Thank you for this beautiful piece. For me, over the years America has become a facsimile of America, in the same way that when you buy produce at a supermarket, or even a health food store, it looks beautiful but just doesn’t taste as good as produce used to taste. I grew up in a small town in Arkansas, and I remember my dad would be driving, and whenever we passed a produce stand my mom would cry out, “Stop!!!” And whatever we bought would be fresh and full of flavor. People tell me, “Maybe you had better taste buds when you were a kid.” But I spent a few weeks as an adult in a “poorer” nation, and the produce there was startlingly good. Even the cucumbers tasted so refreshing I found myself craving them. I would wake up in the mornings and think, “I want to eat some produce.” To me that’s a metaphor for America — the produce we eat is a facsimile of great produce, and America has become a facsimile of itself. I’m not expecting that we can go back to what we were, but I just want us to feel like a real country again. On the 30-year mortgage you mentioned, I was talking to people from another country one time, and they didn’t understand how Americans used the word “own” when they said they owned a home. To them, if you hadn’t paid off your mortgage, you didn’t “own” your home. Plus, there are all the rules and permits and taxes related to your home. In these ways, even “owning” a home in America has become a facsimile of owning a home.
The poisoning of the food and water supply (looks like Alex Jones was right about them turning the frogs gay) is a big part of their social engineering. Our brains and personalities are so chemically driven that it was really a strategically brilliant move on the part of the regime to do that.
Michael Pollan in the documentary Food, Inc., talks about how modern supermarkets offer produce, like tomatoes, year-round, regardless of natural growing seasons.
"Although it looks like a tomato, it's kind of a notional tomato. I mean, it's the idea of a tomato."
<"Although it looks like a tomato, it's kind of a notional tomato. I mean, it's the idea of a tomato.">
I love this -- it's so perfectly said. I think so many of us just really want the actual thing. We want to eat a tomato, not a notional tomato. We want a country, not a notional country!
Great points about the magicians' choices we are given on so many things, starting with our 2 party system.
I think the biggest problem with asking "what is an American?" is realizing that America itself started off with similar magicians' choices due to the Enlightenment. Once a culture internalizes such ideas as "everyone is equal" a culture is permanently weakened and on an inevitable road to libtards running amok. It's just a matter of time due to cognitive dissonance.
Until we correct for the many errors of the Enlightenment, we will only repeat the same mistakes over and over.
You are 1000% on target with your critique of the Enlightenment. I don't think there has ever been a phrase that has been more maliciously warped and weaponized or that has caused more damage to civilization than the phrase "all men are created equal." That's ultimately at the root of all kinds of insane nonsense like "disparate impact is proof of racism" and "trans women are women."
There's a definite spiritual sickness, which often presents as ideological derangement. We've lost what life is about, and what gives human culture meaning.
We have turned a large part of our civilization into a machine based upon revenue-generating addictions. Porn, anxiolytics, stimulants, opiates, SSRI's, smartphones, apps, gambling, food, alcohol, video games, athletics... it's everywhere.
There's also a kind of Darwinian selection operating in our increasingly lonely, neurotic, profit-driven culture: programs and ideas and solutions which demand lots of money get funding and create jobs and establish disciplines... even if they're not helpful. Meanwhile solutions and salves which require NO money (like close-knit families or nutrition or meditation or church or walks outdoors or healthy communal life) get no attention. People have become more lonely, more distracted, more confused, and they increasingly rely on a bureaucratic system (rather than friends and neighbors and family) to help them and meet their needs... but the bureaucracy doesn't care about their needs or their health or their happiness. It only cares about its own survival, and endless growth. Sociology, therapy, psychology, psychiatry, childhood education, feminism, HR trainings-all endeavors we pour BILLIONS of dollars into. Can anyone say that their results are even a net positive, much less worth the cost?
I'm a veteran in recovery who teaches public school and has spent years in therapy. I've come to believe the experts are as lost as we are. They can't solve our problems-any of them. Only we can. Throw off leviathan.
