Waking Up Too Late.

I know it may sound nauseating and arrogant, on my part obviously, but I have to point out to a conclusion I arrived to a long time ago, and I post here one of the more expanded versions of this conclusion which was written into my first book at around 2016-2017. It is from Introduction: America's Dangerous Narcissism.

This decline reflects the American failure to form a real nation, a process which, as paradoxical as it may sound, was prevented by a sequence of historic events in the 20th century, which turned the tables on American fortunes. As strange as it may sound, it was the continental warfare of WWII that the United States did not experience on its own soil, and the lack of experiencing any invasion by a peer foreign power, that failed to provide it with the historic glue, which was responsible to a large degree for the formation of modern nations. This may have played in favor of America’s post-WWII greatness, but it also bore the seeds of the American myth’s destruction with it. Those seeds, overlooked by a non-inquisitive American political and intellectual class in the 20th and 21st centuries, were pivotal in reinforcing stereotypes and clichés which, otherwise, they would have rejected as not having a solid grounding in real life.

Of course, the warnings and alarms were sounding for a long time, especially this one--nations, and their more general political iteration, a nation-state--are the main subjects of history since 1648. The United States is NOT a nation. It failed to coalesce into one, and now is having all paths to real nationhood being either blocked or sabotaged by political-media institutions. The United States is a country, a state, but it is not a nation. Is Americanism as a national feature defined in any way in any of the America's founding documents? Does the United States have an understanding of a huge difference between nationality, as in citizenship, and that of a nation as race, blood, ethnicity, phenotype, culture? No. US Representative Ilhan Omar maybe is an American politician but she is no American, despite being US citizen. She is of a Somalian and Yemeni ethnic origin, she is Muslim and while some of her politics may invoke a sympathy, most of it are of the extreme so called "left" which, such as "defund the police" or radical immigration policies, can hardly be considered nation-oriented, but then again what is American nation? 

I am on record: remove primarily White Christian European-origin population of America, and the US is done as a country. It will balkanize and, eventually, turn into the collection of the territories some of which will be at war with each-other. This is precisely what is happening now in the US. Remove Western, European cultural heart from the United States and it stops being such. As an example, large constituencies of the Democratic Party vote for its representatives based on the "erase the Western past" of the US. The reason they do it not only because they hate the West as a whole. which they do, for all its genuine faults, but because their vision of America is not historically American. Of course, they know what America is, how it works but they do not like it and they identify themselves as "other" Americans. You, know, like school districts in Washington State who define mathematics as racist and view it as a tool of white oppression. Just as an example, Russians, both of White movement and Reds (bolsheviks) may have had a colossal differences on the political system of Russia, but everyone among them knew that Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeelev, great chemist and the father of Periodic Table of elements, was ethnically Russian (that means race: white Slav, ethnicity-blood--Russian, culturally Russian and religiously Russian Orthodox) and for all my hatred for Chemistry, me, being Russian, never thought about Mendeleev wanting to oppress me, or use both organic and inorganic chemistry as a tool for this oppression. 

Of course, there are exceptions, here is Igor Hirak:  

He served in the Soviet Army and was one of the people who were called "liquidators" at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in 1986. He is Russian. Yes, he is black, but culturally in all Igor's idiosyncrasies he is as Russian as they come. 

So, as you can see, when related to race the issue of nationality becomes somewhat tricky, but both Igor and Russia's greatest and venerated, and beloved, poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, who was also black, they both are Russians. In fact, I am positive that Pushkin would be incensed if ever called African-Russian. He was Russian, period, and that is why this black guy is a father of the modern Russian language. You see, Igor, not to speak of Alexander Pushkin are Russia's patriots. They did what they did because they consider themselves Russians. It is complex, all right. But, but, Russia's Constitution is very specific about WHO, what nation holds Russia together. Igor is Russian first, and a black guy second, so was Pushkin. You see how it works? In the US, for minorities, it works exactly the other way around. Ilhan Omar, she is Somali American, African Americans are a significant part of the US population but most of them count themselves as African first and Americans second. Same applies to many Latinos, who are Latino first, and Americans-second. It is a conundrum, under such circumstances, stating that European core of American population is what makes America what it is, or, rather was. No way. One immediately will be accused of being a white supremacist. 

