Are Nation-States Obsolete?

The U.S. Supreme Court Building

The President Taco Administration has performed elaborate gymnastics to preserve its adherents’ notions about American identity. Within its first few weeks, it mistakenly deported a refugee, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom America was supposed to protect. It’s spent the subsequent months desperately excluding him, and others of a similar complexion, from the country. This has included snatching veterans and citizens in its absurdly wide net.

This emphasizes a question underpinning America’s foundation, a question that remains unresolved 250 years later: what is a nation-state for? Not a government, which exists to make and enforce laws, but the state itself, which exists irrespective of who holds power. Why do nation-states exist? Closely related, what purpose do borders serve? Why do we draw hypothetical lines, then demand citizens stay on their side, under penalty of law?

The Taco Administration clearly sees states as ordained to sort humanity into protected and unprotected classes. The protected class is apparently White, English-speaking, and at least implicitly Protestant Christian. Critics have documented the administration targeting suspects by superficial characteristics, like skin melanin and speaking Spanish in public. These standards of insidership are irrational and inconsistent, but serve a nationalist narrative.

If your 11^th-grade American Civics course resembled mine, you probably heard fuzzy bromides about “government by consent of the governed” and “rule of law in a free society.” Textbook writers cherry-pick these sayings from philosophers like John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Baron Montesquieu. Armchair political theorists browse these writers to justifiy a moral nation-state the way religious scholars once selectively read the Bible and Talmud.

Yet these Enlightenment-era thinkers worked backward to attribute purpose to the state. They mostly worked between the Thirty Years’ War in the 17^th Century, and the Seven Years’ War in the 18^th. During that century, old definitions of nationhood, founded on ethnicity or religion, seemed increasingly phony, as European states expanded beyond their homelands to claim vast overseas colonies. Nations needed new justifications simply to exist.

Charles, Baron de Montesquieu

Before this Enlightenment interregnum, states were the monarchs’ private property. Kings owned the military and the treasury, and commenced wars to gather riches, power, and personal glory. Longstanding wars, such as those between the English Plantagenets and the French Valois, were driven not by principles but by personalities. Monarchic dynasties didn’t influence ordinary people much, provided their battles didn’t happen on peasant farmland.

I’ve written about this before. If you dig back far enough, states basically existed as vessels to contain the military. “King” and “Emperor” are, in their origins, not political titles, but military ranks. When theoreticians like Rousseau postulate a “social contract” to justify the state, they’re imposing later moral expectations that simply don’t apply. States didn’t organize themselves to protect the hoi polloi, they fought for the sake of fighting.

Later thinkers, especially John Rawls and David Gauthier, further extend the social contract experiment. Their theories attempt to recreate primordial social selection, when states first organized themselves, and question how we can recapture that supposed purity. (I’m oversimplifying; stick with me.) But anybody who’s read Edward Gibbon knows that states didn’t emerge from social agreements, they arose from swordsmithing and horsemanship.

Modern attempts to repurpose the nation-state for moral ends create frequent slapstick outcomes. My personal favorite is when Paul Robeson—actor, activist, legend—couldn’t cross international borders during the Red Scare. So, he mounted a sound truck along the U.S.-Canadian border and sang to a multinational audience, while nominally honoring the law. The product highlighted borders’ inherent absurdity.

States invent laws to justify themselves, then draw invisible lines across the globe, demanding that people stay inside whatever lines they’re born into. Instead of the cultural flourishing that we regularly see where borders are loosely enforced, in places like Miami or New Orleans, modern borders become absolute walls that ordinary people must never, ever cross. Literal walls now, in Taco’s America.

Conservatives, especially American religious conservatives, are frequently terrified of a one-world state. Organizations like the United Nations, or even cooperation pacts like the USMCA, reduce them to pants-wetting terror. But I suggest we consider something else: a no-state world. Instead of inventing moralistic justifications for boundaries drawn during the horse-and-buggy era or earlier, maybe states themselves are outdated.

I can’t speculate what comes after nation-states. Future predictions consistently go sideways behind the forecasters’ personal blind spots. But the chaos emerging from the Administration’s attempt to define America’s purpose, shows we need to move beyond this medieval model. We don’t do polity for ancient reasons, so we can’t do it within ancient boundaries.