Well said. The experts are indeed lost, and a healthy skepticism of them has become far more normalized and widespread since 2020. Will it be enough that a critical mass of people will see what the dark wizards are up to, in time to stop them? Time will tell.
Get an early edition of Samuelson's "Economics". It is the textbook which made Keynes mainstream. Unlike Keynes, Samuelson was a very clear writer.
But the attack on the culture in favor of consumerism is right there in the first few chapters, complete with helpful diagrams. If people simply save money so they have slack, money is leaking from the Circular Flow. If the economy isn't stimulated by the federal government we get the horror of Unemployed Resources. Hoovervilles to follow.
The measure of an economy is money spent on consumer products and government programs (not including transfer programs). High GNP = prosperity. No mention of the efficiency or usefulness of said programs. Building a 1000 ft. monument to Milliard Fillmore is no different from curing cancer.
Consider the term "unemployed resources." That can be a mother who stays home to teach and raise her kids properly instead of sending them to daycare while she goes to the office. It can be a craftsman's workshop full of quality tools. The big advantage of the assembly line vs. craftsmen, is that the assembly line keeps expensive specialized tools employed all day -- at the expense of the humanity of those who work those tools.
Kenyes gave way to Supply Side Economics under Reagan. One form of pyramid scheme for another. Once again, instead of using our wealth as an opportunity to become human again, we must always pursue GROWTH!
They way back to become human again is a return to kitchen table economics. Debt, including federal deficit spending, is an obligation for future work. It is spending the benefits of future technology before they arrive. It is selling the citizenry into serfdom.
Last years deficit was 1.8 trillioni dollars. DOGE has found 140 billion dollars of savings. And yet people are talking tax cuts. Sorry, we need to talk massive tax increases followed by deleveraging the economy in general. Then we can have culture again.
Although not exactly on point with the subject, I remember talking with some Soviet emigres who came to the US in the 70's but who returned to the Soviet Union after a year or so. They said they couldn't deal with having so many choices and having to bear the consequences. In the Soviet Union so long as you blended in and were as mediocre as everyone else your basic needs were taken care of. You may not have lived like the Politburo but you had enough to get by and learned to be happy with what you had. Here in the States there was no back stop. Although you could become spectacularly successful, you could also lose everything you had. They didn't want that responsibility. Ultimately, they were willing to trade personal autonomy (and choices) for stability.
Another reason was the completely different cultural landscape. They felt more connected back home but felt isolated here in the States; they just couldn't fit in with what they felt was an inferior American culture.
That's an interesting point. That's probably the norm for most people in most cultures, and definitely that's a large part of the rationale for mass immigration and open borders, to turn the American culture into that becuse it's easier to manage in a top-down way. Under the new order, the elite still gamble recklessly, because they control the financial system and just pass their losses onto everyone else while hoarding the profits, but increasingly it's been "safety-first" for everyone else, with only limited options that are practically meaningless in their differences.
America as an idea has always meant to me, a place where the working, common man could define and create his own destiny. That ethic has been swamped by the globalist, collectivist, technocratic leviathan. MAGA means to me, make America and Americans self-sufficient again.
I thought marcionism made sense for a bit, until my priest explained that the Old Testament contains the seeds of the New Testament, and that is its purpose/significance. God HAD a covenant with the Israelites, the son of God was born from among them, then they rejected him and murdered him, thus breaking the covenant. Now Gods covenant is with Christians. The Old Testament is needed for all this to unfold. That was the crux of his explanation but he did a better job explaining.
This was an SSPX priest who explained this. You won’t hear this type of explanation in a typical Novus Ordo homily, unfortunately.
Excellent essay. Gave me much to think about and was strangely just what I needed to read, right when I needed to read it. I’m dealing with some family issues and have to make some big decisions that impact all of my immediate family.
