The neocons write (hat tip Simplicius) that America is an idea, and that idea is at risk of being lost, and that if the idea falls, America will fall.
They attribute this, of course, to Russian disinfo and Russian influence, not to them silencing freedom of speech, rigging elections, and forcing woke down everyone’s throat, but this is just point deer make horse. They can see the deer and they are afraid.
America is an idea. America is a choice. America is a belief in the value of action. US domestic resilience and global power come in no small part from people and countries choosing the United States and from Americans preserving their agency to act with intent. An adversary learning how to alter these realities is an existential threat — especially when ideas are that adversary’s core weapon.
Of course ideas are not Russia’s core weapon. Putin is almost as scared of the ideas that are frightening them as they are. Ideas are our core weapon. Russia does not frighten them. Whatever happens in Eastern Europe, they will be far from Russian drones and Russian artillery, We frighten them.
America the Myth floated along during all of this. It was a shared catechism of the American religion, but is becoming harder to swallow. We are becoming American Atheists and when the people stop believing in their own myths they perish.
Well, to survive we need a new myth. Or better, a very old one. One that has been regularly tried before.
The neocons tell us:
Russia’s true sphere is its global information space — communities penetrated by the Russian narratives, including in the United States
But, of course, Russia’s narrative is not penetrating us. That is point deer make horse, 指鹿為馬. On the contrary, our narrative is penetrating Russia. Putin had to be dragged kicking and screaming into holy war. He wanted a cabinet war, and was profoundly reluctant to let go of it. That is not Russia’s true sphere. This is our sphere.
The white boys from rural America decline to sign up to die for Israel and ensure that goat herder’s daughters get taught to put a condom on a banana. Our enemies know why they are not signing up.
That they know is why they are starting to hesitate a little on woke, on censorship, and may well hesitate on the more flagrant and outrageous forms of election rigging. But they are only backing off a little bit. It will likely prove far too much, and far too little. Far too little to get troops to sign up and for the public to start believing in America again, far too much in that much pent up and long suppressed outrage is going flood through the crack in the slightly opened gates. And then they, or a faction among them, will likely attempt to shut the gates again, which could get more interesting than the first time they shut the gates, for the first time they shut the gates they thought that the normal of the early Obama years would return, and America would conquer Russia. The next time no one is going to believe in Covid and Climate and all that.