Doesn't this sound like a history of the origins and spread of AIDS? Or Ebola?
Bailyn identifies "a peculiar strain of anti-authoritarianism" in early 18th century British political thought as having the greatest "prominence" in colonial thought. "Strain": like a virus.
The strain of this political virus had remained latent in the host: it "could be found intact as far back as the 1730's...[and] in partial form...even farther back, at the turn of the seventeenth century."
He writes of the "transmission" of this strain from England to America; that it was a "contagion;" that its spread from host to recipient "had been so swift...as to seem almost instantaneous." The political virus became concentrated, made stronger, in transmission: "these ideas acquired in the colonies an importance, a relevance in politics, they did not then have--and never would have--in England itself." The host never became infected.
What was the distilled essence of this "peculiar strain" of political virus?:
...the fear of a comprehensive conspiracy against liberty throughout the English-speaking world--...and of which, it was felt, oppression in America was only the most immediately visible part--lay at the heat of the Revolutionary movement.
"There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot to enslave all America."-John Adams
Is not that archetypal of paranoia? A conspiracy against the entire relevant world but unseen, except in the mind of the paranoid. Point to the illogic and that is just confirmation of the paranoid's conspiratorial belief.
The colonists through around terms like "slavery," "corruption," "conspiracy." Bailyn confesses, "I, like most historians, had readily dismissed [these] as mere rhetoric and propaganda." But,
...I began to see a new meaning...I began to suspect that they meant something very real to both the writers and their readers: that there were real fears, real anxieties, a sense of real danger behind these phrases...The more I read, the less useful, it seemed to me, was the whole idea of propaganda in its modern meaning...
They believed it; that is what that means. Point out that there never was any "slavery" of English-speaking people in England or anywhere in the English world and you get, "Taxation without representation is tyranny!" Point out that that is the dumbest fucking definition of tyranny ever, that that is an insult to tyrants everywhere and you get...I don't know, "You're just pissed 'cause I found you out." Point out that their "conspiracy" to reduce the world's English speaking peoples to "slavery" never came about and they say, "Yes, because we defeated them." Point out that their "peculiar" batty "strain" of political virus never took hold and was dismissed as batty in England and you get...whatever.
Bailyn identifies "a peculiar strain of anti-authoritarianism" in early 18th century British political thought as having the greatest "prominence" in colonial thought. "Strain": like a virus.
The strain of this political virus had remained latent in the host: it "could be found intact as far back as the 1730's...[and] in partial form...even farther back, at the turn of the seventeenth century."
He writes of the "transmission" of this strain from England to America; that it was a "contagion;" that its spread from host to recipient "had been so swift...as to seem almost instantaneous." The political virus became concentrated, made stronger, in transmission: "these ideas acquired in the colonies an importance, a relevance in politics, they did not then have--and never would have--in England itself." The host never became infected.
What was the distilled essence of this "peculiar strain" of political virus?:
...the fear of a comprehensive conspiracy against liberty throughout the English-speaking world--...and of which, it was felt, oppression in America was only the most immediately visible part--lay at the heat of the Revolutionary movement.
"There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot to enslave all America."-John Adams
Is not that archetypal of paranoia? A conspiracy against the entire relevant world but unseen, except in the mind of the paranoid. Point to the illogic and that is just confirmation of the paranoid's conspiratorial belief.
The colonists through around terms like "slavery," "corruption," "conspiracy." Bailyn confesses, "I, like most historians, had readily dismissed [these] as mere rhetoric and propaganda." But,
...I began to see a new meaning...I began to suspect that they meant something very real to both the writers and their readers: that there were real fears, real anxieties, a sense of real danger behind these phrases...The more I read, the less useful, it seemed to me, was the whole idea of propaganda in its modern meaning...
They believed it; that is what that means. Point out that there never was any "slavery" of English-speaking people in England or anywhere in the English world and you get, "Taxation without representation is tyranny!" Point out that that is the dumbest fucking definition of tyranny ever, that that is an insult to tyrants everywhere and you get...I don't know, "You're just pissed 'cause I found you out." Point out that their "conspiracy" to reduce the world's English speaking peoples to "slavery" never came about and they say, "Yes, because we defeated them." Point out that their "peculiar" batty "strain" of political virus never took hold and was dismissed as batty in England and you get...whatever.