That is the Achilles heel of Marcionism. St Paul (and others) quote the OT in such a way that it makes it a real stretch to say the god of Genesis is actually a malicious demiurge. That said, the orthodox reading, where we attribute Yahweh's capriciousness and cruelty to God also leads to deep contradictions requiring all kinds of special pleading and theological gymnastics to overcome. I don't know what the answer ultimately is. There are things about the New Testament that are so profoundly true and illuminating that they can only have ultimately come from God; and there are things about the OT that are so profoundly malicious and deceptive that they can only have come from the enemies of God. (Though there are also some really great things in the OT too, to be sure.) I don't know how to resolve that dilemma. One possibility (which also has its own problems, but which does give a coherent account of things) is the interpretation of Rev 21: 1-10 that says we are living in a post-millennial era, in between Christ's second and third comings: https://aghostinthemachine.substack.com/p/tinfoil-hat-time
It’s curious you posted this, since only yesterday I asked myself “What is the American spirit?” And the only answer I could come up with was “a rebel spirit”. It’s not really the highest calling and since it calls to mind rebel angels I’m not that sanguine about it, but the fact is, we ARE rebels. We all feel it, this urge to change our rulers and we pretend voting or protesting will do it though now even that is proven a false flag operation, so to speak. Even when we do vote, the big issues like usury are kept clean off the table. I do suspect that if we are to succeed, we’ll need a different metaphysical grounding. Thanks again for posting, I do appreciate your insight.
You raise a good point about that rebel spirit, which is definitely in the American DNA (not including the newer imports). Maybe it's an epigenetic kind of thing, where the latent potential is hidden until some environmental triggers occur to activate it, because Americans can also be loyal to a fault. Similar to the dynamic people have observed with the orientation to political violence on the Right vs on the Left, where unlike the Left, the Right avoids violence and tries to play by the rules, but once the switch gets flipped they go all in. I think Americans are like that with rebellion. Or at least enough of the Americans in rural still are, so that there's no way anyone could use hard power to rule them, and those currently wielding the soft power know that.
Also, glad to hear confirmation of synchronicities like this, where ideas and questions seem to be hitting different people in different places all at once. That confirms my suspicion that the zeitgeist is about to shift in a meaningful way.
Your Serbian friend got it right. I left England at age 40 to come to the States some 33 years ago. Growing up in England we always ate dinner together as a family. Even long after I had left my parents house but still lived in the same town, I would by a beef joint every Saturday, drop it off at my parents house, and then join them for a traditional English roast beef dinner on Sunday. You break that bond then not only do joy break the family ties but you also break the community ties and the comfort of familiarity and shared experiences. Now, my country is being eaten alive by Islam as a result of deliberate policies by government after government regardless of the party. I despair watching this and I hope it doesn’t happen to my adopted country.
I hope to God that Britain (and Ireland, Germany, et al) can turn things around. What has been done to the people of those countries is a war crime deserving Nuremberg trials and public executions. "Never again" and all that. I would say that there has never been an elite with a more traitorous and murderous hatred of its own people than the British ruling class, but the central-bankster Jewish families probably still have them beat. (The British elite learned from the masters of selling out and sacrificing your own people for power and profit.)
It will take a revolution in all of these countries to reverse the damage already done. This will mean street fighting. However, the indigenous of Western Europe are so demoralised and beaten down that I’m not holding out much hope of that happening. There is a little light at the end of the tunnel showing that the establishment is becoming increasingly scared of populist parties and politicians that they feel that must now ban parties, imprison nationalist leaders, annul election results and postpone elections which they know they will lose. I’m hopeful that the French and Irish will lead the way because both peoples have a history of fighting for their countries and their way of life.
“I don’t understand that higher Reality at all, but I do know it’s more real than the problems we face in our world.”
This piece is so resonant with my own experience and thinking. I sometimes wonder if “Christ Consciousness“ is the thing we seek to avail ourselves of in this world, though I would be very reluctant to define that something that purports to connect our finite mind with the mystery of this existence.
