Abstract


 
 
 
 Criticism to the system is a core place in the US American culture.The self-criticism gets its roots in the permanent restlessness of the American People, in their fears, in their dissatisfaction, and even in their insane self-destructive behabiour. Many episodes in the American history have worked out from attitudes of paranoia, disgust or anger towards communities or the public administration. The natural rhythm of society in the United States is far from acceptance and calm. On the contrary, the US history is defined by restlessnees and doubious sentiments. Thus, one might think that the American dream is fundamentally a state of permanent crisis in which people, unable to deal with their present vital conditions, transmute these conditions into havoc and creation. In the pages of this article, a breaf tour into the historical and cultural trend of discouragement is offered. It also pays attention to the American ability to self-analyze its own historical experiences. The fictionated stories, that come from the imagination but also from people’s voices and memories, convey a sense of dissatisfaction and of struggle to improve the American way of behaving. Those citizens, especially uncomfortable with themselves or with the administration, may not be aware that they are precisely those who constitute the best US image abroad. In the ostentation of a self- criticism, of a subversive thought, these Americans, opposed to the official positions,feature the virtue of the relentless self-purge.Therefore,looking at past and present times, this paper is composed by six related arguments that rely on both historical events and fictionated stories, with the titles of: “Under the paranoid style”; “The angry nation”, “Hate: Public Limited Company”, “Images of anger”, “Guilty, ashamed and redeemed”, and “The legacy of disenchantment”.
 
 
 

Highlights

  • Criticism to the system is a core place in the USAmerican culture.The self-criticism gets its roots in the permanent restlessness of the American People, in their fears, in their dissatisfaction, and even in their insane self-destructive behabiour

  • We perfectly know how McCarthyism worked in the fifties and how the Cold War acquired, in its ideological dimension, a toxic conspiratorial tone that permeated and decomposed American society

  • American politics had always been acted as theater scene for angry minds –mainly those very conservative groups who take their anger to the extreme of paranoid style

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Summary

UNDER THE PARANOID STYLE

In the mid-sixties Harper’s Magazine published an article by Richard Hofstadter with the suggestive title of “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. This issue already refers to a feeling of a clear paranoid sign that accuses a political trend of treason to the interests of the nation It is that in the twenties and thirties of the nineteenth century, the United States would live an authentic conspiracy mania that could be noticed in the popular classes –these voting segment expanded during the Jacksonian Democracy-, especially in rural areas. It is easy to find out in this plot the reference to the case of the Rosenbergs (Clune), the married couple executed by the federal government in 1953 Through his own experience, Daniel runs into a whole cast of characters coming from a frightened and paranoid society. Those that are definitely least favored by the administration in each period, do not just rest meditating at home

THE ANGRY NATION
IMAGES OF ANGER
THE LEGACY OF DISENCHANTMENT
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