and parliamentary control. In reality, it excluded most of the population. In America, the Revolution was portrayed as the fulfillment of that promise—liberty perfected in the New World. Influenced heavily by John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, American revolutionaries embraced the language of natural rights and resistance to tyranny. But the same exclusions remained: women, Indigenous peoples, and enslaved people were denied the very rights celebrated in America’s founding documents. And the corrections took hundreds of years.
American myths repeatedly substituted British illusions with American versions. Britain’s fixed class system became “All men are created equal”—an obscuring of continued inequality. The British Empire claimed to civilize; America claimed exceptionalism, asserting a divine mission to lead the world. Both rationalized conquest. In America, that included genocide of Native peoples, forced removals, Indian boarding schools, broken treaties, and cultural erasure. Chattel slavery was just as brutal. Continental expansion was achieved through war and purchase. Overseas imperialism began under President William McKinley—Trump’s avowed hero—who annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaiʻi, and the Philippines.
Britain’s Common Law was said to provide equal justice but primarily shielded the powerful. The American version—the “rule of law”—became a similarly hollow promise. Slavery, segregation, and mass disenfranchisement were all legally upheld. Today, justice remains out of reach for many due to wealth-based inequities: cash bail, limited defense access, discriminatory policing, and disparate sentencing.
America was not born free from illusion; it was constructed on a reworked set of British myths tailored to an American identity. Myths of liberty, divine favor, and exceptionalism were not cast off—they were reimagined to serve a new American identity. In contrast, new illusions such as meritocracy were invented to suit American ambitions. And while these myths projected idealism, they obscured deep and enduring injustice.
The phrase “all men are created equal” echoed Britain’s myth of equal justice under the law. But both masked a reality of entrenched inequality. The American republic did not correct Old World injustices—it offered a more seductive disguise for them.
These illusions endured—and evolved. Rather than fading, they deepened, reinforcing a national fantasy even as inequality calcified. Hypernormalization—the systemic masking of distorted realities—was embedded from the start.
Founders like Alexander Hamilton and John Adams distrusted direct democracy. Fearing “mob rule,” they built a system of elite control: the Electoral College, a Senate chosen by state legislatures, and lifetime-appointed judges. These institutions were not expressions of democratic will but buffers against it. Today, disparities in population between states render the Senate and Electoral College profoundly undemocratic. Recent manipulation of the Supreme Court nomination process has yielded a 6–3 conservative majority, underscoring the enduring nature of elite control.
Even the Revolutionary War, mythologized as a popular uprising against tyranny by farmers and tradespeople, ultimately served the interests of the elite. Many colonial leaders chafed at British restrictions on trade and land. Independence served seizing economic power. It also saw the manufacturing North benefit over the agrarian South, while slaveholders, land speculators, and westward expansionists saw new opportunities.
American myth sanitizes violence. We “settled” the land rather than colonizing it. We revere “pioneers” rather than conquerors. We speak of “thirteen colonies” without acknowledging their imperial character. In doing so, we obscure the genocide of Native peoples, chattel slavery, and mass ecological destruction, including the slaughter of millions of bison that supported Indigenous life. Manifest destiny became a sacred justification—a divine mission to build a new Eden ordained by God.
In place of honest history, America constructed a mythology of divine virtue. But this fantasy masked brutal realities. Myth made conquest sacred. And myths endure because they feel true—even when they are not.
So, what is the cost of clinging to these myths today? And what would it mean to let them go finally?
Day 134: days left to January 20, 2029: 1,328 days
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