On myth-making and reality-denying

Myths are interwoven with any country's history. I assume I am speaking to non-Pollyannish people. 

Remember the "Roots" TV mini-series? The book author Alex Haley admitted there was a myth element there. As I recall, he was quoted saying the African-American community needed some myths just like any other element or culture. The "myth" at issue with "Roots" was the evil white people with nets going out and about to capture the black Africans. 

Slavery was evil on its face, naturally. But since it was U.S. white people in the South clinging to slavery primarily, let's point fingers accordingly. The South clung with a fighting spirit in the Civil War, and lost. And was trampled. And suffers to this day to a certain extent. Really. 

Slaves were losers in indigenous conflicts who were sold by the winners. But the myth of raw white predation didn't seem too off-base, because of the whites' ultimate culpability with the institution in spades. 

Fighting slavery? That's a big part of what the Mexicans were doing in their assault on the Alamo in Texas. We are learning more and more about the myth of the Alamo. The myth got ingrained in spades by popular entertainment which my generation, the boomers, soaked in. Walt Disney dished it out. Hoo boy, John Wayne dished it out. 

Wayne made his whole "thing" the idea of Anglo-Saxon virtue in the face of supposed threats. The Alamo incident fit in with the notions or agenda of such people. The attitude was really an iteration of "make America great again." It was evident as far back as 1960 with the John Wayne movie. The actor didn't even trust JFK. Was that because of the Catholic connection? 

Don't you see? Fear and paranoia get in the minds of these people. We see it with the men wearing the MAGA caps today. Psychologists have tried to interpret these men. What is the wellspring for them, their thoughts about how "the other" is always hovering out there? Psychologists suggest that the problem - let's be gender specific - is that they "didn't get enough love" when they were young. Profoundly sad, I would suggest. 

Not only that, I would suggest that men for ages have suffered far more than we acknowledge from weak or nonexistent sex education. Look at Andrew Cuomo now. What kind of sex ed did he get as a child? Was he counseled on how best to deal with feelings toward the opposite sex (assuming he's heterosexual)? 

We need to take such questions seriously, not to chuckle or sniff or whatever. Political conservatives of course are most rankled by suggestions of the need for more direct sexual counseling. My mother had "the talk" where she really just talked about bees pollinating flowers etc. Might be grist for a comedian's routine. But I implore you: it's not funny. Look at Bill Cosby! What kind of counseling did he get as a boy? 

Conservatives would say that talk about raw sexual impulses is just verboten. How then is a young person supposed to handle the thoughts that eventually come about? A boy would likely experience mystery and fear. Let's not underestimate the fear element. I went though this. I watched the Annette Funicello beach movies without understanding what was happening to my body. 

Somehow I got through life without the disruptive things that have happened to Bill Cosby and Andrew Cuomo. The latter pleaded that our culture has changed. He is right, just as we have changed from allowing anyone to light up a cigarette almost anywhere. That is a sea change. Gone too is the notion that men must pursue women in a way that allows them to ignore barriers. A "real" man wouldn't accept "no" and would realize that the woman is in fact receptive - she just wants him to be assertive, right? To show he's a "real man?" 

I don't take any chances with this kind of game-playing, would consider it abundantly risky. I don't know what kind of behavior a woman would really accept or want. My "fear" is based on this. I "play it safe" and cultivate no such relationship. Sad? Maybe. I'm 66 years old and probably beyond any new realization about things. 

But hey, let's get back to the subject of the Alamo and myth-making. It may be harmless to remember Betsy Ross sewing the flag. A charming set-up for American history for kids, benign. Not so with the John Wayne version of the Alamo. Hell, Wayne did a reprise of all this with his jingoistic movie about the Vietnam war, "The Greet Berets." That movie was obscene because it fed into the war escalation urges of the mid-1960s, one of the most mystifying and tragic things out of U.S. history. 

The Alamo? It was tragic on a micro scale by comparison. A broader harm has been caused by the myths. Ol' Davy Crockett and his comrades trying to fend off Santa Anna. Good vs. evil, just the way certain political elements in America liked it. Like Richard Nixon. John Wayne rooted for Nixon in 1960. We got Kennedy and you know the rest. It was LBJ who pushed escalation. 

Ah, the Alamo conflict "was for Texas independence!" What could be better? Needless to say there are many conservative Texas political types who just love this. They pressure the education system to follow their party line. But it really is hard to push the truth down in America, even in these MAGA-influenced days. Really. 

The Alamo happened in 1836. The authors of the new book "Forget the Alamo" see the war for Texas' independence from Mexico as a fight for the preservation of slavery by Anglo Texans. Santa Anna and his followers were "ardently abolitionist." Jim Bowie was a notorious swindler. He could have ended up hanging. Crockett? He did not fight to the death, not like the actor Fess Parker in the Disney series. The series ended - I'll never forget - with Parker as Crockett swinging his rifle at the hapless Mexican soldiers who were steadily overwhelming the place. 

We gather the Mexicans won only because of numbers. The Mexican soldiers were like the stormtroopers of "Star Wars," expendable, faceless, cannon fodder. They won because of numbers, just like the "evil" Persians in the "300" story (Sparta). In these stories, the "evil" forces have top commanders who don't even respect the lives of their own troops. 

Conflicts are rarely such a good vs. evil enterprise. Let's put aside the "sacred cow" of American history, the "battle of the Alamo." Don't act like you were born yesterday - forget the movies. Forget the florid romanticism, for crying out loud. 

But wait a minute, a lot of you people may buy into Trump and MAGA, so forget it. John Wayne would be proud of you. He rooted for an America that never existed.

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

("my san antonio" image)