*The Puritans became merchants, the rebels became bureaucrats, the hippies became consultants, and now the moral scolds of yesterday are the patriots of tomorrow. Every movement begins by mocking the last and ends by imitating it. The progressive Left used to sneer at the phrase “real America.” Now it’s busy trying to manufacture one. And it might succeed, at least cosmetically. You can already see the outlines: a multicultural, corporately managed patriotism that celebrates diversity as the new destiny, equity as the new independence, and compliance as the new freedom. It will look good on camera. It will feel safe. It will sound sincere. And that’s precisely why it will be dangerous.
The American dialectic doesn’t end in truth; it ends in exhaustion. We don’t reconcile our contradictions — we market them. The performance becomes the product, the product becomes the creed. And then, when we can’t tell the difference anymore, a new wave of dissent breaks through, reminding us that freedom and order can never be balanced for long. The danger of pretending is not that it fools others; it’s that it erases the line between role and reality. That’s where Sartre and Hegel meet: in the recognition that every synthesis is temporary and every act of bad faith eventually hardens into ontology. Pretending long enough doesn’t just risk self-deception; it rewires the culture.*
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