Thank You, James Baldwin For Shredding Delusional American Myths

By Kary Love  Photos: Wikimedia Commons Reading James Baldwin’s 1964 weighty but buoyant tome, “Nothing Personal,” struck like lightning as he shredded the myths that blind. Buoyant because it is replete with lightning strikes illuminating the coarse world created by myths, or lies; buoyant because it lights the way forward, in a scant 60 pages, to a human world.  In particular Baldwin reveals the lie at the base of the American Myth promoted by those who benefit to the harm of those who provide the fodder: “It is, of course, in the very nature of a myth that those who are its victims and, at the same time, its perpetrators, should, by virtue of these two facts, be rendered unable to examine the myth, or even to suspect, much less recognize, that it is a myth which controls and blasts their lives. One sees this, it seems to me, in great and grim relief, in the situation of the poor white in the Deep South. The poor white was enslaved almost from the instant he arrived on these shores, and he is still enslaved by a brutal and cynical oligarchy. The utility of the poor white was to make slavery both profitable and safe and, therefore, the germ of white supremacy which he brought with him from Europe was made hideously to flourish in the American air. Two world wars and a world-wide depression. have failed to reveal to this poor man that he has far more in common with the ex-slaves whom he fears than he has with the masters who oppress them both for profit.” Divide and conquer: let the poor white believe he is better than the poor black, just like the house n____r believed he was better than the field n____r, and the division of those who ought share the same vision is exploited against their unified strength by the oligarchs who exploit all the poor. The poor white adopts the myth, or lie, of his superiority to maintain an illusion that his life is better and therefore he should go with the flow so as not to lose his privileged position… Many divisions are exploited to maintain the privilege of the exploiting class, but all must be rejected as myths per Baldwin, or lies akin to Solzhenitsyn’s masterful “Live Not by Lies,” and every other great humanitarian call to universal human rights.  So long as the house n____r believes he is superior to the field n____r he cannot unite with the lower class without giving up his relative privilege, thereby demoting his status. Thus does the exploiting class retain the working class in perpetual bondage of one sort or another.  Only by facing the truth, that the exploiters are the enemies of all humankind, will humanity begin to erect a just society. That many workers seek to join the exploiting class to escape their individual suffering is a product of a cultural myth that money can buy happiness, augmented by the desire to be “better” than others.  The grave is the great leveler, and so in America a myth of immortality, or at least death denial has taken root in order to focus attention on getting ahead in this life. Such distraction assists the exploiting class to divide and conquer, as history shows when the mass of people recognizes the great leveler, death, they seek transformational, transcendental goals above and beyond this vale of tears.  So the exploiting class promotes consumerism, 24/7 entertainment spectacle, neutered religious teachings, and tribalism to gut any unification of the human mass. Only escape from this blinkered view of what makes life worth living can rescue humanity from division and war, and ultimately a war of extinction to which division naturally leads. Jimi Hendrix revealed this when he said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will know peace.” The embrace of myths, as Baldwin perceived, is self-delusion of the most dangerous sort, one amplified and reinforced by a culture controlled by the exploiting class for their own benefit while holding back what ought be a rising tide lifting all boats. Humans of the world unite, you have a world to win and chains to lose. Kary Love, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Michigan attorney who has defended nuclear resisters and many others in court for decades.