Believers in the geocentric model of the solar system were not stupid. They were wrong, by all means, but they were not stupid: while it does not require much intellect to come up with the initial hypothesis that Earth is at the center of the solar system, it does in fact require plenty of intellect to be able to continually iterate on this model to rationalize the mountain of evidence against it in a coherent way.
Likewise, when Kamala Harris presents herself as the only candidate in this election to vote for to “save our democracy,” it is a mistake to assume that Americans are stupid when they apparently do not notice the paradoxes of her and her supporters’ rhetoric. In any other country in any other time, I’d think most Americans would be able to point out the irrationality just as easily as they know Lucy Van Pelt’s intents with that football. Yet many Americans, it would seem, see red whenever someone points out the absurdities of electoralism in the USA — and whenever confronted with these absurdities, simply choose to dig themselves further into a safe trench of creative sophistry, just like the geocentrists of old.
The Act of Voting
Elections are treated as a sacred thing by many, and I don’t think this treatment is incidental to the fact that elections are ritualized events generally observed on special days or seasons. Voting in Norwegian elections, ballot boxes have reminded me of the donation boxes at Shinto shrines, and voting booths have reminded me of church confessionals; but really ballots themselves bear a greater resemblance to the ema tablets of Shinto, right down to the firm request to write neatly — or in the ballot’s case, to fill in the box completely. Ema are incidentally a type of “votive offering”, funny that that’s the technical term for it.
Ballots also remind me of the idea of religious fetishes, objects which are said to inherently possess non-material values or powers. Part of this supernatural allure comes from the fact that ballots must have this particular form, and cannot be tampered with; another part is just that people generally don’t see where the ballot’s been or where it goes before and after conducting the ritual of voting.
Psychologically, events we wait in line for feel more special, if they’re things we want to do; and the act of putting something in a box can provide emotional relief on its own, this is why “worry boxes” are sometimes recommended for sufferers of guilt or anxiety. There is also something to be said about the voting age, since when I first voted in an American election in 2020, I took that experience as my equivalent to a coming-of-age ritual — it was proof that I had finally become an adult in my family, and my living situation at the time made the event feel even more special.
What I’m getting at by pointing out all of these things is that the act of voting, especially if one is voting in person at a polling station, literally uses many of the same “devices” as actual religious rites: the way elections are carried out makes them feel like very significant and serious events, regardless of how significant they are in reality, and this is reinforced by how American (and to an extent Norwegian) society at large talks about voting.
Looking at elections from this perspective of “civil religion” as it’s known in religious studies, I think helps explain why a lot of people see red when their “common wisdom” about elections is questioned: be the questioners non-voting “atheists” or third-party “pagans”, questioning the common wisdom around elections is in any case tantamount to questioning God Himself. The elections are something Americans have been psychologically primed to take very seriously, and they do not want to feel like they have been played for fools after investing so much of their mental energy into the elections.
Lady Democracy
I should think most Americans are able to provide a decent definition of “democracy” and sincerely believe on a conscious level that when they speak of “democracy” that they are using their own definition. The belief that the USA (or any other liberal “democracy”) matches that description is what is religious, and it is this religion that is the true object of Kamala Harris’ defense. She aims to defend the rituals and cultural practices of electoralism in the USA — the cultus of Democracy the patron goddess of the USA — which carries the form but decidedly not the substance of the common people’s ability to have control over their own country. Kamala Harris defends a religion so normalized that most Americans don’t realize they even believe in it, and she claims that “the other side” will disrupt this cultus of Democracy that many Americans hold so dear, just as “the other side” claims that Harris’ side will disrupt their own cultus of the Nazarene, a cultus without at least the modest decency of wearing a “secular” garb.
Religions and their gods, of course, always exist to serve some sort of purpose in society, be it a Mandate of Heaven justifying an emperor, or a Sky Father justifying a house patriarch, or simply various gods in each corner of the world personifying various natural phenomena. This considered, I think a reason why I fell out of the worship of American Democracy so early on is because I don’t live in that society, I am and always have been geographically isolated from the things that most effectively produce and reproduce American “election worship”: The Americans in the USA live in a settler-colonial society built on slavery and stolen land — that is the country’s primary contradiction, the cognitive dissonance of which has been the driving pressure of the formation and development of the original American national identity of the United States. My own national identity, on the other hand, is then a settler-colonial identity which has been taken out of its proper settler-colonial context. The original driving pressures of American identity are therefore non-factors for myself, and so I am afforded at least a somewhat easier time recognizing and questioning the aspects of American national identity based in these pressures.