Samantha Fulnecky and the Assault on Learning

Samantha Fulnecky (source)

I’ve attempted to avoid OSU undergrad Samantha Fulnecky’s newfound celebrity for refusing to do her homework. Not because I don’t have an opinion, but because I thought I had nothing to offer. Despite my years’ experience teaching college-level composition, I saw this as a classic teachable moment distorted into notoriety by a partisan media machine. I wouldn’t have given Fulnecky’s paper a zero; I would’ve returned it ungraded and invited her to my office hours.

I would’ve offered Fulnecky two pieces of guidance. I would’ve stressed that a reaction paper needs to address the subject at hand, which hers doesn’t; her sprawling, disorganized essay addresses transgender standing overall, but scarcely mentions the source. Then I would’ve stressed that religious dogma isn’t an academic argument, except in theology classes. Appeals to Christian belief will only persuade fellow Christians—and not just any Christians, but those who share her specific theological interpretation.

Then something struck me. Long before I encountered the story, more informed critics pointed out that Fulnecky doesn’t cite the Bible in her text; she refers to Christian beliefs, but without actual textual source. She doesn’t present a Christian dogmatic position, she offers Christian vibes. Although standard citations exceed the requirements of a reaction paper, if you bring n outside sources, you need to cite them, not just snuggle into them like a comfy blanket.

I’ve noticed something similar in other venues recently. Prager “University,” a YouTube account where prominent conservatives deliver lectures about hot-button issues like science, world affairs, and liberal arts, doesn’t cite sources either. This isn’t incidental. Critics who exhaustively analyzed PragerU’s content note that, when lecturers do make claims of fact, those claims are often ephemeral, difficult to source, or easy to rebut with a fifteen-second Google search. Context, nuance, and complexity go out the window.

Conservatives love the trappings of universities. Besides Prager “University,” prominent examples include the now-defunct Trump University, where The Donald licensed sock puppet instructors to teach get-rich-quick schemes, and Hustlers’ University, where Andrew Tate… um… also teaches get-rich-quick schemes. Right-wing philanthropy networks keep endowing chairs and unofficial newspapers on conventional campuses. Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro love touting their Ivy League law degrees, right before floating proposals to demolish higher ed, and especially the Ivy League.

Dennis Prager

They’re somewhat less enthusiastic about actual higher education. In the 1990s, when I restarted my postponed post-secondary education, conservative outlets like National Review magazine were the vanguard of demand for a rich, robust liberal arts curriculum. By the 2010s, conservatives had abandoned such principles. Besides partisan opposition to higher ed, pundits like the late Charlie Kirk, who dropped out during his first semester, made a living encouraging youth to avoid schooling, mostly on university campuses.

Even where they don’t actively sabotage schools, they undermine education generally. In my state, the one-party government is actively torpedoing arts and humanities curricula, effectively turning state universities into trade schools. Samantha Fulnecky’s refusal to engage with her subject follows a pattern proposed by online firebrands like Kirk and Shapiro, to do everything within your power to avoid opening your mind or risk changing your opinions. Conservatives enroll in college to win, not to learn.

Dennis Prager and Samantha Fulnecky share a premise that truth is something we assert morally, not something we demonstrate empirically. Therefore, changing your mind when presented with contrary evidence is a form of moral failure. That’s why they eschew source citations, because it doesn’t matter what anybody else says, not even their own historically ambiguous holy text. Fulnecky demands experienced, credentialed mentors adjust themselves to her pre-existing beliefs, the God’s Not Dead model of education.

Let me emphasize, education shouldn’t aim to change students’ minds. It would be remarkable if a thorough education with a liberal arts core didn’t make youth change their minds on some topics, but changing one’s mind isn’t a prerequisite. But addressing complex topics more deeply, with a thorough topical understanding and a familiarity with prior knowledge and existing debates, is a prerequisite. And that requires knowing and citing sources, even those that disagree with you.

