There’s still enough of value in this country that it’s a no-brainer that it’s worth saving from Trumpies. If he gets 4 more years, and/or Congress remains deadlocked, I don’t know if that will still be true in 2024. His damage capacity will 3x if he stays.
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The correct American response to remarks like “you’ve become really American, not like some of those other immigrants” is “wtf makes you the judge of that?” “American” unlike any other national identity, is almost like PageRank, an identity born of mutuality of recognition.
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Other identities are kinda essentialist whether you like it or not. Much as I detest the Hindutva brigade in Modi’s India, it’s harder to challenge their claim to primacy in defining the idea of India and Indianness, because there isn’t a robust non-reactionary alternative basis.
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The genius of the US is that if you can grok the way the machine works, hack it for your own idea of your best life (aka “the American dream”), and remake the country itself in a small way in doing so, that *is* how you earn an American identity.
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If you make the mistake of thinking it’s about being born here, and about cowboy hats, guns, garage startups, country music, rock, black culture, or any other absolute signifier, there’s a very good chance you’ll end up being more Russian than American.
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“American” is a post-national relativist, mutualist identity, and trying to adopt (or grow into) via absolute signifiers is a security hole. An attack surface that makes you pwnable by Putin or Xi. Both of whom will cheerfully manufacture a firehose of cowboy-hat memes to own you
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End of conversation
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