When settlers slaughtered and enslaved entire nations supposedly to “bring the light of civilization and progress” from sea to shining sea, the belief that these settlers were sincere in their aims and ultimately “succeeded” is, for the settlers’ sanity, then as today, practically necessary. This is the forgone conclusion at the core of the worship of Lady Democracy, and it is then only natural that her cultus would take this specific ritualized form. Rituals, after all, create meaning and help with the regulation of one’s emotions, and as mentioned earlier, putting a physical manifestation of one’s guilt or anxiety in a box is something that is specifically recommended for sufferers of these emotions — and who could be more anxious, and more guilty, than colonizers?
Indeed, the USA is a country that will never come to terms with its own crimes, for it is a criminal country at its core — the settlers will supremely value their spiritual cleansing in the form of show-democracy, far more than they will ever value a genuine choice of leadership. Hell, what choice do the settlers really need in their leadership, anyways? Two “parties” on the ballot is enough for petty suburban drama and the superficial appearance of choice; one Party in practice is enough to maintain the status quo that the settlers benefit from. The countless millions oppressed by this paradigm can nevertheless be sold on the cult of Democracy on the promise of acceptance and an easy solution to their troubles — their worship will however always be far more unstable than the settlers’.
That’s correct: they’re not stupid, but they’re also neither misinformed nor confused.
The whole overly generous premise of this article falls flat on its face because of the following very simple, very logical reasoning:
Trump has said many alarming things. Shooting protesters in the legs, being dictator on day one, implementing the purge, going after his enemies, etc. Note that HE said these things: they were not (mis)-reported by the media or by his opponents to hurt his campaign. You can watch HIM make those utterly stunning statements.
The media onslaught has been such that it’s almost demonstrably impossible that anybody can not be aware of what Trump said.
Therefore there is only one logical conclusion: roughly half of the US population is either:
a. In favor of replacing the American republic with a dictatorship
b. So ignorant of history that they don’t realize what Trump is proposing
Everybody goes to school in America. Even a little. And I guarantee you that Nazism and the holocaust comes up pretty quickly in the history curriculum, if only to extoll the virtues of America and emphasize how it’s the complete opposite of that.
But let’s be charitable and let’s assume half of would-be Trump voters have never heard of Hitler and genuinely think voting Trump is a good idea: that leaves us with 25% of the US population actively and deliberately wishing to bring about a Nazi-style regime in the United States.
My conclusion thus, based solely on logic, is that at least a quarter of the American population is dangerous, anti-American and perfectly aware of what it’s doing.
Prove me wrong, I dare you.
The only thing I’d dispute right off the bat is the implication that being “anti-American” is a bad thing on its own. When people call things “anti-American” with the implication that this is a bad thing, I feel like this generally implies that the USA is something “worth protecting” — and I just don’t think this is the case, the land belongs to the Natives. There is also a broader problem of how vague the term “anti-American” is, because there are both progressive and regressive movements and ideas that self-describe or are branded as “anti-American”, and there’s even been things or people that are labeled as “anti-American” simply as a way to distance people’s idea of America from these ugly things that are very definitely American.
So as a whole “anti-American” is a term that is often too vague to be very useful. This is why I’ve been developing my own terminology that I think is more clear, but the problem with that is that if other people don’t already know that terminology, then it doesn’t really work as a way to clarify things, which is why I didn’t use it in the original post. But that’s life.
Otherwise, I don’t think anything else you mentioned really goes against my premise, that Trump represents American nationalism rooted in Christianity, while Harris represents American nationalism rooted in civil religion. I’m not necessarily the best writer so I might not have conveyed my ideas in the clearest manner, though. I’m honored you’d call this an “article” in any case, because even if you don’t agree, that shows that you take it at least a little seriously, and that means a lot to me.
I figured it wouldn’t be out of place in a decent rag, and it certainly is of higher caliber than most of the rest of the internet. Thus it qualifies as an article as far as I’m concerned.
You won’t get an argument from me. I renounced my citizenship 23 years ago.
