Whether the words themselves are true or not

the thing as a whole is a lie.

And frankly, history doesn't tend to show the transition from bondage to spiritual faith very often. Far more common is the transition from bondage to an outside power to bondage to the worst available local thugs. The skill set for revolution tends to be mostly destruction and disruption. And while bondage may sometimes lead to spiritual faith and courage, mostly it makes people mean and selfish. Ghandi and Havel are remarkable exceptions, not normal revolutionaries.

I'm not sure what civilizations are being counted in the average, or what the 200 year bit is. Is that the golden age, or does it count the rise and fall? Are we talking bondage to bondage? Golden ages tend to be short (20-100 years) and civilizations tend to linger for a long time depending on what you count as The End.

The only civilization that I know of that followed anywhere near that path is the Jews up to the destruction of the Temple, and 1) only if you take the Old Testament as a serious history book and 2) remarkable as they were, I don't think the group was big enough to count as a great civilization.

But I'm just being silly. This isn't real. This is somebody making history up to support deification of the Founders (hmmm, spiritual faith to great courage to liberty, 200 years ago, isn't that a remarkable coincidence, other than the Founders being mostly Deists and that only because they didn't have the guts to admit they were atheists) and make some school building referendum The End Of Western Civilization. You can't take it seriously if they can't even admit it is their own idea.

You may have noted that I'm not big on deification (of the Fathers-of-whatever) or 'deities' per se.

I thought it an interesting er, today we might call it {ugh} framing? -- as a rhetorical rubric.
But it's boilerplate politico-babble whenever parsed back to any referents. Mainly -- was pointing out the evanescence of 'attribution' - however many mondo 'search engines' are revved up. Ain't nothin Certain in these parts, that I can see.

Which is to imply ~~ as a species we seem to do poorly about vetting the crap inculcated into us as tykes; To that exact point I heard, en passant on npr tday, of a book, Nurture Shock (!) which I think deals with that very phenom -- got it on list to look further into.

Still, Muricans will take such stuff on down to nursery-level (like Geo. Washington's cherry tree fable.)
But those FFs assuredly did have a handful of genuine outliers, IMhO, even though we turned out collectively to be so crass, sanctimonious and hypocritical -- for all the brilliant effort that went into the Launching, eh?

Anyway, I concur that such a wannabe-algorithm sucks / falls under that category: extraordinary claims need ... you know. You appear to demand a level of truthiness about as unRealistic as I would like to see, too. But all of capitalism is based upon becoming One-up / making Your share Larger by any means available (see: John Dewey's infamous pragmatism, a Holy Word implicit in the endless Self-praise of all our anthems.) No niceties required and nary a nod For truthiness -- just go out and Win it All. cha. cha.

('Course the viral-form of Vulture-capitalism ... methinks that needs a whole separate screed sometime.)
Lies.. it's our fav fast-food. Wish someone had TOLD me that! back in kindergarten -- instead of the fluffy-bunny stuff. (Scary though, when 60 yos mouth the same fantasy stuff)
And still talk about The American Peepul -- as-if a monolith.

Long way to go before sentience strikes.Have We That-much time??

Carrion

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