In America, for both sides, the ‘soul of the country’ has a color. During this presidential election season, the world is witness to the social dynamics of a global super power, projecting its current definitions of selfness and otherness.
Both parties are branding their opposition as fighting over the ‘soul of America’.
When we hear about the concept of ‘soul’ being attributed to a nation, we are surely going to see a display of selectivity going along with this idea, so the chosen illustration becomes the accepted norm.
During the 2020 conventions of both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats showed what they meant. The imagery they chose to illustrate the ‘soul of America’ that they are claiming to save from the gravest of dangers in generations, is shown as a throwback nostalgia for 1950’s white rural and suburban Americana, that has very little to do with today’s language, esthetics, social mix, or aspirations.
What both sides of the political spectrum seem to be doing, is empowering an identity or rather enabling its virtual creation or fabrication, according to their wishes for something else. They are both looking for answers elsewhere than in the present.
The idea of making America great “again” spells nostalgia and discomfort with the future.
Just like announcing to your countrymen before the planet that your program is to install law and order, projects the image of a sick society that speaks fear of repression, instead of how it’s going to heal. When a government threatens its own citizens, the world sees weakness, not strength in that country’s image. In reality the scared armed white man is a fabrication. His imaginary enemies are language constructs. He is only real during election times. Then he can be seen: an armed frightened teenager, who will disappear when his acne skin has changed with age, only coming back sometimes when he gets drunk with friends and gets violent.
This disturbed teen ager was convinced by friends or read on line that white people exist. Color, a mindless indicator of shade that a 3 year old child understands to be just that, suddenly has a magical meaning. He believed it for a few years, and thought that belonging to a color group could help him feel special, maybe even be looked upon as a real man in women eyes. But inevitably disillusion hits, his color does not make him special, nor can it help him be loved. He just bought a stupid lie. No so called soul there.
Calling the collectivity a nation, takes inclusiveness not exclusiveness.
It is only by uncovering and then getting rid of injustices and inequalities, that we can discover the soul of a nation, and see its beauty in its harmony and unity.
If the soul of a society is limited to the image of one of its ethnic parts, idealized and sublimated in a fantasized past, we are entering the dangerous zone, where fascination rimes with fascism, where the relationship between people and leadership regress toward less and less intelligent forms of infantilisation.
The scared and scary white man-child, only exists in a fantasy land of language and rhetoric. This image is maintained in existence by definitions based on ideology, a wish for what could, or should be.
The proposition of an alternate ontology, can be preserved by incessant repetition.
When there are so many real categories that need catering and attention, why choose to focus on the construction of a nostalgia and a fantasy, as both an audience and promised utopia? How is the consensus reached to make such decisions?