If baseball is America's pastime, Forest Gump is America's movie. For better or worse, this film encapsulates so much of the American psyche. It's less a fantastical depiction of historical events as it is a record of Americans' reactions to those events. A cultural summary with its finger on the pulse of the collective conscience, and perhaps simultaneously something more sinister...

At its simplest level, Forest Gump is a story about a good-ol' southern boy, descendant of a Confederate hero, who, despite being a bit slow, achieves outrageous success simply by being a good person. He participates in all of the virtues of conservative Americana - succeeding in sports, fighting in the war (but not getting injured too badly), succeeding in sports again, starting a successful business, and investing wisely. He does all this while being largely unaware of the plight of those around him, even his closest friends and love interest.

Meanwhile, his girlfriend, deeply scarred by her father's abuse, is set down the dark path of liberalism. While Forest is busy succeeding in all the conservative virtues of athletics, military service, business, and investment, Jenny fails in all the liberal virtues of higher education, pacifism, black power, free love, and drug use. Forest repeatedly offers her an 'out', a path to redemption, salvation from her unholy liberal ways, but she rejects him at every turn until it's too late.

Jenny's life is a train wreck, Forest's life is a nonstop rocket to the moon. Jenny adopts liberalism. Forest is a model of conservative virtue. This dynamic requires further investigation lest we prematurely conclude that Groom is implying southern conservatives are slow in the head. On the contrary, Forest's story is, in many ways, like the charming and not-entirely-truthful success stories wealthy southern conservatives tell about themselves, brushing the uglier aspects of their personal and family histories (often involving slavery, exploitation of workers, tax fraud, corruption, etc.) under the rug. It has long been the tactic of southern businessmen to play the part of the simpleton to hide their wily nature. Far from being an indictment of southerners as mentally impaired, Forest is a southern conservative paragon. Jenny, on the other hand, offers evidence that liberals must be deeply scarred people, and Lieutenant Dan provides corroborating evidence.

Like Forest, Lt. Dan is a veteran, but unlike his innately fortunate subordinate, he's seriously injured in Vietnam and comes home bitter. Much like Jenny, his trauma induces him to go down the path of liberalism and he suffers as a result. Unlike Jenny, he finds redemption, returns to the light, and embraces conservative virtues once again, even trying to dissuade Forest from giving his friend Bubba's family any of the profits from a company bearing his name. Who says redemption into the light of Conservative Jesus requires a charitable heart?

The important difference between Forest, the conservative, and Jenny and Lt. Dan, the liberals, is that Forest deals with his disability and never sees himself as a victim. Jenny and Lt. Dan see themselves as victims, and this, according to Groom, is a necessary precursor to the liberal disorder.

There's no denying that Forest Gump is a classic, entertaining movie with a compelling narrative - and in this way too, it is the charming mythology of a white southern elite's backstory, refined subconsciously over decades to be retold around the country club or memorialized on little plaques that adorn park benches. There is a dichotomy between Forest's conservative success story and the other characters' liberal failure-to-redemption arcs. The intensely negative portrayal of the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, free love and drug use, are part and parcel of the conservative lens that the historical events depicted in the film are presented through. The 'real America' wasn't civil rights, anti-war, etc., it was the fantastical success story of a white southerner, and if you deny it, you weren't paying attention.