Dual Power Dave

The illusion the empire sells its citizens isn’t just political. It’s existential. For a significant portion of the American working class, people who have watched their towns empty, their wages stagnate, their futures narrow, the empire is not delivering material prosperity anymore. It hasn’t been for a while. What it is still delivering is the story. The story that says: whatever else is true, you are a citizen of "the greatest nation in history." You are on the right side. Your country, whatever its flaws, is "the last best hope." The main character. When material conditions fail, identity becomes more important, not less. The flag on the truck is not irrational. It is a person holding onto the one form of wealth the system hasn’t yet taken from them. That is not a small thing to ask someone to surrender. That is why the critique that only targets ideas, without addressing the material conditions that make those ideas necessary, keeps failing. You cannot argue someone out of the only dignity available to them.

There is a specific kind of entitlement that doesn’t know it’s entitlement. It just feels like normalcy. The expectation that gas will be affordable. The expectation that the dollar will be accepted everywhere. The expectation that your country’s president’s decisions will be treated as globally relevant while other countries’ decisions are treated as local. The expectation that your wars will be covered as "tragedies" and other people’s resistance will be covered as "threats." None of this feels like entitlement from the inside. From the inside it feels like the way things are. That’s the difference between entitlement built on occasional advantage and entitlement built into the structure of an entire civilization. The second kind doesn’t need to announce itself. It just shapes what feels normal. And what feels normal is the hardest thing in the world to voluntarily give up.