Salon political writer Chauncey Devega has written an article in which he posits that the United States of America is a grim fairy tale. A fairy tale made of mythical monsters. These monsters are not the lovable elephant, the symbol of the Republican Party, but they are a many headed hydra of the right wing deplorables.

Before writing this post, I went back a full ten years to read his polemics. Mr. Devega is a thematic writer. Every article has a theme of Trump bad, the Right is bad, the United States is bad, and anyone who doesn’t agree with him is bad.

Devega’s most recent article is about us monsters, “America’s right-wing political monsters are real — and they are coming for you”. Barack Obama called us “bitter clingers”, to Hillary Clinton we were the “basket of deplorables” and Joe Biden has called us “dregs” engaged in “neanderthal thinking”. What makes the Right monsters, for Devega, are the names on our many heads: fascism, nationalism, white supremacy, homophobia, and patriotism.

From the article:

The American people can no longer deny that political monsters are real. These monsters want to overthrow America’s secular and multiracial democracy and replace it with an American apartheid plutocracy. The monsters want to take away the basic human and civil rights of nonwhite people, women, LGBT people, immigrants, liberals and progressives, along with any other groups they deem to be “un-American” and “the enemy.” Across the country, this monstrous agenda is well underway. For all of the Biden administration’s early successes, they occur under the ominous shadow of a right-wing terrordome, now nearing completion for 2022 and 2024 and beyond. Trump’s coup attempt and his followers’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 is but a preview of what is to come.

It’s a terrifying thought, but can you imagine what it’s like being in this poor, little man’s head? I am going to speak for everyone on the Right here and say, “Nah dude, we don’t want to take away anything from anybody. Most of us just want to be left alone.” We on the right want you to be able to speak freely, live your life as you wish, drop your mask and get your thumb out of your backside. The only “monstrous agenda” I have seen lately is the fascists on the Left demanding the shut down of the U.S. economy, the abuse of our nation’s children with no school and isolation, and the perma-masking of all by St. Fauci of Wuhan.

Unfortunately, we cannot even have this discussion with Chauncey Devega because of the stain of America’s birth in the original sin of slavery. Actually, it is neo-natal sin. Again, from the article:

America’s national mythology is a story of inexorable progress. This narrative of progress is also a tale of hope, constructed on the belief that the American people are inherently good. In addition, America’s national mythology is a story of perpetual reinvention, intentional forgetting and rewriting of the past, where democracy is taken to be a given, a special bequest to the American people from God. And of course, the American people and the country itself are somehow “exceptional” among the nations and peoples of the world.

These claims wither away under any serious empirical investigation or historical inquiry — that’s why they are myths. It is not facts which give myths the force of meaning but rather the way people internalize them and make them true for themselves and the larger community.

Even the more sophisticated popular understandings of American history that include the fact that the country is a racial settler state, founded on the evils of genocide against First Nations people and the enslavement of Black people, in which “white democracy” was the ideal norm, still emphasize an arc of progress and positive change. In those more nuanced stories, America is an “imperfect union” that is always striving, however difficult and complicated the work may be, to become a better nation.

In this video, Mr. Devega discusses the white gaze and the origin of police as slave catchers:

I couldn’t find any information on Mr. Devega’s education, but I would venture a guess that it never included world history. A “racial settler state” would be a description of most heterogeneous countries. The nature of man is exploration. His very own surroundings and the curiosity of what is over that hill or across that body of water. Some explorers and their parties were eliminated by indigenous peoples. Some explorers and their parties exterminated the indigenous peoples. That is the history of the world. And, in many places that is still the norm. Right now, Joe Biden’s puppet master, China, is enslaving and exterminating their own indigenous people, the Uighurs.

That’s no excuse for what took place before, during, and after our Founding as a nation. Slaveholding was a way of life in the 17th and 18th century. Former slave, Anthony Johnson, became an entrepreneur and slaveholder. Chief Seattle (Seattle, Washington named after him) owned slaves. Many indigenous people owned slaves. White people did not invent slavery.

I am done playing with these Lilliputians. They are so consumed with their victimization and their hatred for everyone who doesn’t think like them that they can’t see past the end of their own nose. Those of us on the Right who love our country are not monsters, anymore than you on the Left are monsters. We love the founding documents, we love our history. We changed the history of the world. We fought to free those oppressed. Here and abroad. We are the most giving nation ever.

By dehumanizing the Right, by calling us monsters, you, Mr. Devega are asking for violence against us. You are inviting violence. You are requesting violence. Is that really where you want to go? Drop your mask and get your thumb out of your backside. The only monsters are in your head.

Featured Image: DonkeyHotey/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)