You're listening to American Prestige.

To listen ad-free, you can subscribe at AmericanPrestigepod.com.

Find the link in our show notes.

What seems to be unique about this moment, at least vis-a-vis, let's say, the moment of American imperialism in the period after 1945,

or even in the period after 1917,

when the United States entered World War I under, I think,

a felt belief to make the world safer democracy

through capital P, progressive era management of ethno-nationalist affairs.

This war seems to be uniquely a ideological.

And you could always say that, and we're going to talk about consciousness later, so I want to bring this up. You could always say that the ideological justifications were bullshit and that you could take the hard materialist analysis.

I don't think that is true. I think that since the United States basically affirmed its globalism on the world stage in the 20th century,

there was a core ideological feature. And the notion being that the United States would move

capital H history and capital P progress in a specific direction. Now, that was different according

to different leaders. What Woodrow Wilson thought is different than what John Kennedy thought

is different from what George W. Bush thought.

But I think this was a genuinely felt idea that the United States had an apocal millenarian

mission that was key to global politics and international affairs.

And you could trace this back to John Winthrop's 1630 speech before he even landed in the

United States about the United States being a

city on a hill. What that city on a hill meant is different at different moments. Sometimes it's an

example. Sometimes you're bringing that fucking city to other people around the world, but there was this

notion of pushing the world forward. I think that is a key reason, by the way, just as a little

...