@gilduran76 quotes Lincoln to fire up Americans against Trump. I get exactly the opposite feeling from what…

@gilduran76 quotes Lincoln to fire up Americans against Trump. I get exactly the opposite feeling from what Lincoln said. To me it reveals the cancer at the heart of American society, which is why it’s always at war with itself. /1 https://t.co/uDDMulxbfu

That ‘nation of freemen’ IS the problem. That’s ’the people’, the idea I often criticise. The idea populations somehow spontaneously self-organise civilisation. All human groups, of whatever size, only spontaneously organise one thing. Hierarchies of status. /2

Through imitative rivalry, as Girard said. Humans copy one another in teams, which ‘unites’ them, and then fight other teams, for status. They even fight within their own teams, for status. /3

Lincoln is expressing very clearly the complete fantasy at the root of American society. That we are all ‘free men’, spontaneously self-organising our civilisation. This is why everything looks like ‘authoritarianism’, to America. Every tiny hierarchy terrifies it. /4

But those hierarchies will always form, because humans will always pursue status. Status IS identity, for social animals. Without it they are literally nothing and nobody. By enshrining anti-hierarchy at the heart of American life, only one thing happens. /5

An endless war, for status. Uncontrolled, rampant status games. By denying it should even exist, American opened the Pandora’s Box of forever status-driven violence. It’s easily one of the most violent nations on Earth. It has never understood why. /6

This is why. By denying status and hierarchy, it leaves social life completely exposed to perpetual wars, for status. History shows us throughout thousands of years the horrendous error this is. History itself only exists because these status wars were tamed. /7

By centralised, managed status hierarchies. Monarchies and churches, mostly. A way to control and channel status games. ‘Freemen’ will just continuously re-enact B-grade Westerns, where every gunslinger in town tries to be top dog. /end