At the end of the day, the magic that makes the American Experiment work is that it is grounded in an astute understanding of human nature and political realism.
Early in March 2026, the famous but anonymous X account known as "Insurrection Barbie" dropped a long article about an Integralist operation to disrupt and hijack the American right-wing (or conservative movement, or Republican Party).
In this episode of James Lindsay OnlySubs, my subscribers-only podcast, I read through the first eleven verses of the fourth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, where Jesus is tempted by the devil in the desert.
When we face the question of what makes us who we are, different people have different answers. Some see ourselves as receptacles of tradition. Others see us as a self to be discovered in the world. Still others see us as blank slates who can become whatever we can dream.
Carl Schmitt captured the essence of totalitarian politics in his book The Concept of the Political (1932). It is the distinction between friend and enemy. The poison of this kind of thinking is in the ugly fact that the declared enemy must be treated as the declared enemy once a political faction has declared one, and anyone who doesn't go along with that declaration declares himself one of the enemy.