We Need New Stories

A malignant thread has been running through Anglo-American history, and it is made of myths. These are not myths that animate believers into a shared sense of camaraderie and direction. They are myths that divide and instill a sense of superiority over others. Nations are susceptible to these impulses when going through times of instability or subordination, when they become vulnerable to demagoguery, or fall to dictatorship. Again, myths are useful and comforting galvanizers. But when they take hold in democratic, ostensibly affluent societies, it is not a temporary madness, it is a culmination of events...These myths are spun by those who get to speak, who have the platforms, those who have historically accumulated the necessary influence and power. Those who, culturally, are defined as its vessels. Myths are spun out of several untruths, woven with skill, and their omnibus weights the narrative in favor of those who are not necessarily in power-it is less calculated than that-but of those who benefit from power.
-from the Prologue