Conservatives once believed in difficult, diverse education; but conservatives like William F. Buckley and George Will have become rare. These pundits were intelligent, gentlemanly, and most important, willing to face evidence. Today’s conservative leadership doesn’t want to engage debate, it wants to silence it, and dogmatic belief is one tool to achieve that goal. When your goal is not to question but to clobber, making yourself a media darling is an easy way to win.

Internet Censors and Real Speech

The cover art from Sharon Van Etten’s
Remind Me Tomorrow

I had no idea, until this week, that Sharon Van Etten’s folk-pop electronic album Remind Me Tomorrow might be off-color. Specifically, the cover art. I’ve linked to my review of the album several times on several platforms without incident. But this week, I had a link yanked from Instagram by the parent company, Meta, on the grounds of “child nudity.”

As you can see, the cover image is a childhood snapshot of Van Etten and her brother. That’s Van Etten half-folded into a laundry basket, partially unclothed. Small children often hate clothes, and have to be conditioned to wear them in time to start school. Because of this, most people recognize a categorical difference between innocent small-kid nakedness, and smut. I suspect any impartial judge would consider this the former.

This isn’t my first collision between Meta and nudity. I’ve repeatedly needed to appeal them blocking links because my essays included Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, a panel from the Sistene Chapel ceiling. It depicts Adam, not yet alive, lolling naked in Eden, including his visible genitals. Nearly every blog essay I’ve written that included this image, I’ve had to appeal against lewdness regulations.

Any reasonable person would agree that social media needs basic standards of appropriate behavior. Without a clear, defined threshold, one or a few bad-faith actors could deluge the algorithm with garbage and destroy the common space. Consider the decline of public spaces like Times Square in the 1970s: if nobody defends common spaces, they become dumping grounds for the collective id.

But those standards are necessarily arbitrary. What constitutes offensive behavior? We get different answers if we ask people of different ages, regions, and backgrounds. My grandmother and I have different expectations; likewise, Inglewood, California, and Doddsville, Mississippi, have wildly divergent community standards. But because Facetube and InstaTwit don’t have geographic boundaries, they flatten distinctions of place, race, age, and economic standing.

TikTok perhaps embodies this best. Cutsie-poo euphemisms like “unalived,” “pew-pew,” and “grape” gained currency on TikTok, and have made it vitally difficult to discuss tender topics. YouTube restricts and demonetizes videos for even mentioning crime, death, and the Holocaust. Words like “fascism” and “murder” are the kiss of death. In an American society filthy with violence, the requirement to speak with baby talk circumspection means that we can’t communicate.

Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, from the Sistene Chapel ceiling

Watching the contortions content creators have to perform whenever called upon to address the latest school shooting or overseas drone strike, would be hilarious, if it weren't heartbreaking. Americans have to contend with legislative inertia, lobbyist cash, and morally absolute thinking when these catastrophes occur. But then the media behemoths that carry the message have the ability, reminiscent of William Randolph Hearst, to kill stories by burying them.

I’m not the first to complain about this. I’ve read other critics who recommend just ignoring the restrictions, and writing forthrightly. Which sounds great, in theory. If censorious corporations punish writers for mentioning death and crime too directly, the response is to refuse to comply. Like any mass labor action, large numbers and persistence should amend the injustice.

In theory.

Practically speaking, media can throttle the message. In the heyday of labor struggles, the Ludlow Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain, unions could circumvent media bottlenecks by printing their own newspapers and writing their own folk songs. But most internet content creators lack the necessary skills to program their own social media platforms. Even if they could, they certainly can't afford valuable server space.

Thus, a few companies have immediate power to choke even slightly controversial messages, power that creators cannot resist. Which elicits the next question: if journalists, commentators, and bloggers cover a story, but Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk stifle the distribution, has the coverage actually happened? Who knows what crises currently fester unresolved because we can’t talk about them?

This isn’t a call to permit everything. Zuckerberg and Musk can’t permit smut on their platforms, or even link to it, because it coarsens and undercuts their business model. But current standards are so censoriously narrow that they kill important stories on the vine. If we can’t describe controversial issues using dictionary terms, our media renders us virtually mute.