Thank you for this beautiful piece. For me, over the years America has become a facsimile of America, in the same way that when you buy produce at a supermarket, or even a health food store, it looks beautiful but just doesn’t taste as good as produce used to taste. I grew up in a small town in Arkansas, and I remember my dad would be driving, and whenever we passed a produce stand my mom would cry out, “Stop!!!” And whatever we bought would be fresh and full of flavor. People tell me, “Maybe you had better taste buds when you were a kid.” But I spent a few weeks as an adult in a “poorer” nation, and the produce there was startlingly good. Even the cucumbers tasted so refreshing I found myself craving them. I would wake up in the mornings and think, “I want to eat some produce.” To me that’s a metaphor for America — the produce we eat is a facsimile of great produce, and America has become a facsimile of itself. I’m not expecting that we can go back to what we were, but I just want us to feel like a real country again. On the 30-year mortgage you mentioned, I was talking to people from another country one time, and they didn’t understand how Americans used the word “own” when they said they owned a home. To them, if you hadn’t paid off your mortgage, you didn’t “own” your home. Plus, there are all the rules and permits and taxes related to your home. In these ways, even “owning” a home in America has become a facsimile of owning a home.
The poisoning of the food and water supply (looks like Alex Jones was right about them turning the frogs gay) is a big part of their social engineering. Our brains and personalities are so chemically driven that it was really a strategically brilliant move on the part of the regime to do that.
Michael Pollan in the documentary Food, Inc., talks about how modern supermarkets offer produce, like tomatoes, year-round, regardless of natural growing seasons.
"Although it looks like a tomato, it's kind of a notional tomato. I mean, it's the idea of a tomato."
<"Although it looks like a tomato, it's kind of a notional tomato. I mean, it's the idea of a tomato.">
I love this -- it's so perfectly said. I think so many of us just really want the actual thing. We want to eat a tomato, not a notional tomato. We want a country, not a notional country!
Great points about the magicians' choices we are given on so many things, starting with our 2 party system.
I think the biggest problem with asking "what is an American?" is realizing that America itself started off with similar magicians' choices due to the Enlightenment. Once a culture internalizes such ideas as "everyone is equal" a culture is permanently weakened and on an inevitable road to libtards running amok. It's just a matter of time due to cognitive dissonance.
Until we correct for the many errors of the Enlightenment, we will only repeat the same mistakes over and over.
You are 1000% on target with your critique of the Enlightenment. I don't think there has ever been a phrase that has been more maliciously warped and weaponized or that has caused more damage to civilization than the phrase "all men are created equal." That's ultimately at the root of all kinds of insane nonsense like "disparate impact is proof of racism" and "trans women are women."
There's a definite spiritual sickness, which often presents as ideological derangement. We've lost what life is about, and what gives human culture meaning.
We have turned a large part of our civilization into a machine based upon revenue-generating addictions. Porn, anxiolytics, stimulants, opiates, SSRI's, smartphones, apps, gambling, food, alcohol, video games, athletics... it's everywhere.
There's also a kind of Darwinian selection operating in our increasingly lonely, neurotic, profit-driven culture: programs and ideas and solutions which demand lots of money get funding and create jobs and establish disciplines... even if they're not helpful. Meanwhile solutions and salves which require NO money (like close-knit families or nutrition or meditation or church or walks outdoors or healthy communal life) get no attention. People have become more lonely, more distracted, more confused, and they increasingly rely on a bureaucratic system (rather than friends and neighbors and family) to help them and meet their needs... but the bureaucracy doesn't care about their needs or their health or their happiness. It only cares about its own survival, and endless growth. Sociology, therapy, psychology, psychiatry, childhood education, feminism, HR trainings-all endeavors we pour BILLIONS of dollars into. Can anyone say that their results are even a net positive, much less worth the cost?
I'm a veteran in recovery who teaches public school and has spent years in therapy. I've come to believe the experts are as lost as we are. They can't solve our problems-any of them. Only we can. Throw off leviathan.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/leviathan
Well said. The experts are indeed lost, and a healthy skepticism of them has become far more normalized and widespread since 2020. Will it be enough that a critical mass of people will see what the dark wizards are up to, in time to stop them? Time will tell.
