Some 250 years since it began, the American experiment lives or dies in the next two weeks.
This is not hyperbole. Much like satire, hyperbole is dead in a ditch on the side on the road. One of the most insidious part of the last 10-15 years has been to watch humor and comedy be hijacked as vehicles for malevolent thought and action. Look at how many writers, comedians, and influencers have turned right in a nasty response to a changing world, choosing to feed and nurture a hateful cohort in the name of praise and validation, trading any sort of moral clarity to stroke their inflated egos, “humor” conflated with grift.
It’s “funny” to bully now. It’s “funny” to punch down. C’mon, lighten up, it’s just a joke. He’s not serious when he pulls the gun. When he cocks it, he’s just pulling your leg. Bang.
Well, you shouldn’t have stood there and let him shoot you. That’s on you.
None have more contempt for marks and suckers than the con men who fleece them. Conversely, marks and suckers don’t blame con men for getting grifted. Why? Because admitting you’ve been had is more painful than angrily lashing out at those who knew better. At the root is the childlike desire for unaccountable unreality.
There are some who say the American experiment already failed or never existed in the first place. That it was merely a con, a trick of nationalism, a sop for poor whites in service to caste, the U.S. already an evil empire that must fall.
Though there’s elements of truth to all those beliefs (albeit a nihilistic kind), I struggle with this viewpoint, both because of deep-seated (albeit wounded) idealism and, truthfully, fear. I have a romantic attachment to a dream of a “more perfect union” and struggle giving up on the vision that has animated countless Americans across all racial and generational lines.
That said, there is evil here and it is resurgent.
Table of Contents:
- I: The Original Sin of America
- II: Property, Slavery and Roman Law (Wed. 10/23)
- III: The White Supremacist Project (Thurs. 10/24)
- IV: The Lies We Tell Ourselves (Fri. 10/25)
- V: Lull of Paradise, Promise of Revelation (Sat. 10/26)
- VI: Good Night, and Good Luck (Sun. 10/27)
I: The original sin of America
It’s racism and white supremacy. It’s misogyny and colonialism.
But really what it boils down to is property.
In America, property and racism are inextricably linked, most obviously via slavery.
- Who were the only ones who could vote, according to the original Constitution? White, property-owning men.
- What was the 3/5th compromise? Slave-owners wanted slaves who couldn’t vote and for them to count toward their electoral prospects.
- Why do we elect presidents via the Electoral College rather than a pure popular vote? To get around extending the right of suffrage which was dominate in the North but repellent in the South.
This inflammatory skewing of the American system in the favor of evil continues to this day. This is one of those things you wish were self-evident, however, we sit in the year 2024:
- witnessing the most racist political campaign since segregation was the law of the land
- watching the VP candidate of said campaign claim their movement is a continuation of the Southern slaveholders (excuse me, “bourbons”) fight in the Civil War (aka the Lost Cause).
This isn’t a fearful fantasy or some secret plot. Trump/Vance and their ilk boast about it because they can get away with it. In their own words, they lust for the white supremacist project at the heart of so much evil in the world. The same project that powered Western colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade, the Antebellum South, and Nazi Germany (who took pointers from America’s racist Jim Crow laws), an ideology premised on looting entire civilizations under the guise of conquest and enlightenment.
TOMORROW: The Original Sin of America, Part II: The White Supremacists’ Project
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