Given how platforms screen even slightly dangerous topics and strangle stories in their beds, I’m curious whether anyone will even see this essay. I know I lack enough reach to start a movement. But if we can start speaking straightforwardly, without relying on juvenile euphemisms, that represents a step forward from where we stand right now.

Andrew Tate, Master Poet

Back in the eldritch aeons of 1989, art photographer Andres Serrano gained notoriety for his picture “Piss Christ.” The image involved a crucifix with Jesus, shown through the glimmering distortion of an amber liquid, putative Serrano’s own urine. The controversy came primarily through Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), who aspired to become America’s national guilty conscience. This outrage was especially specious because Helms only noticed the photo after it had been on display for two years.

I remembered Serrano’s most infamous work this week when “masculinity influencer” Andrew Tate posted the above comment on X, the everything app, this week. Tate is a lightning rod for controversy, and seems to revel in making critics loose their composure. Sienkiewicz and Marx would define Tate as a “troll,” a performance artist whose schtick involves provoking rational people to lose their cool and become angry. To the troll, the resulting meltdown counts as art.

Andres Serrano remains tight-lipped about his politics, and repeatedly assures tells that he has no manifesto. Following the “Piss Christ” controversy, he called himself a Christian, but this sounds about as plausible as Salman Rushdie calling himself Muslim after the Satanic Verses fatwa: that is, a flimsy rhetorical shield that convinces nobody and makes the artist look uncommitted. I think something else happened here, something Serrano didn’t want to explain; the image itself doesn't matter.

Specifically, I think Serrano created a cypher of art. Unlike, say, Leonardo’s “Last Supper,” Serrano’s picture doesn’t actually say anything. Instead, it stacks our loaded assumptions of religious imagery and bodily waste, and asks us what we see here. The image itself is purely ceremonial. Serrano cares more about why seeing the Christian image through urine is worse than seeing it through more spiritually anodyne fluids, like water or wine. Our answer is the art.

Critics like Helms, or let’s say “critics,” see art in representational terms. Art, to them, depicts something in the “real world.” This might mean a literal object, such as a fruit bowl in a still life, or an event or narrative, like the gospel story in “The Last Supper.” The representational mind seeks an artwork’s external, literal reference. This makes “Piss Christ” dangerous, because dousing the sacred image in something ritually unclean is necessarily blasphemous.

Progressive critics abandon such one-to-one representations. In viewing more contemporary art, from Serrano’s photos to Jackson Pollock’s frenetic, shapeless splatters, they don't ask themselves what object they ought to see. They ask themselves how the art changes the viewer. In the Renaissance, audiences assumed that art created a durable image of the transient, inconstant world. But artists today seek to amplify and hasten change. We viewers, not the world, are the purpose of contemporary art.

Ironically, as progressive critics tolerate more receptive non-representational standards in visual art, their expectations of language have become more exacting and literal. From religion to poetry to President Taco's id-driven rambles, they take words to mean only what they mean at surface level. Every online critic who considers it their job to identify “plot holes” in Disney’s Cars, or insist the Bible is disproven because we can’t find the Tower of Babel, makes this mistake.

At the surface level, Andrew Tate’s macho posturing seems like the opposite of art. His insistence on appearing constantly strong leaves no room for contemplative ruminating over language’s beauty or nuance. He doesn’t signpost his metaphors like Emily Dickinson, so it’s easy to assume he has no metaphors. Yet the weird prose poem above, with its apparent insistence that it’s now “gay” to be straight, defies literal scientific reading. By that standard, it’s pure poetry.

Tate seemingly contends that, in a world without obsolete gender and sexual designations, while nothing better takes their place, words become meaningless. If men feel sexually homeless nowadays, Tate lets us relax our burdens and shed our doubts. If words mean nothing, then words can’t control us. If it’s gay to be straight, then we can expunge archaic goals like love and stability. Yield to language’s poetic flow, let it transform you and be transformed by you.

This doesn't forgive Tate’s crass misogyny and weirdly self-destructive homoeroticism. He still treats women as ornaments and men as something to both desire and despise. As with any poet, it’s valid to say when something doesn’t land. (This one landed so badly that Tate eventually deleted it; only screenshots remain.) But we must critique it in its genre. Andrew Tate is a poet, not a journalist, and his words change us like art.

