{"id":9159,"date":"2020-03-06T09:10:41","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T08:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=9159"},"modified":"2020-03-06T09:10:41","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T08:10:41","slug":"the-hallucinated-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/?p=9159","title":{"rendered":"The Hallucinated Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Floyd<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One reason why it\u2019s so hard to get a handle on American politics, to say anything sensible about it, is that it takes place almost entirely in a hallucination. The country that most Americans feel they are living in does not actually exist.<\/p>\n

\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9<\/p>\n

But dip into the timeline of any number of these earnest folks and you will find a touching, childlike belief in the essential goodness and rightness of the \u201cAmerican experiment\u201d \u2014 however much the noble character of this bold and progressive adventure has been tragically perverted by one\u2019s political opponents at any given time. You will find that despite \u201cknowing\u201d all of the above, they don\u2019t actually live in that grim reality but in a dream world, where the CIA and FBI \u2014 known purveyors of murder, lies and gargantuan corruption \u2014 have become \u201cheroes of the resistance,\u201d moral champions motivated solely by selfless public service and faithful adherence to our \u201ctrue\u201d ideals. They\u2019ll even enthusiastically push CIA agents and imperial warriors for public office.<\/p>\n

\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9<\/p>\n

Again, we\u2019re speaking here of good liberals, highly educated people \u201cin the know,\u201d people who are \u201csavvy,\u201d who are proud of their complicated, critical,\u00a0conflicted<\/i>\u00a0patriotism \u2014 so much more\u00a0nuanced<\/i>\u00a0than the blind, cartoonish faith of the Right.\u00a0Yet even they feel there exists some normative, essential goodness in the American character: in the nation\u2019s history, society, politics \u2013 indeed, in its very teleology, which they believe actually exists and is, like the arc of the universe in the 19th-century quote made famous by Martin Luther King Jr., forever \u201cbending toward justice.\u201d And thus all the manifest evils that have beset the \u201cAmerican experiment\u201d since the beginning \u2013 and are overwhelming it like a tsunami today \u2013 are seen as aberrations and terrible distortions of what the country\u00a0really<\/i>\u00a0is.<\/p>\n

How can there be a sensible way forward for a people trapped in such a fever dream?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought of this last night, at a panel discussion<\/a> on what a Bernie Sanders presidency would mean for transatlantic cooperation. Enthusiastic young people, including a Canadian, urged the audience to phonebank in order to get out the vote, and spoke of their suffering („I stayed up all night“) while votes were counted on Super Tuesday. I am coming to realize that I am not an expat, not an American Voice Abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Floyd: One reason why it\u2019s so hard to get a handle on American politics, to say anything sensible about it, is that it takes place almost entirely in a hallucination. The country that most Americans feel they are living … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mwehle.de\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}