Get an early edition of Samuelson's "Economics". It is the textbook which made Keynes mainstream. Unlike Keynes, Samuelson was a very clear writer.
But the attack on the culture in favor of consumerism is right there in the first few chapters, complete with helpful diagrams. If people simply save money so they have slack, money is leaking from the Circular Flow. If the economy isn't stimulated by the federal government we get the horror of Unemployed Resources. Hoovervilles to follow.
The measure of an economy is money spent on consumer products and government programs (not including transfer programs). High GNP = prosperity. No mention of the efficiency or usefulness of said programs. Building a 1000 ft. monument to Milliard Fillmore is no different from curing cancer.
Consider the term "unemployed resources." That can be a mother who stays home to teach and raise her kids properly instead of sending them to daycare while she goes to the office. It can be a craftsman's workshop full of quality tools. The big advantage of the assembly line vs. craftsmen, is that the assembly line keeps expensive specialized tools employed all day -- at the expense of the humanity of those who work those tools.
Kenyes gave way to Supply Side Economics under Reagan. One form of pyramid scheme for another. Once again, instead of using our wealth as an opportunity to become human again, we must always pursue GROWTH!
They way back to become human again is a return to kitchen table economics. Debt, including federal deficit spending, is an obligation for future work. It is spending the benefits of future technology before they arrive. It is selling the citizenry into serfdom.
Last years deficit was 1.8 trillioni dollars. DOGE has found 140 billion dollars of savings. And yet people are talking tax cuts. Sorry, we need to talk massive tax increases followed by deleveraging the economy in general. Then we can have culture again.
Thanks for the book recommendation!
Wonderful, thought provoking article.
Although not exactly on point with the subject, I remember talking with some Soviet emigres who came to the US in the 70's but who returned to the Soviet Union after a year or so. They said they couldn't deal with having so many choices and having to bear the consequences. In the Soviet Union so long as you blended in and were as mediocre as everyone else your basic needs were taken care of. You may not have lived like the Politburo but you had enough to get by and learned to be happy with what you had. Here in the States there was no back stop. Although you could become spectacularly successful, you could also lose everything you had. They didn't want that responsibility. Ultimately, they were willing to trade personal autonomy (and choices) for stability.
Another reason was the completely different cultural landscape. They felt more connected back home but felt isolated here in the States; they just couldn't fit in with what they felt was an inferior American culture.
That's an interesting point. That's probably the norm for most people in most cultures, and definitely that's a large part of the rationale for mass immigration and open borders, to turn the American culture into that becuse it's easier to manage in a top-down way. Under the new order, the elite still gamble recklessly, because they control the financial system and just pass their losses onto everyone else while hoarding the profits, but increasingly it's been "safety-first" for everyone else, with only limited options that are practically meaningless in their differences.
As a fellow Distributist I'm often reminded that Chesterton himself wrote the philosophy out as a thought experiment.
He did not believe men were capable of actually implementing it.
America as an idea has always meant to me, a place where the working, common man could define and create his own destiny. That ethic has been swamped by the globalist, collectivist, technocratic leviathan. MAGA means to me, make America and Americans self-sufficient again.
Smash the leviathan.
I thought marcionism made sense for a bit, until my priest explained that the Old Testament contains the seeds of the New Testament, and that is its purpose/significance. God HAD a covenant with the Israelites, the son of God was born from among them, then they rejected him and murdered him, thus breaking the covenant. Now Gods covenant is with Christians. The Old Testament is needed for all this to unfold. That was the crux of his explanation but he did a better job explaining.
This was an SSPX priest who explained this. You won’t hear this type of explanation in a typical Novus Ordo homily, unfortunately.
Excellent essay. Gave me much to think about and was strangely just what I needed to read, right when I needed to read it. I’m dealing with some family issues and have to make some big decisions that impact all of my immediate family.
