masukuma wrote:I must admit - I don't know how the US has stayed united all this time. I haven't really thought about it properly. However, dispite the disparities they have been able to keep their country united (with exclusion of the times Texas always wants out when a democrat president takes the helm). I think they have done this over and over again by
1) creating an enemy 'outside'. Sometimes all these wars may be thought of a way of uniting people at home. the narrative of our soldiers fighting for our freedom outside may be unifying
2) Media - movies have done this over and over again. sometimes painting the outside world as vile (the russians for a while, the Vietnamese). Movies that show how poor the rest of the world must massage the egos of the poor side of the US... knowing... we are better off than those people. As Binyavanga Wainaina once quipped in a video - perhaps the US needs Africa as a boogieman... the one you point at when you want kids to eat their veggies. The one you point out when someone is feeling unsatisfied with the status quo.
Hey Masukuma, a good place to start on understanding the history of the US is Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations the chapter titled "Of Colonies".
Here is a link:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN17.html
Wealth of Nations was published in the year 1776 the same year that the US got its independence.
Another great book is Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America". De tocqueville was a French Aristocrat who visited the US for 9 months in the year 1830.
https://www.amazon.com/D...601/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 What is interesting about reading these 2 texts is that they were written when the US was still a very young country. They are a very interesting read more so if you ever get to visit the US and observe some structures of society described 200 years ago still very much alive in the modern US.