Doug ----------
Absolutely! Thanks Ira Glazer. My sense of these mythological origins started with the Americans and all the fabricated nonsense we were taught as kids in the 50-60s. Maybe it was LA the land of make believe where anything can be made real, except the real. Even the word is suspect.
But all these impulses, suspicions, thoughts got many boosts over the years of US bullshit politics, especially the News, after going to events and then seeing their betrayal as journalism which in turn became history and wasn't.
Then there is Leo who invented a political philosophy from his `close' readings of western philosophy. But my all time favorite in this trade in mythological worlds is Schlomo Sand's first chapter on historiography in Invention of the Jewish People. At last my long study of Strauss paid off in an unexpected way. Sand in many ways made the rest of reading Strauss irrelevant after his mendacious Spinoza.
In case anybody missed Sand's book, here is a lecture where he develops the general thesis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EmvANgw9Mk