America’s Ghosts and a New Geist

The Ghosts of America will have to answer to the Geist of our time. In other words, something strange is happening, and we can all sense it.

Caleb Fisher

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was."
—Abraham Lincoln

Some of us feel the first stirrings of inner turmoil as we reckon with the possibility of America’s end, at least of America as we know it. Ghosts of history tell us to keep it together at all costs.

It. This. The Republic. We the People. The Exceptional State.

We have long labored under the idea that we would cease to be a people without a national father figure presiding over armies and functionaries.

Abraham Lincoln, despite being melancholic, fought through bouts of unhealthy Thanatos Feminine. Why? To keep himself intact. To keep the union intact. That he was murdered in Ford’s Theater is an irony that will always haunt us. “Sic semper tyrannis!” cried John Wilkes Booth as Thanatos Masculine ravaged his disordered mind. There is a sense that if we let the Republic fall, we are turning our backs on the sacrifices not only of figures like Lincoln but of all of those who died under his command. 

What about the Founders who, despite their sins, gave the world the first liberal order? What about the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy or battled at Iwo Jima? What about those who marched on Washington, suffered in Selma, or were otherwise set upon by attack dogs and fire hoses and humiliated at the hands of bigots in the Jim Crow South? Won’t all those rights, so long fought for, be washed away as this version of America disintegrates? What unimaginable theocracies, retrograde regimes, and backwater factions await, ready to rise up from the hinterlands to seize power? Without the welfare state, won't an army of the penniless storm our gated communities or comfortable universities, ready to kill for a tin of fish? Without the warfare state, won’t some rogue nation destabilize the world? 

Maybe America can be something more than the welfare-warfare state.

Fear and History sit on either shoulder, whispering warnings. We have to keep it together. But keeping the nation-state together at all costs is a directive from Eros Masculine. A dam is holding back the forces of change but can’t hold forever. In other words, we are on a death watch. And that means we might not have a choice but to let this all play out, however it will play out. Because, unlike Lincoln, we won’t be in control. 

When the dam breaks, we can be more or less radical in our response. At Underthrow, we explore a number of paths—from restoration to radicalism—which might be necessary, though all will seem radical to anyone who has sat pickling too long in the status quo. But in the coming chaos, what once seemed radical might soon seem commonsensical.

In a time of transformation, what becomes is what becomes. We can only speculate. We can only hope to steer the transformation, even if we paddle in different directions. There will never be ein Absoluter Geist, Dear Hegel. But there will always be new Zeitgeister—the egregores of new eras. And though there can be some measure of progress over greater timescales, perfection can never be. The reconciliation of opposing forces can create stable equilibria for a time, but these, too, are destined to become unstable. And that process is non-linear and ceaselessly unfolding. In historical terms, we have to accept that the dialectics of Hegel are realized in the earthly algorithms of Darwin and, otherwise, pray like hell that all of this is the will of a Higher Power.

I can’t help but think the Ghosts of America will have to answer to the Geist of our time. In other words, something strange is happening, and we can all sense it. Only those who see the patterns and temper their own spirits will make it through the coming upheaval.