That is the Achilles heel of Marcionism. St Paul (and others) quote the OT in such a way that it makes it a real stretch to say the god of Genesis is actually a malicious demiurge. That said, the orthodox reading, where we attribute Yahweh's capriciousness and cruelty to God also leads to deep contradictions requiring all kinds of special pleading and theological gymnastics to overcome. I don't know what the answer ultimately is. There are things about the New Testament that are so profoundly true and illuminating that they can only have ultimately come from God; and there are things about the OT that are so profoundly malicious and deceptive that they can only have come from the enemies of God. (Though there are also some really great things in the OT too, to be sure.) I don't know how to resolve that dilemma. One possibility (which also has its own problems, but which does give a coherent account of things) is the interpretation of Rev 21: 1-10 that says we are living in a post-millennial era, in between Christ's second and third comings: https://aghostinthemachine.substack.com/p/tinfoil-hat-time
Pretty much agree with everything you said. And yet I’m Catholic, go figure.
Good read. It sure seems like we are living in the time of satan described. Everything would make complete sense…
It’s curious you posted this, since only yesterday I asked myself “What is the American spirit?” And the only answer I could come up with was “a rebel spirit”. It’s not really the highest calling and since it calls to mind rebel angels I’m not that sanguine about it, but the fact is, we ARE rebels. We all feel it, this urge to change our rulers and we pretend voting or protesting will do it though now even that is proven a false flag operation, so to speak. Even when we do vote, the big issues like usury are kept clean off the table. I do suspect that if we are to succeed, we’ll need a different metaphysical grounding. Thanks again for posting, I do appreciate your insight.
You raise a good point about that rebel spirit, which is definitely in the American DNA (not including the newer imports). Maybe it's an epigenetic kind of thing, where the latent potential is hidden until some environmental triggers occur to activate it, because Americans can also be loyal to a fault. Similar to the dynamic people have observed with the orientation to political violence on the Right vs on the Left, where unlike the Left, the Right avoids violence and tries to play by the rules, but once the switch gets flipped they go all in. I think Americans are like that with rebellion. Or at least enough of the Americans in rural still are, so that there's no way anyone could use hard power to rule them, and those currently wielding the soft power know that.
Also, glad to hear confirmation of synchronicities like this, where ideas and questions seem to be hitting different people in different places all at once. That confirms my suspicion that the zeitgeist is about to shift in a meaningful way.
Your Serbian friend got it right. I left England at age 40 to come to the States some 33 years ago. Growing up in England we always ate dinner together as a family. Even long after I had left my parents house but still lived in the same town, I would by a beef joint every Saturday, drop it off at my parents house, and then join them for a traditional English roast beef dinner on Sunday. You break that bond then not only do joy break the family ties but you also break the community ties and the comfort of familiarity and shared experiences. Now, my country is being eaten alive by Islam as a result of deliberate policies by government after government regardless of the party. I despair watching this and I hope it doesn’t happen to my adopted country.
I hope to God that Britain (and Ireland, Germany, et al) can turn things around. What has been done to the people of those countries is a war crime deserving Nuremberg trials and public executions. "Never again" and all that. I would say that there has never been an elite with a more traitorous and murderous hatred of its own people than the British ruling class, but the central-bankster Jewish families probably still have them beat. (The British elite learned from the masters of selling out and sacrificing your own people for power and profit.)
It will take a revolution in all of these countries to reverse the damage already done. This will mean street fighting. However, the indigenous of Western Europe are so demoralised and beaten down that I’m not holding out much hope of that happening. There is a little light at the end of the tunnel showing that the establishment is becoming increasingly scared of populist parties and politicians that they feel that must now ban parties, imprison nationalist leaders, annul election results and postpone elections which they know they will lose. I’m hopeful that the French and Irish will lead the way because both peoples have a history of fighting for their countries and their way of life.
Great article.
“I don’t understand that higher Reality at all, but I do know it’s more real than the problems we face in our world.”
This piece is so resonant with my own experience and thinking. I sometimes wonder if “Christ Consciousness“ is the thing we seek to avail ourselves of in this world, though I would be very reluctant to define that something that purports to connect our finite mind with the mystery of this existence.