I just figured people in America who care about electing someone must care about America. Otherwise they wouldn’t play the game. So technically if they knowingly vote for someone who openly plans on destroying it, they’re anti-American. Whether it’s a good thing or not is orthogonal to the issue.
Heeell yeeeaaah
Edit: So, although you renounced your citizenship, are you still OK with being called American, or how do you prefer to be called in terms of nationality? You’ve made me very curious about your background now, if you’re OK with sharing that.
I never called myself an American. Countries are artificial and stupid, and where I happened to be born without me having any say in it doesn’t define who I am, and doesn’t give me any sense of pride.
I left the US soon after the USA Patriot act was enacted, and after having witnessed several of my foreign friends of arabic descent with green cards get deported without reason and without trial despite having done nothing at all after 9/11, because I knew staying in the US was akin to staying in Germany in 1933.
This country is utterly fucked. If it’s not fucked this time around, it will be when another Trump runs for president and gets elected. Because the problem isn’t would-be dictators running for president, it’s the people who vote for them. This election being a close election is totally incomprehensible unless you realize that Americans are terminally messed up in the head.
I don’t disagree, necessarily, but just speaking for myself, I don’t feel like nationality is something I can just opt out of “just like that”, either. To me, calling myself “an American in Norway”… Made up as both those things may be in the grand scheme of things, people’s belief in them still has a concrete enough impact on my life that I just like the convenience of shorthand terms, right? But I feel like my own attitude might have to do with me being a second generation immigrant, whereas you’re first generation — so I just couldn’t see “being American” as having anything to do with where I was born, because I wasn’t born in America. So this was why I wanted to hear your attitude as someone who was.
Nationality is a legal thing based on where you were born - usually, not always - and also a set of values that were imposed on you when you were too young to have any say about it, just like religion. When you’re old enough, you may reflect on whether you agree with that set of values and decide to stick with them or reject them.
I learned history and I lived in 7 countries, so I know exactly what it means to be American and I want no part of it. I’m fact, it’s so revolting to me that I decided to pay the extortion fee and renounce my citizenship - and believe me, it wasn’t cheap back then.
For a while, I thought of going stateless because while the American citizenship is nothing to be proud of, I don’t know any other that I really want to have either for more or less the same reasons.
But being stateless really, REALLY makes one’s life difficult. So I adopted another country’s citizenship based on how benign it is - Belgium if you’re wondering, I and don’t even live there. But it means nothing to me: it’s just to make the paperwork easier to deal with.
You say you’re an American from Norway but you’re not in fact American: my advice is, ditch the American bit. You of all people should know how Americans are perceived abroad and it’s not flattering.
I’m not going to argue with you, but I think you have a really bad way of understanding nationality which is not going to do you any favors.
Would you care to explain what your understanding of nationality is?
Not arguing 🙂 I’m genuinely curious because I just can’t think of any other way to interpret what it is.
Trump said a lot of shit the first time around. He did some of it where there was already an easy legal framework for it and no serious pushback, like the “Muslim ban” wrt immigration, but where something lacked these traits, like the Muslim registry, he apparently didn’t even bother, and for other aspirations, like withdrawing from Afghanistan (which admittedly I think was not a campaign promise either), he did make some progress but ultimately didn’t actually do it because his generals, etc., didn’t want him to and he’s a paper tiger.
The thing you’re fundamentally misunderstanding about Trump is that he doesn’t have a coherent ideology or a serious desire to do even the incoherent things he talks about if they are inconvenient. He says things because saying things is easy and he gets a reaction from the crowd and (even more) free press coverage. It’s a good strategy and maybe the biggest non-Hillary, mathematically positive reason he won in 2016.
Most Americans, your ilk included, are quite ignorant of history, but this is missing the reality that a lot of these people are just vibing and that’s the intended reaction because Trump is just saying things. We have direct evidence of this in the Capitol riot, where we had a bunch of people imagining they were going to take over the Capitol and somehow thereby the election (there is no causal relationship that makes this make sense), but then when they get hit with some pepper spray they cry and try to go home, while most of the ones who got in were basically just illegal tourists and petty thieves and vandals. That’s the thing about this movement, it’s unserious, and pretending Trump is some new Hitler is a complete failure of analysis that gives him the political gravity he desires.
The only things we have reason to believe people seriously want are the things within the scope of normal Republican politics, like removing abortion rights (and what do you know? They made some serious headway there)
Your argument is left with nothing because your hidden axioms (e.g. that Trump is earnest in his promises, that MAGAts are earnest in their professed aspirations) are complete nonsense.
