@jiub @Tattie I think it’s important to understand those comments in context: Americans are deconstructing at an alarming rate. This is especially true of millennials and GenZ but it’s happening across the generations. And in the context of deconstruction, it’s easy to have a period of pure hate and anger before you get to the other side and start building.
And that anger is justified! America has done a lot of shit over the centuries. And a lot of us are waking up, realizing that the American Dream was a lie, and that we’ve been made complicit in those atrocities, even though many of us didn’t really realize what America was doing. We’re 100% right to angry about that and want to see the whole American project burn!
And I said “made complicit” not “are complicit” for a reason. America is a cult. We’re kids who were raised in that cult. We waved the flags. We wore the T-shirts. We watched the fireworks and thought we were celebrating the best country on earth. We got excited to send money and aid to those less fortunate than us who lived in worse countries. We believed it, not only because it was convenient and appealed to our whiteness, but because it was all we knew. I’ve had some fascinating discussions with my Ukrainian coworker who grew up under the fading shadow of the Soviet Union and our experiences of the brainwashing are eerily similar.
So people are angry. They’re right to be angry. But also, thanks to that brainwashing, they also often don’t have a better model in mind. They just know they’ve been lied to. But when your entire political science education is all about the American system and how great it is, it’s hard to dream of something better.
A lot of us also don’t have an idea of what America is absent the cult rhetoric. America is… America. What else could it be?
And yes, there is more. It’s bustling cities and wide open fields. It’s road trips to beautiful parks. It’s herds of bison and flocks of geese. It’s lakes and rivers and forests. It’s square dance and pecan pie and beers with neighbors and friends. It’s pizza and cheeseburgers and tacos and tater-tot hot dish and Chinese take-out. It’s hauling a way too heavy couch up to the 5th floor to help a friend move into their university dorm. It’s state fairs and carnivals and churches. It’s hundreds of townsfolk watching their kids play mediocre football against the next town over and cheering for them like it’s the NFL. It’s garage bands and stadiums full of Taylor Swift fans and that one remaining mall that’s still haunted by the local goth kids.
And there’s a real beauty in that America. But it’s also an America that we now know is tainted. It’s an America where all these things are used as a cover so we don’t have to talk about the racism that never went away. So much of the beauty was built on the suffering of innocent prior. And we don’t have the English to hate and blame for any of it. We have only ourselves. We did all that. And we just kept eating pecan pie and setting off fireworks like there’s nothing wrong. We’re the best, most free country in the world.
It’s hard to come out of that without nihilism. I’m sitting here in a different country, eating food from a third, with no real desire to ever see a state or county fair again. I wish I could enjoy those things. I’m jealous of those that haven’t been disillusioned and still can. But I can’t. And I don’t know if I’ll ever believe in a place or its people ever again.
Oct 20, 2026, 4:27 PM