Party Politics and the Art of Forgiveness

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

This weekend, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) called the Democrats “a big tent…. that’s got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene.” This statement deserved the immediate blowback, as Greene’s history of race-baiting, antisemitism, and harassing school shooting survivors doesn’t just go away. But it exemplifies two problems with American politics. First, that our parties have been reduced to the Trump and anti-Trump parties, without underlying principles. Second, we keep steadily eroding the relationship between forgiveness and repentance.

Raskin’s invitation is only the latest Democratic effort to dilute their brand. The Democrats continue providing a nurturing cocoon to aggressive nationalists like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, simply because they personally refuse President Taco. Former Representative Joe Walsh, who holds truly noxious views, has become a resistance leader. Yet the party leadership, including Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, still haven’t endorsed Zohran Mamdani, even after he won the party primary and the majority vote.

Throughout the last decade, we’ve watched America’s mainstream parties reorganize themselves around one man. Republicans, who had legitimate policies in the 1990s when I was one of them, have become the party that endorses whatever dribbles out of President Taco’s mouth. Those who disagree, the party deems “traitors.” Meanwhile, Democrats, once the party of Civil Rights and the New Deal, have jettisoned all principles to pursue whatever and whoever opposes this President. This isn’t sustainable.

To accomplish their agenda, Democrats have ushered their onetime opponents up the leadership ladder. Although professional pundits claimed Kamala Harris lost last year’s election behind issues like queer, trans, and racial rights, Harris actively avoided those issues. Instead, she spent the campaign’s final weeks touring as a double-act with Liz Cheney, whom observers have described as “arch-conservative.” Democrats have pivoted away from their base, including labor, minorities, and queer voters, to chase the ever-shifting center.

Democrats have made conservatives like Cheney, Walsh, and now Greene their preferred leaders, despite their voting base’s opposition. This rush to promote former enemies makes sense if, like I suspect many Democrats did, you read Clausewitz in high school, without prior context. Many military strategists contend that former enemies make the best allies. Which is probably true, if your only interest is winning. But because the Democratic base has certain principles, winning alone isn’t enough.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD)

“Forgiveness” has become the defining stain of contemporary American life. News reeks with commentators who demand forgiveness, not as a culmination of a penitent journey, but as a precondition. From ordinary criminals who want forgiveness without facing consequences, to widespread abuse in religious congregations, to loyalists eager to excuse treason, we’ve witnessed a reversal of the forgiveness process. It’s become something powerful people demand from their perches, not something the wronged offer from God-given mercy.

I can’t unpack the full underpinnings of forgiveness in 750 words. In brief, “forgiveness” is half of the continuum, one face of a coin. The other half is “repentance,” the process of taking account and changing one’s life. This isn’t merely verbal contrition, as I learned in White Protestant Sunday school. Repentance, or metanoia in Greek, means literally walking a new path. We know somebody’s repented, not by their words, but by their changed life.

Cheney, Walsh, and especially Greene have shown no inclination toward changed lives. Though Greene has verbally apologized for past violent rhetoric, observant critics claim her manner hasn’t shown signs of authenticity. More important, this change in Greene’s loyalties has happened too suddenly to reflect in her actions. Perhaps Greene has literally reversed herself, and she’ll demonstrate a more cooperative, nonviolent, and restrained manner. But it’s too soon to know whether her words match her actions.

Please don’t misunderstand me: verbal apologies matter. Humans are language-driven creatures, and speaking with one another is a necessary part of bond-building. But who among us hasn’t known somebody who says they’re sorry, while showing no acts of repentance? This may be innocent—small children think “I’m sorry” is a blanket ticket to forgiveness—or malicious—abusive spouses love voicing their regrets. But only when words and actions come together do they make a difference.

Part of repentance includes asking whether one will handle power better in the future. Current or former elected officials, including Greene, Walsh, and Cheney, want the Democratic Party to offer them unconditional leadership, like they had before. But from my vantage point, they’ve shown no signs that they’ll use that leadership to uplift the downtrodden, heal the hurting, or support large-D Democratic principles. They haven’t shown a new life, so they haven’t yet earned forgiveness.