More like a third. Remember that if “no vote” was a candidate, it would have won recent elections.
The Nazis based their ideology in large part on the US. They are not opposites, the US merely pretends they are. Manifest Destiny is Lebensraum that worked.
You’ve tilted your fedora so hard it’s now more like a chin guard.
this is something biden also said
That is very much not what he said:
There’s a difference between police under attack shooting assaillants and police not under attack shooting peaceful protestors - in the legs or elsewhere.
How disingenuous of you.
There isn’t much of a distinction between the two when pigs can retroactively decide if you were an assailant of not.
Maybe so. But that’s not the point. The point is: Biden didn’t ask whether US troops could shoot protesters in the legs to deal with them. He suggested that if cops need to shoot, they try to do so in a less lethal way.
You get shot in the femoral artery, you’re bleeding out and dying right then and there. There’s no “less lethal” way to shoot someone. You also have to worry about what happens if you miss. You try hitting someone’s arm 100 feet away, you’re likely to end up shooting a bystander (not like cops care about that since they kill bystanders all the time).
The only reason to shoot someone is if you intend to kill them. Suggesting otherwise means Biden either doesn’t actually give a shit or he’s ignorant as to what law enforcement is doing or both.
I would argue that it is in fact not anti-american, and actually lines up perfectly well with what america is and always has been, a white settler state built on slavery and genocide.
The rest of your points stand fine, just to clarify… but I don’t see how these Amerikans are being anti-Amerikan… I mean
Didn’t the Nazi regime’s economy and ideology get its inspiration from the U.S’s settler-colonial framework of Manifest Destiny? In this way, it’s a ouroboros process…
That’s kind of the problem. You’re drawing conclusions about what people are motivated by and believe based on your assumptions, but these people, like, exist, you can observe them and even interact with them, which allows you to collect evidence which you can compare against the hypothesis that you derived from intuitive assumptions. In reality, most of his supporters don’t fall into either of your proposed categories of “Wanting to replace the American republic with a dictatorship” or “Has never heard of Hitler.” Rather, they don’t believe that Trump is comparable to Hitler. Just because someone has heard of Hitler doesn’t mean that they’ll automatically connect him to Trump.
That’s nonsense. Many people simply don’t watch the news or engage in politics. It can be hard for politically engaged people like you and me to even comprehend the level of disengagement people can have. Anecdotally, I know a someone, a trans woman I’m in a Discord with, who hadn’t heard about what was happening in Gaza until it came up in conversation a few months ago, she had vaguely heard of October 7, but didn’t pay attention to it because she didn’t think it concerned the US at all, she had no idea that the US was giving any kind of aid to Israel at all, let alone military aid, and she was shocked and appalled to find out about it. You have to understand that there are plenty of people who are just, like, into other stuff, or who avoid the news because it’s stressful and depressing.
Relevant XKCD
Yes, but even if someone sees those things, they might interpret them differently than you. Someone who likes Trump, surrounds themselves with people who like Trump, and watch media that supports Trump, is going to come away with much more generous interpretations of what he says as opposed to someone who dislikes Trump, surrounds themselves with people who dislike Trump, and watch media that opposes Trump. Virtually everything Trump says has some layer of ambiguity or plausible deniability, which allows people to assign whatever views they want onto him. For example, when he said he’d “be a dictator on day one,” did he mean, he’s going to overthrow the entire system of government, or did he just mean that he’s going to aggressively pursue the policies he mentioned in the statement? Your argument rests on the assumption that every single person is going to interpret it the first way, but that’s just not true.
I’m not saying any of this to defend Trump or his supporters, but it’s important to know your enemy and have an accurate understanding of them, for the sake of threat modelling if nothing else.
I got a notification for this comment while I was on a walk. I read the first sentence or two and figured I would read the rest when I got home, since its opening did intrigue me, but I guess since you deleted the comment you don’t want me reading the rest of it…? It’s a shame but it’s your choice.
I don’t mind you reading the rest. I just figured it was the wrong venue for political ranting. Also, the more I think about how fucked up the US is, the more I plain don’t want to even discuss it anymore. That’s why I removed my post - and a whole lot of others in other communities too. But if you want to read it, be my guest 🙂
I see, I see.