“The world is so polar today. Culture Wars are everywhere! People are screaming at one another online, and I just want things to go back to the way they used to be.”
Oh, do you? No no, I’m asking: Do you?
You want things to go back to the way they were, say. Say you do. I know a lot of Americans think it, are tired of the infighting. You’re not part of the nutjobs on the left, you’re not one of the lunatics on the right. You’re just…somewhere in the middle. Perfectly normal, perfectly sane, perfectly rational, perfectly informed.
Oh, are you? No no, I’m asking: Are you?
Are you sure?
Okay, then, Mr./Ms./Mrs./Whatever Normal Person In The Middle—what is “the way things used to be”?
Exactly as they are right now. Only adjusted for inflation, and brought up to speed for the 21st Century. America hasn’t changed, internally. Popular movements have caused some change, technology has caused some modifications, sure. National military aggression has largely been cut back and outsourced and police and governmental spying have become more advanced, as a result. There’s a little more fairness in the workplace. Kind of. But, internally, people are the same as they were at America’s founding. Let’s go over some of the ways in which I may or may not be lying.
1. Americans Are Angry, Violent People
Because they’re people. People get angry. Sometimes they get violent. The important thing is to look at why they’re angry, who they direct it at and how it manifests.
America has always been a violent place. I don’t need go over the domestic or civil history of this country, dating back to settler times. Most people (I think) know this nation-state—or most any modern-day nation-state—has a history of violence at its outset, both before and after conception, both against foreign threats and amongst its own kind: Israel, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, the United States of America, etc., etc., etc.
And not to say it wasn’t sometimes justified. But often enough it wasn’t. Often enough it was fueled by imperialism, hegemony, religious or ethnic strife, racism, greed, things like that. All the classics.
Fast forward to 2024. It’s all still here, more or less—people fighting each other or combating “outside invaders” for the purpose of protecting their own interests (more on that later): the violent rhetoric by politicians and their supporters; the hate speech on the internet; the threats on the internet; the implied threats on the internet; the proxy, free-hiring of someone else to violently take care of a problem for you (i.e., doxing) on the internet. It’s all geared towards the same end.
Actually, I could make this entirely about the internet. But I won’t, because the internet is nothing without human beings. Angry, angry human beings.
So, why are they so angry? Well, mostly because…
2. Americans Are Stupid
By which I mean irrational, impressionable, closed-minded, narrow-minded, uninformed, misinformed, disinformed, frustrated to the point of making bad choices, and so on. Case in point: election season. I can’t help but want to repeatedly rub a cheese grater across my face every time an election rolls around and people get asked why they’re voting for one presidential candidate or the other, and I have to read their answers. The justifications for a Trump vote in 2024, though, have been the most mind-bogglingly stupid I’ve ever come across.
From just one sample set, you can hear independents who plan on voting for Trump say the following on the “big issues” affecting Americans today (i.e., the economy and immigration):
“Trump’s a man of his word. What he says he’s gonna do, he does.”
“People…want some of what they had four years ago. And I do, too.”
“Kamala Harris…just seems to have been given everything [in her career].”
“[Trump]’s very talented in, like, diplomatic relations with other countries with mutual respect.”
“I don’t know if it’s true [that Haitians immigrants are eating pets in Ohio],” said one Haitian immigrant. “But I really don’t like when they’re talking bad about Trump.”
Fortunately, stupid is remediable. It can be undone. As soon as people realize just how much they have in common with others across the ideological spectrum, and that low-to-middle-tier economic status unifies them more than anything else they think is more important, they’ll get a little sharper. Then, hopefully, they’ll put aside their prejudices, righteousness and silly little beliefs to see the bigger picture, see the limitations of just what either candidate can do to help them, and recall how much candidates lie about actually doing the helping.
Presidential candidates are just two sides of the same coin, really. It’s important to recognize just who minted that coin and keeps it shiny, before 200-some million people get a chance to flip it every four years.
3. Americans Are Isolationists
Americans, like most nationalities, care more about themselves than other nationalities. It can’t be helped. People have to work for a living, pay taxes, put up with various forms of bullsh– from randos, shitty neighbors, petty criminals or disgruntled d—s (see #1) who push American’s legal boundaries every single day and wind up crossing the personal boundaries of others when they do. Or maybe they’re the ones doing the pushing.
Either way, they don’t care about Vladimir Putin trying to turn Russia into the Soviet Union again. (Not yet, anyway.) They don’t care about Palestine never becoming a globally recognized, sovereign nation-state, though they do care about Israel (see #4). They don’t care about war in Syria, Myanmar, Sudan, Haiti, Yemen. Unless it’s to stop the “bad guys” (see #5).
They don’t care about anything but their own problems, first and foremost. Always have, always will. And why wouldn’t they? It’s built into the system. The machinery cogs have always been largely responsible for their own maintenance.
4. Americans Are Religious to a Fault
When your actions run counter to the actions of the god upon which your entire religion is based, and they’re done in the name of that god, then you’re considered religious to a fault. Humans have corrupted the teachings of Jesus since…I don’t know, around Jesus’s time, I guess. Or thereabouts.
The Church of the East, first seven ecumenical councils, Eastern Orthodox theology, Catholicism, etc. Some of these came centuries after Jesus had died, but he did, in fact, speak of planning for none of them. Their existence was never really important. The Word was. Sure, these organizations and sects served to spread that Word (-ish) far and wide, but at what cost?
When people quote the Bible, what are they quoting? The teachings of Jesus? The interpretation of the teachings of Jesus by one-to-four of his disciples? The letters of Paul (and his secretaries) to churches in the early-A.D. Western World? The tales of Hebrew storytellers who lived a thousand years before, re-telling stories that were told to them, before? Do they really have any idea?
No one seems to want to think about it. Nor the fact that Christianity hasn’t changed meaningfully in a thousand-some years. Not by the time of the Founding Fathers, and certainly not today. Religious fanaticism has always been there, not long after humans realized they could use it to get something out of the deal for themselves.
And then repent for it later. If an attack of conscience (i.e., morality) somehow momentarily surfaced.
5. Americans Want to Hate the Bad Guy
Anger tends to arise from fear. Speak to reformed, angry a–holes here and elsewhere, and they’ll tell you: I was angry and violent because I spent my life afraid. Heck, the number one reason for the military buildup in this country since the end of World War II has been fear. They call it ‘defense’, but it’s no different on paper. “Let’s prepare ourselves for war against the entire world because anyone, anywhere, anytime, can blot our existence from the map and will, because they’re the bad guys and we’re the good guys.” Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Chile, The Congo, Angola, Iraq, Vietnam, Cuba—these were all countries that some arm or branch of the federal government invaded, overtly or covertly, for the (spuriously) stated purpose of stopping them from doing American citizens any pre-emptive or continual harm. (Of course, Hitler said the exact same thing about Germany’s neighbors before invading them way back when. So did Vladimir Putin, incidentally, about a year and a half ago. But that’s a conversation for another time.)
The Soviet Union itself would be a slightly different story, because they could actually do America harm, but the fact is it was of far greater importance that The Soviet Union existed for America, and America for the Soviet Union, because then each had their own, personal bad guy to account to their population for. Which allowed the two to keep perpetually “defending” themselves, and to maintain a certain level of civil and ideological control of their respective populations.
Because when you live in constant fear of a threat you can’t beat up yourself or shout obscenities at, you’ll be looking to someone to protect you from it. And if the threat isn’t actually as great as the protectors have convinced you it is, you’ve got a bad faith contract to begin with. What the enforcers then do with that contract is almost entirely up to them.
