The United States has always been a country of make believe. Much like how Ancient Rome was founded by the descendants of Aeneas fleeing the city of Troy and its sacking by the Greeks, America was made by religious refugees seeking freedom and prosperity in the New World. It was new land of opportunity and glory was to be had by all. Much like the new spritual frontier which was opened by Emperor Constantine’s moving of the capital to Constantinople and shaking off the myopic obsession of Rome, America seemed like a place that was able to shake off all of humanity’s past to create something new. Being creatures of novelty and innovation, human beings often have a tendency to also get stuck in their own animalistic natures that been staying in our brains since the time of the our earliest ancestors.
America already had incredible generals, inventors and artists right from when it began. However, human beings are not perfect beings. The day-to-day existence of a human being is always testing our morality and humans, finding sometimes their existence is boring and needing novelty, often rely on needing outlets to satisfy their Cro-magnon instincts. The American people, especially before Abraham Lincoln presidency were no different to this rule. The Americans always thought highly of themselves but unlike the Pagan Romans, were interested in hiding away human passion under the curation of human experiences that best repersent us. This is why in America, you hardly hear about the evils of men and women; they are often put into a ghetto, safely within true crime or other entertainment. In Ancient Rome, such fragilities of humanity were part of one’s daily life and thinking. Not so in the United States.
When it comes to prostitution in the United States, you have to understand that Americans have always been very hypocritical people on the topic of sexuality. Unlike the Ancient Romans, who may have had hypocrisies in their own society, were at least willing to engage the issue without creating utopian visions of a future society, a more prefect union, in order to push the issue into some ambiguous situation where everything that is confusing man today will be solved by science. America, being the land of make believe and magical thinking, regardless of its enlightenment mentality is not a country that is immune to fragilities of human nature and his institutions.
America has always been a two-faced society unlike the Ancient societies it modeled itself on.
The incredible heights of morality and virtue set by Washington and Jefferson were simply too high for the American people to maintain. Even in their own age, they were not able to live to their own images. However, the American people up until recently, have been an optimistic people in spite of humanity’s many shortcomings and inability to emphasize with all humanity, especially those of who have issues with our opinions.
In the American Civil War, the Republic which was full of so much idealism in spite of societal inequalities between classes and the bondage of Blacks in the South, was becoming entrenched in a war that costing many lives in the process. While there is a narrative that the Southerners were simply demons who were struck down by Angelic Union soldiers, (This is the narrative driven by post 1960s cinema which has some nuance to it but the media portrays it in this way), the Union was not an organization with clean hands. Many people do not understand that the individual’s experience of a war will not be the same as that of someone who lives many generation in the future. As time passes, the threat of one’s family and clan being attacked in that situation passes and people start to create myths about their ancestors, adding gloss to embellish the stories in order to exaggerate the deeds of their clan and to make the crimes of their enemies seem worse than usual. As much as Voltaire and Rosseau believed that man was somehow the cusp of becoming some kinda of rational creature that would conquer all his Cro-Magnon instincts.
We are aware that is not the case, no matter what modern man tries to assert. Even in the 19th Century, there were many who were still naively believing in such ideals, even though the Conquests under Napoleon were showing that rationalism were simply just another facade for a man’s vanity and willingness to conquer.
The Civil War shows that America was like any other nation, even if it was special, it was still a human nation, and not some real-life creation of King Arthur’s Kingdom where honor and glory are superhuman ideals. The existence of Prostitution during the Civil War was just one aspect that was showing how Americans were not building utopia and that it was subject to all the issues that are effect humans.
Americans, especially more recently have seemingly without question adapted a Japanese concept of a public and private face. In all cultures since the rise of Civilization, we have public and private faces, however in America, it is taken to whole another level, especially with the move away from communities that are organic.
Americans are more interested in having someone else clean up their mess in my opinion. You see this in so many sectors of how the economy works. Many European-Americans, who came from stock who were very much blue-collar and working class do not have the same mentality towards labor that requires much effort with their body. So, they want to delegate it to someone else, namely Latin Americans who come up through the border. Because of such an attitude, the Republic doesn’t have the same inner spirit to continue the traditions of one’s ancestors. What is the point of upholding those traditions if you simply to delegate those responsibilities to what they call an underclass of people who are not even citizens.
The United States was built on foundations that are honestly really shaky when you apply to pressure to it. The country requires new thinking that goes beyond reliving the 1960s again and again. Much of the Left-wing are simply extreme lovers of Capitalism with some social issues sprinkled on top. There is no real sense of any real change to the economic system in the state.
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