Yet, America needs some kind of "national idea" and identity. So, Seth Kaplan doesn't waste the time and states that America needs nationalism. All right. What is American nationalism?

Both the left and right, however, now act in ways that weaken the glue that holds our nation together. Their fierce fight for power increasingly undermines our sense of common nationhood, tearing apart the very social bonds that unify us. In fact, they seem to be taking on the appearance of two separate nations. Each side has its own flag—the right waves the stars and stripes while the left waves the rainbow banner; anthem, with the NFL playing both the American and Black national ones before some games; version of history; media; sources of authority and heroes; and moral framework, with the left more worried about fairness and harm and the right more about in-group loyalty, authority, and sanctity.The importance of national cohesion can be seen in every global ranking of countries. Almost all developed countries—which are mostly in Europe, North America, and East Asia—are nations. The few who struggle with social divisions based on identity—notably Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Belgium—serve to highlight the importance of national cohesion to stability and to satisfying the desires of a population (who naturally want to feel their country reflects their identity). 

Well, it is all fine and dandy, but here is a trick, Spaniards slaughtered each-other in droves during Spanish Civil War, but be they Republicans or Franco's supporters, sometimes irreconcilable, one would know the Spaniard from Russian or Indian. Simple as that. But who is American? American balkanization was predicted long time ago. Cohesion comes from many things. Igor Hirak may be black, but in everything else, in his cultural affiliation he is Russian, he speaks clear and beautiful language, he comes across entirely as an average Russian guy. He is, but what about NFL black millionaires who identify themselves with anything but America? Kaplan states: 

The U.S. built its national cohesion and strong sense of nationhood from a number of time-tested sources—a common heritage, widely-accepted institutions, education, rituals, and elite modeling. These elements combined to forge the strong national identity and narrative that unite us. But many of these sources are under stress—even attack—often from within the body politic itself. The strains go back decades—starting in the 1960s and 1970s—but have significantly accelerated since the end of the Cold War and, in particular, the turn of the century.

Well, about "strong sense", Kaplan's piece is about being for everything good, and against everything bad. But well-intentioned mantras are not a substitute for realistic policies and courage required from elite to stop dissolution of the America. America doesn't have such elites. What she has is corrupt, both financially, intellectually and by lust for power, and mostly cowards. American social, humanities, academe is a laughing stock consisting of doctrine-mongers, slogans manufacturers and grievance-generators, who are an insult to scientific inquiry and real academe. The United States was in the reality detachment mode across the full spectrum of human and state activity for a while now. Kaplan writes about strength of American "institutions" one day before the whole corruption of the US election system was exposed. In this case, I can say only one thing from my first book:

What has to be understood at this point of time is the fact that the current United States is neither an actual nation-state nor can it continue to be considered to be Western in its many important manifestations. While the veracity of Scruton’s definition of Western Civilization can be debated, there is very little doubt that the American cultural dynamic is anything but Western. The vector is distinctly anti-Western and anti-European, or at least as it concerns what was traditionally regarded as European civilization. No nation has ever existed based strictly on an ideological and political creed—not even the Soviet Union. Blood, race, ethnicity and, as a result, common culture matter, in fact—they define the nation whether it has Republican system of governance or a fascist one, which are merely derivatives of cultures. Evidently, the lessons of the Soviet collapse have not been learned in the US, or in Europe, where the merits of liberal dogma are wrongly accepted as a main reason for their alleged Cold War “victory”. The dangerous and manifest divisions in the US today are more than just differences of political opinion, they are a symptom of a serious illness. A large part of those divisions originates in a substantial segment of the American population seeing no value in American real, not perceived, liberties. 

It is either understood and heeded or the dissolution of the American, already barely alive, nationhood will continue. I do agree with Kaplan on one thing: the nation which refuses to venerate George Washington has no future, nor deserves one.