1. This is essentially correct. Politically, one of the things Americans need to grapple with is the degree to which “American” along with the notion of “nationalism” are largely constructs of propaganda. America is an empire. One is American the way people were “Romans.” A 🧵
2. This nationalist propaganda construct of America works to cover over the reality that there are multiple cultures under the imperial umbrella. So yes, in this idea of going off to college does in some sense mean that you are being trained in the “imperial culture.”
3. You have been trained to believe that you are member of the imperium more than you are attached to your local culture. From birth, in order to integrate you into the empire, you are alienated from the local, pushed to embrace the national, the culture of the imperium.
4. In the old days when universities were more local, they were training grounds for the local elites. Other than the Ivy’s and a handful of other schools like Chicago and Notre Dame, most universities were local schools.
5. In those days there were much more regional elites, but with mass media and mass culture, the imperial American propaganda has taken over. So @Tinkzorg is correct that going from rural Sweden is less dislocating than going to university in the US.
6. The universities really are training grounds for the imperium and the imperial culture. And going forward, I think people need to think less perhaps about being a red American or a blue American as this validates the idea of the imperium.
7. Far better would be to concentrate on the local culture, on being a Texan, Michiganer or a Floridian for example. Since the imperium is largely a thing of the left technocracy, the more that one focuses on capturing federal power the more it reinforces the imperium.
8. Since at least the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the idea of America as a single thing as opposed to a confederation of relatively independent states.
9. This means that if conservatives and the right wish to make a break from then left regime, if you are battling over the imperial government, you are fighting the battle on the left’s terms.
10. Perhaps the real battle is not who controls the imperial federal government but rather a battle to free one’s locality, one’s state or region from imperial rule, which is effectively the same thing as defeating the left.
11. This impulse many have to focus on real gains to be made at the same one is intuitively correct. Maybe we have to see this not as one political battle but multiple battles all at once.
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