New Delusions

Natural selection shaped us into family animals. We tend to live in small cooperative groups. When we form larger groups, which are less reinforced by our basic makeup, we depend on less-binding factors to hold us together, among them ideologies, metaphors, legalities and group-shared delusions. In short, we make stuff up, so that America becomes in theory a gigantic family with a President as our Super-Father.

When the Super-Father's swivel chair is sat in by someone Black or a woman or someone gay, the claim that America is a super-family needs an adjustment, and that comes hard for families wedded strongly to White male macho supremacy. 

When I was in the military (in the era of universal military training), I learned that officers were required to attend religious services. Officers need not believe in God, just go to church, because it set an example for enlisted men. They were all men in those days. The military reasoning was explicit. Religion might or might not be a delusion--not the point--but it added cohesion to a nearly random group of young men pledged to fix bayonets and charge machine-guns.

Today many of our key national delusions are fading. Only 12% of millennials describe themselves as patriotic. I'd guess there was nearly universal patriotism in my grandfather's generation. Now we're skeptics. Some of my friends are so skeptical they turn their backs to science and scorn the World Health Organization and so on. Beliefs like "America is a democracy" are hard to sustain when second place wins the Presidency. "We're a country of laws" is less impressive once you realize that there are different applications of the laws depending on your race.  

This country needs new and more compelling beliefs. It's time to make up something new.